Communications of the ACM
Lcd Hacking Trick Could Make Virtual Reality More Real
Nvidia researchers have created a prototype Virtual Reality headset that can quadruple the pixel density of an LCD display panel.
Credit: Nvidia Research
Virtual reality (VR) systems could be augmented with a new dimension of realism thanks to a prototype VR headset created by Nvidia researchers that can quadruple the pixel density of a liquid crystal display (LCD) panel.
The researchers built this cascaded display through the modification of two commercially available LCD panels, while exploiting the panels' use of an array of minuscule shutters to control the visibility of individual pixels. The Nvidia team removed the shutter array from one panel and laid it over the array in another panel of the same design. The additional layer is oriented so its pixels are slightly offset from those of the panel underneath, while the borders of the extra shutter layer split each pixel of the panel below into four smaller areas.
The researchers have developed software capable of translating the feed from a video or a game into instructions for each layer to generate the desired image for a viewer.
Cascaded displays also yield a higher frame rate that smooths out moving images, while setting the panels to refresh out of sync with one another causes the display's user to see new frames at double the rate each individual panel is updating.
From Technology Review
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