Video is StarVR One : Official Introduction via StarVR Corporation and YouTube
Two technological innovations have recently come to my attention that could go a long way towards solving some of the limitations of VR.
A common problem with most VR headsets I’ve seen so far is that they have a rather limited field of view. Generally they are limited to a forward looking window, with a width of around 110° degrees.
Now StarVR One headset has been released for commercial applications. It has a super-wide fov of 210° X 130° degrees. This encompasses essentially the entire human peripheral visual field. The headset also includes Tobii eye-tracking that enables foveated rendering. That means as you look around, only the central part of your visual field is rendered at full resolution. This reduces the bandwidth requirements of the headset. The 2 displays use 90 Hz and 1830 x 1464 pixels AMOLED technology.
The following video illustrates one user’s hands-on reaction:
Video is StarVR One – The New King Of High End Virtual Reality – MRTV StarVR One Hands-On Review via MRTV – MIXED REALITY TV and YouTube
A Cure For Simulator Sickness?
Another common problem with VR has turned out to be simulator sickness, a variety of motion sickness that many users experience, when using VR headsets. It occurs because the vestibular motion sensors in the inner ear, conflict with the motion you are seeing through the headset.
One solution that is emerging, is to place the user on a motion-simulator chair of some sort. Basically it uses rotation and tilt, to simulate more accurately, the forces you would be subjected to if you were actually moving around in the real world.
One startup I’ve heard of recently, that seems to me to be on the right track is called Feel Three
Video is Feel Three Kickstarter Promo via Feel Three and YouTube
This design does seem to me, that it could have sufficient degrees of freedom, to simulate the full range of motions. The basic need is for unlimited rotation, plus a wide range of tilts, to simulate the inertial “pseudo forces” experienced during horizontal acceleration, deceleration, and cornering/banking.
Of course the ear’s vestibular aparatus is not so sensitive to the strength of any inertial-gravitational forces. Rather, it senses displacement in the direction of the reaction vector. When you are stationary, the reaction vector points straight up-down, due to gravity. Hence tilting you should be enough to simulate any moderate levels of horizontal acceleration. Up to perhaps 1g in any direction, which would produce a 45° tilt in the normal vertical alignment of the reaction vector, due to vector addition. Of course tilting forward/backwards could also simulate going up and down hills, or roller-coaster pitching motion in an airplane, whatever.
This video is a demo of actual gameplay, using Feel Three to play the space-adventure simulator, Elite Dangerous:
Tao Of Scientism 