Intel researchers find a potentially better solution to HMD's (Like the Oculus Rift) distorting images.

[Vitalius]

Post at /.

 

An anonymous reader writes:

"The combination of smartphone panels with relatively cheap and light-weight lenses enabled affordable wide-angle Head Mounted Displays like the Oculus Rift. However, these optics introduce distortions when viewing the image through the HMD. So far these have been compensated for in software by using post-processing pixel shaders that warp the image. However, by doing so a loss in image quality (sharpness) can be perceived. Now researchers from Intel found a way around this error by using different sampling for rendering, therefore potentially increasing the image quality of all current and future HMDs with a wide field of view."

Rather than applying barrel distortion to the final raster image, the researchers warp the scene geometry during rasterization. However, it currently requires ray tracing so it's a bit computationally expensive. Note that a vertex transformation can be used (with tessellation used to enhance the approximation), but the results are of variable quality.

 


To summarize:

HMD's (Head Mounted Displays) distort images due to the wide angles needed for your eyes to see the entire picture. This is fixed with software, but causes the image quality, and specifically, the sharpness to suffer.

Researcher's at Intel have found a way around this by using a different sampling method for rendering which will potentially increase all HMD's picture quality that have a wide field of view (FOV). 

However... A comment on this post at Slashdot caught my attention, and here it is:
 

Oculus Rift is one of the greatest products ever, and Ima let you finish, but this is even better for multi-monitor gaming.

At least Oculus Rift had identified and addressed the problem of distortion, even though their solution loses image quality. Multi-monitor gaming has been garbage for a decade because everyone seems content with horrific distortion at large FOVs.

I know, it's all a matter of screen placement and eye positioning. That's dumb. I want a wrap-around image. I want to aim a projector at each of three walls and have the result make sense.

If you've tried Fisheye Quake, you know it's hell on your system, and still doesn't look great. If this technique is at all performance, everyone needs to start shipping with support, and they need to start yesterday.

That's interesting to me because the only problems I have ever heard of regarding multi-monitor gaming are the bezels, the price tag, and the high performance GPU requirement. Never have I heard about distortion issues, though it makes a lot of sense. 3 flat panels trying to show you a curved view sounds like it wouldn't work too well.

What is your take on this? 

If you use multiple monitors to game, do you notice any lack of sharpness or distortion (depending on if the software solutions are being used)?

I think this is great. I'm sure that even though each screen in the Oculus Rift is 640x480 (or wtv it was), it was hurt even more by these software solutions. More clarity = good.