Startup company Varjo’s prototype AR/VR Headset
Varjo, a company based in Helsinki, Finland, is working on prototypes for Virtual and Augmented Reality with plans to make an early version of a headset. Varjo are hoping to sell headsets to professional users next year. This has been reported by technologyreview.com.
Varjo’s VR prototype builds on an Oculus Rift with a high-resolution micro OLED display and an angled glass plate in front of the headset’s regular display. The plate they use lets Varjo merge the two different displays into one image that you see when you put on the headset.
The author speaks of his experience using a Varjo headset and says that what Varjo is doing with this hack is similar to a technique known as foveated rendering, which shows you the highest-resolution images just at the spot where your eye is focused, and lower-resolution images in the periphery of your field of view (in much the same way the fovea, which is a point on the retina of the eye, does).
According to the article, Varjo plans to add the ability to track your gaze. Research Assistant Professor, Emily Cooper, notes that eye tracking can be hard to calibrate and isn’t always consistent. One reason is that while we might look at the same object in the same spot over and over, we don’t always do it with the exact same part of our retina—which could throw off an eye tracker.
“It’s always important to keep in mind that people’s vision isn’t perfect,” Cooper says. “That can be a benefit—foveated rendering kind of exploits that in a way. But it can kind of get in the way sometimes.”