Nvidia's Near-Eye Light Field Displays. Not very Stylish. Reminds me of 80s VR. (via NVIDIA)
Head-mounted displays are fast becoming popular among consumers for use in gaming and AR/VR applications. Companies such as Oculus, Vuzix and Google have already introduced their iterations of the technology to the market while others are looking to get their versions prototyped and ready for consumers. One such company, Nvidia, is looking to toss their hat into the head-mounted display race with a prototype device known as Near-Eye Light Field Displays. The eyewear doesn’t operate using the same technology as other head-mounted displays such as the Oculus Rift or Google Glass but rather uses microlens arrays that convert pixels into individual lightrays to give an image depth and clarity. The arrays are situated on top of a pair of Sony ECX332A OLED micro-displays measuring a scant 15.36 x 8.64 millimeters capable of pumping out a resolution of 1280 x 720 at a pixel density of roughly 2100ppi. The microlenses allow the human eye to refocus on the image, which gives the illusion of multiple depths. Both lenses, about 1 centimeter thick, are situated onto a frame with all of the electronics (unknown at this time) housed in a small box on top of the screens. Obviously, their intended use doesn’t revolve around fashion whatsoever but are rather intended for use with gaming or watching media. The software that powers the head-gear is known as light-field ray tracing, which works by tracing the path of light through each pixel and simulates the effects it has in contact with virtual objects. The interesting thing about the software is that the displays can be adjusted on the fly for user’s glasses or contact presciptions, eliminating the need to wear them while also wearing the head-mounted display. It’s unknown as to when Nvidia’s head-mounted display will become available at this time, but it’s safe to say that it will be sooner rather than later.
Nvidia's Project Logan. (via NVIDIA Blogs)
The graphics company isn’t just developing new head-wear or discrete graphics for desktops or laptops, they are venturing deeper into the mobile market by trying to integrate their Kepler series chip into mobile devices. Indeed the company is looking to integrate their high-end chip (notably used in their 600 and 700 series cards) into mobile devices, which was recently showcased recently at SIGGRAPH. Project Logan was initiated to develop a new SoC based off of Nvidia’s Kepler-series chips, which currently powertheir flagship card Titan (based off of a revised GK-based chip), for use in mobile devices thereby giving them tremendous power in rendering high-end visuals. Unlike its desktop counterparts or the GPUs found in other mobile devices, the chip consumes less power while rendering GUIs, games or video. Nvidia’s Logan feature the same APIs as the larger discrete GPUs including support for the upcoming OpenGL 4.4, OpenGL ES 3.0 and Microsoft’s DirectX 11. It also has the same rendering power as its big brothers such as tessellation and compute-based deferred rendering as well as advanced anti-aliasing and physics/simulations (PhysX) for more realistic gaming. While Nvidia’s Project Logan is certainly impressive, it doesn’t quite have the graphics power of a full-on video card such as the Titan, however it can (at this point) give consoles a run for their money.
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