Skip to main content
ideamachinedev
Up and Coming
August 18, 2014

Experimenting with Flex OLED for VR screen

Hi Guys,
I was wondering...
As the flex OLED's are coming to the market ( and being used in wearables) I would love to see oculus consumer version using a flex OLED to have a physical shape (to match distortion optics) which is being calculated at the moment using shape transformations. This will enable native software to run just like it were a flat, split screen and will also take care of the pixel density problem plus save a lot of computation at least reducing one step in the rendering pipeline. Although this might be easier said than done, I would like to hear from people at Oculus who I believe might be experimenting. :)
Disclaimer: It is a crazy idea with little or no knowledge of the algorithms and techniques used so far. Please excuse my ignorance.

    6 replies

    simhopp
    New Participant
    March 8, 2015
    I think eventually that's what's going to happen.

    at least for this type of head mount display,

    where you have screen, and a lens for each eyes.

    most ideal setup would be two separate spherical surface display screen with the pixels arranged in pincushion pattern for each eyes.
    where the pixel in the center would be square, but the pixels at the corner of the pincushion would be smaller and distorted accordingly.

    and simple spherical lenses.

    this arrangement will minimize distortion and reduce the burden on GPU.

    but for now, LG G Flex type of curved screen would be better than current flat screen setup.
    saviornt
    Up and Coming
    March 8, 2015
    CV2... for now, the screen cost is a bit high.
    Current WIPs using Unreal Engine 4: Agrona - Tales of an Era : Medieval Fantasy MORPG
    jherico
    Inspiring
    March 9, 2015
    "simhopp" wrote:
    and simple spherical lenses.

    this arrangement will minimize distortion and reduce the burden on GPU.


    No, certainly not for a long long time, if ever. The problem with curved display surfaces is that everyone seems to think you'd just need to bend it on one axis, but in order for the screen to maintain a constant distance from the lens surface you'd need the screen to continuous curvature on two axes. The resulting shape would be more like the bottom of a bowl than the simple curve shape you can get from bending current flexible display technologies. Try creating a bowl shape out of a piece of paper without creasing it and you'll see what I mean.

    This kind of bowl shaped display isn't likely to be developed any time soon because while flexible displays have all sorts of potential applications, a flexible (or even rigid) bowl shaped display would have exactly one, potentially making it easier to do lens correction in VR. However, there are much cheaper ways of doing that using the GPU, so no one is going to try to do it with some brand new display manufacturing pipeline.
    Brad Davis - Developer for High Fidelity Co-author of Oculus Rift in Action
    Harley
    Up and Coming
    March 25, 2015
    Please read and reply to the other existing thread about Flexible Display Panels here instead:

    viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1197

    I'm also thinking that it would be great for CV2, but question is how they can be fully utilized.
    g4c
    Up and Coming
    March 25, 2015
    as @jherico says: To marry with a spherical lense the flexible panel would have to take the form of a section of sphere (2D curve), cant bend stiff sheets in 2D, but perhaps it's possible to fab it flat and then heat mold in the shape?
    Android VR Developer. https://twitter.com/SiliconDroid
    Fredz
    Up and Coming
    March 25, 2015
    "jherico" wrote:
    in order for the screen to maintain a constant distance from the lens surface you'd need the screen to continuous curvature on two axes.

    On the DK2 the screen is not at a constant distance from the lens surface either, that's probably why anything outside of a relatively small center FOV is blurry.

    With a curved screen in one dimension it's possible that it would be less blurry on at least one axis, which would be a progress and would allow a wider horizontal FOV. A new type of rendering would be required though (hemicylindrical instead of planar) which is not necessarily well optimized with current graphic APIs.

    I guess that may change with DX12/Vulkan, and it could also mean less wasted resolution on the edges.
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement