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Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

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Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#91

Post by gmueckl »

mncharity wrote: post #87
gmueckl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wrote has nothing to do with skeuomorphism, only with human anatomy, perception and pretty basic geometry. I am not proposing that windows get rendered with 3d modelled grips for grabbing and moving.

When an artist draws with a display-less graphics tablet, the hand is in one place, but they watch and use an abstraction of it on a display, displaced in space, orientation, and scale. It can take some getting used to. Touchpads and cursors have similar non-trivial relationships. And similarly, there's no reason for your hands to be positioned at the end of your arms (as with "throwy hands"). Nor, with non-novice us…

Skeuomorphism is the wrong word for what you are criticizing, I think.

You are talking about an simulated non-physical world that makes no semse at best and I'm certain that it is just a nausea and disorientation simulator for almost every single user if I understand your thoughts correctly. The thing with VR is that it messes with expectations about the physical world that people process subconsciously. Break them ever so so slightly and people react involuntarily to it. There is no consciously controllable component to getting uncomfortable in VR.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#92

Post by gmueckl »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #68
gmueckl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current generation of headsets is unsuited for showing large amounts of reasonably sized text. The display resolution is not there yet. If you map your desktop into a plane in VR space at the proper distance, your UI text shows up heavily aliased and barely readable due to the texture resampling that happens in that process. You need to increase resolution by another factor of two or three to make that actually c…

The difference between a headset and a monitor is that in VR when you lean in the text gets sharper.

Leaning in is not ergonomic over longer periods of time and may be very undesirable in constrained spaces. I find myself actually doing that a lot when interacting with the desktop in VR and it becomes physically straining after a few minutes.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#93

Post by gmueckl »

mncharity wrote: post #71
dreamcompiler wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lighter, higher-resolution headsets + full keyboard control = 3D Emacs!

Yes. If anyone knows of any existing code to support say 3D cross/parallel-eye stereo views, with z-axis displaced words, in an emacs buffer being actively edited, I'd like to hear of it. Teaching your window manager to be 3D is fun, but the next step is to teach your apps.

You are welcome to try, but I can tell you right now that a UI that places words in a text at different depths is a terrible idea. Depths is simulated by varying parallax and vergence. And forcing a permanent vergence adjustment is a strain on the eye muscles. Plus you get to enjoy the vergence-focus mismatch from the fixed headset focal distance to the fullest. This is a headache-inducing cue.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#94

Post by wlesieutre »

deorder wrote: post #82
smcnally wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far off is current headset resolution from what’s needed for reading code, working with files, audio, video?

Very close, but it is not there yet. The following is at least preferable: - Full clarity along the lens - Double the resolution of what the current VR has - Foveated rendering (to be able to handle the high resolution) - Dynamic focus - Eye tracking (to get dynamic foveated rendering and focus) - More comfort (lighter headset, improved finger tracking, better weight distribution, better foam, cooling etc.)

I'll add input device and hand/finger passthrough to that. I think the Rift S can do this, assuming you're good with "virtual screens overlayed on camera passthrough" as an implementation.

But if you want to bring it into a fully virtual world instead of on top of the cameras, then you can't see your keyboard, mouse, or fingers. I can blindly touch type well enough to get by, but for it to see any adoption you'll need to get the input devices visible in VR.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#95

Post by itsyaboi »

gmueckl wrote: post #91
mncharity wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an artist draws with a display-less graphics tablet, the hand is in one place, but they watch and use an abstraction of it on a display, displaced in space, orientation, and scale. It can take some getting used to. Touchpads and cursors have similar non-trivial relationships. And similarly, there's no reason for your hands to be positioned at the end of your arms (as with "throwy hands"). Nor, with non-novice us…

Skeuomorphism is the wrong word for what you are criticizing, I think. You are talking about an simulated non-physical world that makes no semse at best and I'm certain that it is just a nausea and disorientation simulator for almost every single user if I understand your thoughts correctly. The thing with VR is that it messes with expectations about the physical world that people process subconsciously. Break them e…

Just wanting to point out, "...nausea and disorientation simulator for almost every single user" is quite the exaggeration. I have demo'd the Vive at several schools, businesses, among friends/family, and a significant portion of people had no problems with flying or "sliding" control schemes.

One curious personal observation: out of the ~10 Asian coworkers who tried the Vive, all experienced some degree of motion sickness related discomfort.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#96

Post by mncharity »

gmueckl wrote: post #93
mncharity wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If anyone knows of any existing code to support say 3D cross/parallel-eye stereo views, with z-axis displaced words, in an emacs buffer being actively edited, I'd like to hear of it. Teaching your window manager to be 3D is fun, but the next step is to teach your apps.

You are welcome to try, but I can tell you right now that a UI that places words in a text at different depths is a terrible idea. Depths is simulated by varying parallax and vergence. And forcing a permanent vergence adjustment is a strain on the eye muscles. Plus you get to enjoy the vergence-focus mismatch from the fixed headset focal distance to the fullest. This is a headache-inducing cue.

Which is why you keep your primary text plane at focus depth, and emphasize shallow 3D displacement. You can do a lot with a mere cm of depth around your laptop screen, or a similarly scaled annulus at an HMD's 2 meter focus distance.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#97

Post by gmueckl »

itsyaboi wrote: post #95
gmueckl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skeuomorphism is the wrong word for what you are criticizing, I think. You are talking about an simulated non-physical world that makes no semse at best and I'm certain that it is just a nausea and disorientation simulator for almost every single user if I understand your thoughts correctly. The thing with VR is that it messes with expectations about the physical world that people process subconsciously. Break them e…

Just wanting to point out, "...nausea and disorientation simulator for almost every single user" is quite the exaggeration. I have demo'd the Vive at several schools, businesses, among friends/family, and a significant portion of people had no problems with flying or "sliding" control schemes. One curious personal observation: out of the ~10 Asian coworkers who tried the Vive, all experienced some degree of motion si…

The people I showed the Vive to all had issues, so our experiences seem to be entirely different. How long did they use the headset on average?

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#98

Post by gmueckl »

mncharity wrote: post #96
gmueckl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are welcome to try, but I can tell you right now that a UI that places words in a text at different depths is a terrible idea. Depths is simulated by varying parallax and vergence. And forcing a permanent vergence adjustment is a strain on the eye muscles. Plus you get to enjoy the vergence-focus mismatch from the fixed headset focal distance to the fullest. This is a headache-inducing cue.

Which is why you keep your primary text plane at focus depth, and emphasize shallow 3D displacement. You can do a lot with a mere cm of depth around your laptop screen, or a similarly scaled annulus at an HMD's 2 meter focus distance.

This results in an interesting question: I don't know if the available headset resolutions are sufficient to provise these quite subtle vergence cues.

Re: Moving the Linux desktop to another reality

#99

Post by mncharity »

gmueckl wrote: post #98
mncharity wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why you keep your primary text plane at focus depth, and emphasize shallow 3D displacement. You can do a lot with a mere cm of depth around your laptop screen, or a similarly scaled annulus at an HMD's 2 meter focus distance.

This results in an interesting question: I don't know if the available headset resolutions are sufficient to provise these quite subtle vergence cues.

Hmm. For VR HMDs, with RGB subpixels (non-PenTile), you can read a pixel-aligned 5 pt character in the center, but you don't get many of them (because of lens blur, and just VR lensing), and the pixels are a bit large. I've no idea how well SteamVR/Unreal/Unity currently let you use them. The lenses of Valve's Index were praised elsewhere here.

AR HMDs trade narrower FoV for angularly smaller pixels, and you can use "all" of them. But the pixels may be poorly aligned between eyes, as with Project North Star. Maybe Hololens 2 (with different a-v issues). I can't comment on Magic Leap. I look forward to trying next month's/year's Nreal glasses.

Media-viewing and drone HMDs offer a screen at some distance. Some are stereo 3D. Some are 1080p. Few have head tracking. You can add it with Intel t265, Zed, Structure Core (no linux), or DIY. Many have a "diopter" adjustment. They've varied build quality, and supported nose sizes.

Some months back, I failed to find a 3D 1080p HMD, and so currently use mono 1080p DJI drone goggles (discontinued cheaper white model), with anaglyph (crushing the color space to reduce eye strain) or DIY shutter (flickery 30 or 20 Hz) to recover 3D. :/ Usually with reading glasses, despite my old eyes being nearsighted, which costs some edge pixels. DIY optical tracking, so no temporal antialiasing. I'd not recommend it.

My current hope is for a Q4, 1080p, 50-ish degree FoV, 3D "screen" HMD (media-viewer or AR). With either head tracking built in, or COTS. It may need a Windows box in support, especially for hand tracking. I'll likely stay with a simple custom browser-as-compositor stack, for low-cost pixel-precise control, but a mainstream VR or AR stack might work too.

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