IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

This comment confuses me. Is it text on a web page or did i just actually watch an IMAX movie? I hope they don't send you a letter too!

> To put it another way, your display has the ability to render a certain amount of detail, full stop. Where a virtual object is rendered is irrelevant.

But we're talking about a virtual display displaying pre-existing content (e.g. video footage). We aren't talking about the object itself.

If it is one foot from you in virtual space, each pixel of video footage might be mapped 1:1 into each pixel of the VR headset's screen resolution. Therefore the loss of detail is 0%. Every pixel of video detail is transposed onto the display in the VR headset.

If the virtual object is further way (e.g. six feet) it takes up a smaller percentage of the VR headset's display, and therefore fewer physical pixels on the VR headset's display are used to render it. So now instead of 1:1 you might be 1:4, and you're seeing 25% of the video's original detail actually rendered on the VR headset's display.

> Try this. Sit close to your monitor, close enough that text isn't crisp enough. Now zoom your display (Ctrl+'+' in most browsers), which is equivalent to bringing a virtual display closer. Note that the text still isn't crisp. If you could see the pixelation before, you can still see it. Moving the virtual display closer does nothing, because you aren't adding more resolution to the physical display.

Your analogy is backwards and doesn't apply.

But sticking to that same analogy, go get 1080p resolution image. View it on a 1080p display. You're seeing 1:1 (100%) of the detail within the image (all of it). Now zoom out, and again, and again. Detail has been lost. First a little, then a lot, and as you go too far back substantial amounts have been. This is because a 1080p image on a 1080p display can only display 100% of the detail when it is viewed at 100%. As the image is zoomed (or further away in the VR headset's case) it is not possible to continue to consume all of the details as the pixels don't physically exist to display it.

So solve this problem you need a higher resolution than the source material, and it gets higher and higher the more you zoom. If you viewed a 1080p image on a 8640p display, you could zoom out significantly with absolutely no loss of detail, because the pixel density is such that it can still render every dot within the image.

So in order for a VR headset to be able to render stuff far away with no loss of detail the resolution of the headset has to be much higher than the source video. The further away the video gets, the higher the resolution. Again, that is if you want absolutely no loss of detail (in the real world, some loss of detail is acceptable).

In order to play back a 1080p video on a 1080p VR headset, the video either needs to be right in front of the viewer (at 1:1), you'll have to accept loss of detail when moving it further away, or you'll need a higher resolution on the VR headset than the source video (e.g. 4x more pixels on the headset than the source video, when it only takes up 1/4th of the VR headset's display space).

If the virtual display-video is only 1cm squared on each of the VR headset's displays, then that 1cm needs to have the same pixels as 1080p to display 1080p video with no loss of detail. It is just physics. As you move things further away in virtual reality they get rendered by fewer pixels on the real-world VR headset displays, and therefore loss of detail is unavoidable. You can only counteract this with higher PPI than the source video (or just accepting the loss of detail).

"The jump up in tech between playing a normal video game and playing with Kinect was X. The jump between a regular game and playing a room scale VR experience is X times 100. It’s like saying, 'I have an IMAX theater in my house.' It’s so much better that we can get away with a cumbersome setup."

You can't see how that quote implies it's up to IMAX standards? Why even use the IMAX name if not to invoke the idea that it's up to their standards?

> How far the movie screen appears in the VR headset has no impact whatsoever on pixelization and is purely a stereoscopic effect

We're talking about rendering pre-existing video at those distances, so it absolutely DOES cause pixelation as fewer pixels are used to render the video content than its native resolution.

A lot of people calling me wrong seem to be under the odd mistaken impression that we're rendering some generic object far away, but the discussion is about display pre-existing video footage at a distance.

If the VR headset is 1080p and the video footage is 1080p, if you put it far away (i.e. it only takes up 50% or 25% of the VR headset's screen real-estate) then it obviously cannot be rendered using all 1080p of the video's original pixels (since many are in use on the VR headset's display for non-video footage) and therefore a loss of detail is unavoidable.

The only solution to this is having a higher PPI than the source video. And as you move the video footage further and further away, the PPI needs to increase to keep the video footage rendered at its native resolution.

Be serious.