A Question About VR Headset Resolution

I received a question via reddit a few moments ago, and I think the answer might be of general interest, so I decided to answer it here:

“Would you happen to know the effective or perceived resolution of the [Valve Index headset] when viewing a 50″ virtual screen from say.. 5 feet away? Do you think its equivalent to a 50″ 1080p tv from 5 ft away yet? I was also wondering why when I look at close up objects on the index that I can see basically no screen door effect, but when looking into the distance at the sky then suddenly the sde becomes very noticeable.”

Okay, so that’s actually two questions. Let’s start with the first one, and do the math.

The first thing we have to figure out is the resolution of a 50″ 1080p TV from 5 feet away. That’s pretty straightforward: a 1080p TV has 1920 pixels horizontally and 1080 pixels vertically. Meaning, it has √(19202 + 10802) = 2202.9 pixels along the diagonal, and – assuming the pixels are square – a pixel size of 50″/2202.9 = 0.0227″. Next we have to figure out the angle subtended by one of those pixels, when seen from 5 feet away. That’s α = tan-1(0.0227″/(5⋅12″)) = 0.0217°. Inverting that number yields the TV’s resolution as 46.14 pixels/°.

Figuring out a VR headset’s resolution is more complex, and I still haven’t measured a Valve Index, but I estimate its resolution in the forward direction somewhere around 15 pixels/°. That means the resolution of the hypothetical 50″ TV, viewed from 5 feet away, is approximately three times as high as the resolution of a Valve Index. The interested reader can simulate the perceived resolution of a VR headset of known resolution by following the steps in this article.

The second question is about screen-door effect (SDE). As shown in Figure 1, SDE is a high-frequency grid superimposed over a low-frequency (low-resolution) pixel grid, which makes it so noticeable and annoying. But why does it become less noticeable or even disappear when viewing virtual objects that are close to the viewer? That’s vergence-accommodation conflict rearing its typically ugly, but in this case beneficial, head. When viewing a close-by virtual object, the viewer’s eyes accommodate to focus on a close distance, but the virtual image shown by the VR headset is still at its fixed distance, somewhere around 1.5‒2m away depending on headset model. Meaning, the image will be somewhat blurred, and SDE, being a high-frequency signal, will be affected much more than the lower-frequency actual image signal.

Figure 1: Low resolution vs. screen-door effect (SDE). (Right-click and “view image” to see in full resolution.)

Visual Simulation of the Resolution of VR Headsets

While I was writing up my article on the PlayStation VR headset’s optical properties yesterday, and specifically when I made the example images for the sub-section about sub-pixel layout comparing RGB Stripe and PenTile RGBG displays, it occurred to me that I could use those images to create a rough and simple simulator to visually evaluate the differences between VR headsets that have different resolutions and sub-pixel layouts.

The basic idea is straightforward: Take a test image that has some pixel count, for example WxH=640×360 as the initial low-resolution full-RGB picture seen in Figure 1. If you then blow up that image to fill a monitor that has the same aspect ratio (16:9) and some diagonal size D, the resolution of that image in terms of pixels per degree depends both on D and the viewer’s distance from the monitor Y: the larger the ratio Y/D, the higher is the image’s resolution as seen by the viewer. In detail, the formula for distance Y to achieve a desired resolution R in pixels/° is:

Y = (D / sqrt(W*W + H*H))/(2*tan(1/(2*R)))

where W and H are in pixel units, R is in pixels/°, and D is in some arbitrary length unit (inch, meter, parsec,…). Y will end up being in the same unit as D.

If a viewer then positions one of their eyes at a distance of Y from the center of the monitor and closes the other one, the resolution of the image on the monitor will be R. In other words, if R is the known resolution of some VR headset, the image on the monitor will look the same resolution as that VR headset.

There is one caveat: when looking at a flat monitor, the resolution of the displayed image increases away from the monitor’s center, while in a VR headset, the resolution generally decreases away from the center direction (see this article for reference). Meaning, for a correct evaluation, the viewer has to focus on the area in the center of the monitor. Unfortunately there is no easy way to simulate resolution drop-off using a flat monitor, at least not while also simulating sub-pixel layout.

Simulation Procedure

Here’s what you need to do: Continue reading

Field of View and Resolution of the PlayStation VR Headset

It has been a very long time since I did the original optical measurement of then-current VR headsets. I have owned a PlayStation VR headset (PSVR from now on) for almost a year now, and I finally got around to measuring its optical properties in the same way. I also developed a new camera calibration algorithm (that’s a topic for another post), meaning I am even more confident in my measurements now than I was then.

One approach to measuring the optical properties of a VR headset, which includes measuring its field of view, its resolution in pixels/°, and its lens distortion correction profile, is to take a series of pictures of the headset’s screen(s) through its lenses using a calibrated wide-angle camera. In this context, a calibrated camera is one where each image pixel’s horizontal and vertical angles away from the optical axis are precisely known.

If one then displays a test pattern that lets one identify a particular pixel on the screen, one can measure the viewer-relative angular position of that pixel in the camera image, which is all the information needed to generate the projection matrices and lens distortion correction formulas that are essential to high-quality VR rendering.

Without further ado, here is a series of 7 images taken with the camera lens at increasing distances from the headset’s right lens (Figures 1-7, and yes, I forgot to clean my PSVR’s lens). The camera was carefully positioned and aligned such that it was sliding back along the lens’s optical axis, and looking straight ahead. The first image was captured with an eye relief value of 0mm, meaning that the camera lens was touching the headset’s lens. The rest of the images were captured with increasing eye relief values, or lens-lens distances, of 5mm, 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, and 30mm: Continue reading

The Display Resolution of Head-mounted Displays, Revisited

I wrote an article earlier this year in which I looked closely at the physical display resolution of VR headsets, measured in pixels/degree, and how that resolution changes across the field of view of a headset due to non-linear effects from tangent-space rendering and lens distortion. Unfortunately, back then I only did the analysis for the HTC Vive. In the meantime I got access to an Oculus Rift, and was able to extract the necessary raw data from it — after spending some significant effort, more on that later.

With these new results, it is time for a follow-up post where I re-create the HTC Vive graphs from the previous article with a new method that makes them easier to read, and where I compare display properties between the two main PC-based headsets. Without further ado, here are the goods.

HTC Vive

The first two figures, 1 and 2, show display resolution in pixels/°, on one horizontal and one vertical cross-section through the lens center of my Vive’s right display.

Figure 1: Display resolution in pixels/° along a horizontal line through the right display’s lens center of an HTC Vive.

Figure 2: Display resolution in pixels/° along a vertical line through the right display’s lens center of an HTC Vive.

Continue reading

The Display Resolution of Head-mounted Displays

What is the real, physical, display resolution of my VR headset?

I have written a long article about the optical properties of (then-)current head-mounted displays, one about projection and distortion in wide-FoV HMDs, and another one about measuring the effective resolution of head-mounted displays, but in neither one of those have I looked into the actual display resolution, in terms of hard pixels, of those headsets. So it’s about time.

The short answer is, of course, that it depends on your model of headset. But if you happen to have an HTC Vive, then have a look at the graphs in Figures 1 and 2 (the other headsets behave in the same way, but the actual numbers differ). Those figures show display resolution, in pixels/°, along two lines (horizontal and vertical, respectively) going through the center of the right lens of my own Vive. The red, green, and blue curves show resolution for the red, green, and blue primary colors, respectively, determined this time not by my own measurements, but by analyzing the display calibration data that is measured for each individual headset at the factory and then stored in its firmware.

Figure 1: Resolution in pixels/° along a horizontal line through my Vive’s right lens center, for each of its 1080 horizontal pixels, for the three primary colors (red, green, and blue).

Figure 2: Resolution in pixels/° along a vertical line through my Vive’s right lens center, for each of its 1200 vertical pixels, for the three primary colors (red, green, and blue).

At this point you might be wondering why those graphs look so strange, but for that you’ll have to read the long answer. Before going into that, I want to throw out a single number: at the exact center of my Vive’s right lens (at pixel 492, 602), the resolution for the green color channel is 11.42 pixels/°, in both the horizontal and vertical directions. If you wanted to quote a single resolution number for a headset, that’s the one I would go with, because it’s what you get when you look at something directly ahead and far away. However, as Figures 1 and 2 clearly show, no single number can tell the whole story.

And now for the long answer. Buckle in, Trigonometry and Calculus ahead. Continue reading