Since that’s not a feasible option, judder can also be eliminated with zero persistence, as shown in this diagram, where there’s no sliding or jumping at all.
We’ve done the experiment of using a zero-persistence scanning laser display with really good tracking.
The result looks amazingly real; doing an A/B comparison with a full-persistence display is night and day.
So it would seem that zero persistence is the magic solution for judder – but it turns out to be just another layer of the perceptual onion.
Zero persistence works perfectly for whatever image the eyes are tracking, because that image lands in exactly the same place on the retina from frame to frame.
However, as shown in this diagram, anything that is moving rapidly relative to the eyes now strobes, because successive frames of such images fall too far apart on the retina to fuse, and there’s no smear to hide that.
This is a great example of how deep the issues associated with head mounted displays go.
So at this point, judder in head mounted displays is not a solved problem.
Judder isn’t that bad; it does reduce visual quality and makes text all but unreadable, and is worse with higher pixel density, but the resulting virtual images are certainly good enough for gaming.
However, it’s not great, either, and the point here is that, much as was the case with 3D graphics, great VR visual quality is going to require a considerable amount of time and R&D.
And believe me, there’s a lot more than just color fringing and judder to figure out.