At GTC 2016 next week, NVIDIA Research will take to the stage to explore “computational display” prototypes for next-generation fidelity and form-factors in VR and AR headsets.

David Luebke, NVIDIA’s Vice President of Graphics Research, at GTC 2016 next week will be exploring the complex optical, display, and form factor challenges faced by VR and AR headsets today, as well as ways to overcome them. Leubke will discuss what he calls “computational display” prototypes, which co-designs the entire pipeline of rendering, display, and optics to achieve high resolution, wide field of view, and small form-factor devices.

S6738 – Computational Displays for Virtual and Augmented Reality

We’ll describe work by NVIDIA Research and our partners on challenges common to all wearable VR and AR displays:(1) FOCUS: how to put a display as close to the eye as a pair of eyeglasses, where we cannot bring it into focus? (2) FIELD OF VIEW: how to fill the user’s entire vision with displayed content? (3) RESOLUTION: how to fill that wide field of view with enough pixels? A “brute force” display would require 10,000×8,000 pixels per eye! (4) BULK: displays should be vanishingly unobtrusive, as light and forgettable as a pair of sunglasses, but the laws of optics dictate that most VR displays today are bulky boxes bigger than ski goggles. I will discuss several “computational display” prototypes which sidestep these challenges by co-designing the optics, display, and rendering algorithm.

The session will be held on April 5th at 3:00pm PT, the second day of GTC.

Hosted in San Jose, CA, from April 4-7, GTC 2016 is all about GPU computing. And this year, the company is making virtual reality a top topic of the event, with a dedicated VR track featuring 45 talks and sessions from speakers across the industry.

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This is of course not the first time NVIDIA has been involved in explorations of the future of AR & VR tech. Back in 2013, Leubke and another NVIDIA researcher published their findings on a near-eye wearable light field display which “allows for dramatically thinner and lighter head-mounted displays capable of depicting accurate accommodation, convergence, and binocular-disparity depth cues,” according to the abstract. Last year we saw the Light Field Stereoscope which the Research group continued to work on with creator Fu-Chung.


Road to VR is a proud media partner of GTC 2016.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Anony Anonymous

    News something passed not? 2013.

    Nvidia has nothing of moments to present?. Something more stable?

    • Bryan Ischo

      Does not compute.

      • Bob

        It’s called Google Translate.

    • Raphael

      Does not compute.

  • Raphael

    The fact that they understand the fov needs to full your peripheral view is significant. Together with Stanford research i hope they can make it happen.

  • Surykaty

    I wonder what the magic leap tech is really about. Im mostly interested in the refresh rate it has as its important for immersion. If it equals at least 60 fps on a low persistence oled it could send Vive, Rift or PsVR into dust bin. You just have to close the thingy in a ski mask sort of thing (like Rift and everything else) and boom you have an amazing VR device with you having the advantage of being able to focus at different depths of the picture (according to the z buffer maybe). My speculation…

    • doesn’t matter what magic leap has made if they don’t share it with the world they are as good as non-existent.

      • Surykaty

        … before writing something this emotional again count to 3 please

        • since when factual=emotional?

          • Surykaty

            so i’m speculating about the tech and its possible effect on other VR tech and you say they (company) is good as non-existent because they did not share the tech to the world??? Sorry I don’t understand the logic in the text and how it really connects to my original comment.

            Facts : they exist, they have some very big investors on board and they released an interesting video showcasing the tech.

            It would be a completely different story if you would just say. “Well speculations are speculations, we know nothing about the tech” .. now that’s a proper comment

          • i find it pointless to even discuss about a company that has only showed a youtube video

          • Surykaty

            finally a legit comment.. however I do think the video is revealing enough, that I could speculate about enclosing the apparatus in an opaque shell (not to let light through) and so create a VR device out of it.. if it can be put on a persons face or on a camera lens (as shown in the video), it’s simply very very likely. The only problem is now what are the field of view numbers and what is the refresh rate (and how bulky the whole thing is and etc)