Researchers in the Stanford Computational Imaging Group have developed a new virtual reality headset that takes into account how the human eye focuses and processes depth.
Current display technologies are essentially two-dimensional and don't present images the way our eyes were designed to see them, which can cause "virtual reality sickness," or VR sickness for short, after only a few minutes.
The new system involves two transparent LCD displays with a spacer in between, which is called "light field technology." A Stanford News article describes a light field as creating "multiple, slightly different perspectives over different parts of the same pupil. The result: you can freely move your focus and experience depth in the virtual scene, just as in real life."
Gordon Wetzstein, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering, developed the technology along with researchers Fu-Chung Huang and Kevin Chen. In the news piece, Wetzstein listed the variety of applications this advance could have, robotic surgery top among them: "If you have a five-hour [robotic] surgery, you really want to try to minimize the eye strain that you put on the surgeon and create as natural and comfortable a viewing experience as possible."
But the applications aren't limited to what has already been imagined. Wetzstein explains, "Virtual reality gives us a new way of communicating among people, of telling stories, of experiencing all kinds of things remotely or closely. It's going to change communication between people on a fundamental level."
You can access a short video on the new development here.
Previously: Fear factor: Using virtual reality to overcome phobias, From "abstract" to "visceral": Virtual reality systems could help address pain, Double vision: How the brain creates a single view of the world, Discover magazine looks at super human vision and Augmented reality iOS app for color vision deficiency
Photo by Vignesh Ramachandran
