In a presentation during Display Week 2022, Meta (formerly Facebook) detailed the specs of its Quest 2 VR headset. Meta display engineer Cheon Hong Kim talks about the Quest 2’s display architecture and design challenges when using an LCD panel for a VR headset.
The talk covers the importance of low persistence, a technique that illuminates pixels in every frame as your head moves in real-time (via UploadVR). Without this technology, rapid head movements can be perceived by your brain as motion blur, which can be a very disturbing feeling. An early version of the Oculus Rift development kit had this issue back in 2013, and it was fixed a year later.
Compared to headsets with OLED displays (like the Valve Index or PlayStation VR), LCD displays are generally considered unsuitable for VR due to longer response times. In 2017, the release of a new “quick switching” LCD improved the response time of the Oculus Go and Quest 2 headsets.
One interesting piece of news from the conversation was that the Quest 2’s per-eye resolution is actually smaller than the listed 1832 x 1920 pixels. This is because Quest 2 only uses a fraction of the single panel for both lenses. And because the lenses are round, the user’s eyes never need or see the corners of the display. So even though each eye is technically 1832 x 1920 resolution, you can’t actually see.
The presentation also detailed the reasons for the screen-window effect that plagues some VR headsets. The screen window effect is when the gaps between pixels become visible, the screen window effect of the image in front of you. Quest 2 still can’t avoid this phenomenon. However, it wants to increase the count on future headphones to eliminate motion blur and ghosting.
