When it comes to using a virtual reality headset (VR), no matter how good the screen is, what you see will always be limited by the width of the field of view of the hearing instruments.
Most of the best VR hearing aids on the market, such as Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive, have a 110-degree field of view, which is actually quite good, but you will still see the edges of the hearing aids once you see them outside of this limit.
That could one day change, however. This week at the F8 2018 developer conference, Facebook made fun of a new VR headset prototype with wider lenses that expand the field of view inside the headphones to 140 degrees.
Called Half Dome, the headset's lenses would allow users to see a much wider field of vision than even the new HTC Vive Pro, which still has the traditional 110-degree FOV.
In addition, Half Dome lenses are & varifocal & # 39; that are controlled mechanically. This means that instead of changing the focus on the software side when you observe something in virtual reality (like what is done with the foveated rendering), the lenses are adjusted to give you better focus.
Varifocals simulate how the real eye fits to look at objects, so placing them in a VR headset would offer a more realistic simulation of visual focus.
It is not known when we will see the technology within Half Dome reach a real product, although with signs that point to a possible launch of Project Santa Cruz later this year, we could see this technology sooner rather than later.
Via Digital Trends
