As CTO of StarVR, I want to take the opportunity to clarify some questions and speculations we’re hearing that concern the StarVR One display specifications that we’ve announced.

VR is imposing a new set of rules for displays. To achieve the best visual quality, we spent the time and energy to design our display panels to match our lenses. This is a very unique solution and we pushed ourselves to leverage the best panel technologies available.

Our panels have a native resolution which is higher that our previous Development Kit version. However, we know that resolution is not everything and so we’ve focused our efforts on engineering a solution that combines the best aspects of both panels and lens for our StarVR One product.

VR image quality is about balancing a lot of factors. We manage to get the best design and then went above anyone else. The major points we’ve achieved with StarVR One are:

1. Very close to zero Screen Door Effect (SDE), believing is trying it ;-)!

2. Uses nearly 100% of the display surface and conforms to the lenses’ FOV. Imagine providing the best pixel ratio per angle across the entire 210 FOV and we’ve done it!

3. Display panels are Full RGB.

I strongly believe we need to redefine how we quantify and qualify VR panels and what resolution means in VR. We are going there. VR needs its own specification rules. Let’s define them together. StarVR One is the first of its kind.

For the techies I would like to add some deeper specifications and information on our approach:

Definition of StarVR one Panels

- 16 million RGB sub-pixels

- 5.35 million sub-pixels per channel

- 5:4 aspect ratio per display

Compare our numbers to typical AMOLED sub-pixel arrangement (RGBG = 2px) and 5.35 million green sub-pixels. The total number of sub-pixels would be 10.7 million.

Optimized for our lenses, Optimized for VR

The StarVR One displays are designed to work in optimal combination with the lenses, maximizing the active viewing area utilization.

The full RGB Sub-Pixel Arrangement (SPA) is not classical RGB stripes, but a Delta Triad sub-pixel arrangement that provides a better pixel distribution without favoring any viewing orientation. Also, unlike competing AMOLED SPA displays that sacrifice color, we retain genuine (full RGB) pixels in StarVR One.

We prefer not to express the display resolution in terms of width and height as the pixels are not forming an orthogonal grid. However, a resolution of 1830 x 1464 * RGB (remember it’s Full RGB and this is key) per display would be the closest equivalence considering the number of sub-pixels and the display aspect ratio.

We run a custom sub-pixel rendering algorithm before the signal is sent to the displays resulting in an optimal sub-pixel sampling.

The Pixel Per Degree (PPD) calculation is complex and reducing the result to a single number is not very meaningful. It makes little sense to simply divide the resolution by the Field of View (FOV) especially on very large FOV HMD. The calculation must take in to account many factors: lens distortion, sub-pixel arrangement, FOV per eye, and pixel density. It also varies slightly depending on the gaze direction.

In the end, putting on the HMD and looking through the lenses is the only way to have a true sense of its visual quality.

Again, we encourage you to try StarVR One. Available soon. Please stay tuned.

This cannot be a more exciting time for us. VR is best experienced and judged by a trying it. It’s not easy to describe something that only your eyes can appreciate. Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. Believe me StarVR One will amaze you. StarVR One does not compromise on the quality of its display technology and the experience it provides.

Emmanuel Marquez

CTO@StarVR