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Kopin

Display Maker Demonstrates Flagship OLED VR Display & Pancake Optics, Its Best Yet

July 6, 2022 From roadtovr

Kopin is an electronics manufacturer best known for its microdisplays. In recent years the company has been eyeing the emerging XR industry as a viable market for their wares. To that end, the company has been steady at work creating VR displays and optics that it hopes headset makers will want to snatch up.

At AWE 2022 last month, the company demonstrated its latest work on that front with a new plastic pancake optic and flagship VR display.

Kopin’s P95 pancake optic has just a 17mm distance between the display and lens, along with a 95° field-of-view. Furthermore, it differentiates itself as being an all-plastic optic, which makes it cheaper, lighter, more durable, and more flexible than comparable glass optics. The company says its secret sauce is being able to make plastic pancake optics that are as optically performant as their glass counterparts.

Photo by Road to VR

At AWE, I got to peak through the Kopin P95 optic. Inside I saw a sharp image with seemingly quite good edge-to-edge clarity. It’s tough to formulate a firm assessment of how it compares to contemporary headsets as my understanding is that the test pattern being shown had no geometric or color corrections, nor was it calibrated for the numbers shown.

You’ll notice that the P95 is a non-Fresnel optic which should mean it won’t suffer from the kind of ‘god-rays’ and glare that almost every contemporary VR headset exhibits. Granted, without seeing dynamic content it’s tough to know whether or not the multi-element pancake optic introduces any of its own visual artifacts.

Even though the test pattern wasn’t calibrated, it does reveal the retina resolution of the underlying display—Kopin’s flagship ‘Lightning’ display for VR devices.

Photo by Road to VR

This little beauty is a 1.3″ OLED display with a 2,560 × 2,560 resolution running up to 120Hz. Kopin says the display has 10-bit color, making viable for HDR.

Photo by Road to VR

Combined, the P95 pancake optic and the Lightning display appear to make a viable, retina resolution, compact display architecture for VR headsets. But it isn’t necessarily a shoe-in.

For one, the 95° field-of-view is just barely meeting par. Ostensibly Kopin will need to grow its 1.3″ Lighting display larger if it wants to meet or exceed what’s offered in today’s VR headsets.

Further, the company wasn’t prepared to divulge any info on the brightness of the display or the efficiency of the pancake lens—both of which are key factors for use in VR headsets.

Because pancake lenses use polarized light and bounce that light around a few times, they always end up being less efficient—meaning more brightness on the input to get the same level of brightness output. That typically means more heat and more power consumption, adding to the tradeoffs that would be required if building a headset with this display architecture.

Kopin has been touting its displays and optics as a solution for VR headsets for several years at this point, but at least in the consumer & enterprise space they don’t appear to have found any traction just yet. It’s not entirely clear what’s holding the company back from break into the VR space, but it likely comes down to the price or the performance of the offerings.

That said, Kopin has been steadily moving toward the form-factor, resolution, and field-of-view the VR industry has been hoping for, so perhaps the P95 optic and latest Lightning display will be the point at which the company starts turning heads in the VR space.

Filed Under: awe 2022, Feature, folded optics, hardware preview, Kopin, kopin lightning display, kopin p95, News, Pancake Optics, vr display, VR displays, VR Optics

Panasonic Subsidiary Shiftall Unveils Lightweight MicroOLED VR Headset for Consumers

January 4, 2022 From roadtovr

Panasonic subsidiary Shiftall, the makers of SteamVR-compatible body tracking system HaritoraX, announced it’s releasing a lightweight consumer VR headset this year that includes OLED microdisplays and the ability to play SteamVR content. Called MeganeX, the low-profile, high-resolution headset is slated to launch sometime in Spring 2022, priced at around $900.

Unveiled at CES 2022, Shiftall’s MeganeX is said to include 1.3 inch OLED microdisplays which feature a 2,560 × 2,560 per-eye resolution, rated at 120Hz. The 6DOF headset features a foldable frame with built-in speakers, making for a compact package that weighs in at 250g, or around 8.8oz (without cable).

Pancake optics are included here too—a design element which Huawei and Pico have used in their respective prototype headsets, and which HTC has used to slim down its Vive Flow standalone headset.

Image courtesy Shiftall

Shiftall says MeganeX is focused on serving up SteamVR content, however it’s also said to include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR1 chipset—similar to Vive Flow. Here’s the full spec sheet Shiftall has shared so far:

  • Display: 1.3inch OLED microdisplay 5.2K (2,560 × 2,560 per eye), 10bit HDR / 120Hz
  • Weight: Approx. 250g (8.8oz) – Without cable
  • Processor: Snapdragon XR1 platform
  • Tracking system: 6DOF, camera based inside-out head tracking
  • Connection: DisplayPort Alternate Mode on USB-C or DisplayPort + USB2.0 – Connect with the interface conversion box (included in package)
  • Estimated Price: Less than $900

Tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch (aka ‘SadlyItsBradley’) says in a hands-on at CES 2022 that both clarity and brightness are “actually pretty good,” and further correctly guessed at the inclusion of Kopin microdisplays. Shiftall says those are also Kopin-made pancake optics, in case you were wondering.

Lynch’s admittedly quick assessment on the show floor is encouraging to hear, as pancake optics typically present drawbacks when it comes to optical efficiency, requiring brighter displays to overcome disturbances caused by its polarized elements, which reflect light back and forth.

Both specs-wise and in physical appearance, Shiftall’s MeganeX feels very similar to Panasonic’s compact VR glasses revealed at a special event last year in Japan which coincided with the all-digital CES 2021. Those included Kopin microOLEDs providing a 2,560 × 2,560 per-eye resolution too.

One of the biggest missing pieces is field of view (FOV) however. Kopin says in a prior announcement for its first all-plastic ‘P95’ pancake optics, that when paired with its own Kopin’s 1.3 inch 2,560 × 2,560 microOLED it can provide around a 95-degree FOV.

Acquired by Panasonic in 2018, Shiftall focuses primarily on niche consumer devices, many of which feel like contenders for SkyMall. Its IMU-based body tracking system, HaritoraX, has been on the Japanese market for some time now though, which better positioned the company to dive deeper into the world of XR hardware development. Besides MeganeX, Shiftall is bringing two more immersion gadgets to global markets with the help of parent company Panasonic this year.

Alongside MeganeX, Shiftall also announced Pebble Feel, a wearable body cooling and heating device worn on your back, and Mutalk, a microphone that’s supposed to suppress outside noise as well as muffle the user’s own speech to those nearby in their physical space—both ideal candidates for VRChat, NeosVR or any other fairly open social VR app that supports niche hardware such as haptic vests. Both Pebble Feel and Mutalk are slated to launch in 2022, both priced at “around $200”.

Filed Under: Kopin, kopin vr, micro oled, microdisplay, microoled, News, panasonic, Shiftall, Standalone VR Headset, VR, VR Headset

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