This Startup Wants to Make Your VR Experience Even More Realistic

Imagine: You look around and see dragons flying all around you. You’re in the middle of a war and there are knights everywhere. Fireballs blaze past your head and magic spells zip by you. You stop, for just a second, and look at the glorious world that envelopes you. You realize it looks a bit blurry. That’s when you pause the game and take off the virtual reality headset you were wearing.

Virtual Reality  

The world of virtual reality has made staggering advancements over the last decade. In the past 10 years, people have gone from thinking of virtual reality as another pipe dream to thinking of it as a legitimate future of gaming and other applications. It’s an exciting and intriguing world that has many companies vying for your dollar and attention.

While VR is just beginning to find its footing and understand what it’s supposed to be, it still has some hurdles to overcome. One of these is the graphical quality of the virtual world you step into when you put on the headset. While many companies are trying to solve this problem, one company stands out and has made an improvement that could be game changing.

Looking to Change the Game

Varjo is a company based in Helsinki, Finland — and graphical fidelity has been its main area of concern for virtual headsets. After all, besides motion sickness, graphical quality is one of those problems that may be keeping the average consumer from adopting the technology. As a matter of fact, graphical quality and motion sickness go hand in hand. Better graphical fidelity may lead to less motion sickness.

The image above is a comparison of details of a 3D model used in a Varjo example VR scene.

The amazing technology that Varjo is working with helps bring graphical clarity to the images you see all around you when you put on the VR headset. What they’ve been working toward is making the resolution not only clearer, but also to function as the human eye does. It sounds awesome in theory, but how does it work when people strap on a headset and try it for themselves?

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How It Works

One such demo was done, and the results were quite impressive. Varjo’s technology allows for clarity and resolution up to 70 times the amount that is currently being seen in the VR market. In the demo, the participant can read individual file names when sifting through a folder in the virtual world. Varjo makes this possible by creating a sharp visual cue that makes everything directly in front of you clear. Everything to your left and right becomes slightly blurrier — much like the human eye.

Is This the Next Step?

While Varjo has made this stride in VR and AR technology, what does this mean for the future of the newly born tech? First and foremost, it should be noted that this technology could be hugely important. The key word here is could. While VR and AR may be the future, the technology is still in its infant stage. This could be a major step forward for graphical fidelity. However, if no one ends up adopting this micro-display technology, then it may all be for naught.

If this is a piece of the VR puzzle developers have been looking for, this will be a crucial step in the right direction for VR. All companies have been striving for a way to figure out how to achieve crisp and clear visuals without making people sick, and it looks as if Varjo has figured it out. Only time will tell if this new discovery by Varjo will change the game. Regardless, the VR experience is still fun, and it’s almost more fun to witness these companies battle each other for the newest discovery in the tech field of VR.

By  Kayla Matthews	Embed
Kayla Matthews writes about marketing innovation and business solutions for Inc.com, Convince & Convert and WeWork. You can read more posts by Kayla on her blog, Productivity Theory.