Last week Oculus provided us with a glimpse of what the next Rift could look like. Now it’s Sony’s turn to do the same.
Japan Display, a tech group backed by Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba, this week revealed two new screens with greatly increased pixel density, specifically designed for VR headsets. As Venture Beat reports, one screen featured 1,001-pixels-per-inch (PPI) while the other boasts 803PPI.
It’s important for VR displays to have a high PPI, as is makes the gaps between pixels much harder to spot. PSVR’s current 386PPI display, for example, works well enough but has clear black lines between pixels, resulting in a distracting ‘screen-door effect’. With more pixels packed onto the screen, the user gets a much clearer image, as you can see in the image below from Japan Display itself.
Japan Display also notes that displays with more than 1000PPI will be essential to shrinking the size of LCD displays and thus the overall size and weight of VR headsets.
That could mean that, if a hypothetical PSVR 2 uses the 1,001PPI option, which measures in at 3.25 inches, the headset might be smaller than the current offering for the PS4, which uses a 5.7-inch OLED display. Venture Beat also notes that the 1,001PPI display has a 120Hz refresh rate, which matches what the current PSVR is capable of, while the 803PPI option has a 90Hz refresh rate similar to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Both displays will be on show at the SID Display Week in LA this month, and Japan Display says to expect them in products by next March. That said, we doubt we’ll be seeing the next PSVR around that time; we likely won’t get an update there until PS5 has launched.
