

Beginnings of the Holodeck: AMD's DX11 GPU, Eyefinity and 6 Display Outputs - profquail
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3635

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cracki
holodeck, seriously?

this isn't even new tech, just the same old, but more, faster and better.

at our university, we have a CAVE. that's a 4x4x3 meter box with
backprojection screens on four sides and a projection on the floor.

then you stand in there with polarized glasses that are motion-tracked.

now you can move around and what you see is really 3D. there's even a
joystick-kinda input device (also motion-tracked) with which you can move and
rotate what you see.

calling 6 displays the beginning of a holodeck... hah!

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rms
If you read the article, you would see that the roadmap that begins with this
GPU is to build one by 2016. That GPU will supposedly perform the holodeck
like speech, gesture, and eye tracking.

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throw_away
When can we have the one that goes haywire and punches me in the face? :)

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chaosmachine
This setup has a fatal flaw: The center, where your character or crosshairs
would normally appear, is right on the split between two screens.

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coliveira
That's why they recommend the 5x1 setup for first person games.

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skolor
I found this somewhat confusing. I'm not a big FPS player, so this might be
way off base, but wouldn't a 2x2 being the best setup? Unless I'm wrong, most
FPS games are designed so that what is shown on the screen is what would be
directly in front of you. Wouldn't spreading that out across 5 screens be
rather detrimental?

Now, I understand how that would be awesome if a game could sense that and
give you the peripheral vision your character would have, but unless that is a
feature in modern games, I would think a 2x2 makeup, with the cross-hair
created by the intersection would be the best way to go.

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fuzzmeister
Many modern games let you increase your field of view above the normal 90
degrees, making a 5x1 display useful.

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hapless
Just a few years ago, you had to buy an SGI to the tune of several million
dollars to get six graphics heads.

Now it's 2010's $500 video card. Which you install in commodity hardware.

I could never have predicted that standing in 2000.

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jacquesm
I really hate to think how many screens I could buy today for the price of my
90's O2...

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cracki
you'd _really_ hate to think how many screens you could buy _in the future_
for the price of your 90's O2...

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rms
>Carrell estimates that the human eye can directly resolve around 7 million
pixels, almost twice the resolution of a 30" display. But that's just what
it's directly focusing on, all of the peripherial vision brings the total up
to around 100 million pixels. The Eyefinity demo I showed earlier was running
at 24.5 million pixels on a single GPU; you can estimate that at this
generation we'll be able to do about 50 million pixels with two GPUs and one
more generation from now we'll get to that 100 million pixel marker. That's
two years for a single GPU. Then give it a few more years to be able to render
that many pixels but with enough complexity to actually look real.

Rendering something at the max resolution that the human eye can resolve isn't
enough however; you have to feel immersed in the graphics. That's where
Eyefinity comes in, at least what it starts to come in.

Carrell believes that in seven years we can have the first generation Holodeck
up and running. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Trek reference,
Carrell believes it'll take seven years to be able to deliver a 180 degree
hemispherical display (you're not completely surrounded by displays but at
least your forward and peripheral vision is) with positionally accurate and
phase accurate sound (both calculated by the GPU in real time). The GPU will
also be used to recognize speech, track gestures and track eye
movement/position.

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johnyzee
Why not VR helmets? That sounds so much more doable (and immersive) than
building a wall (or for a holodeck, a room) of screens. I have enough trouble
fitting a 40" LCD into my living room.

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wlievens
Absolutely. VR helmets is something that was promised ages ago but never
really broke through. Or am I wrong? Any experiences here?

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Gonsalu
Yeah, but does it run Crysis?

