RifTUP! FullHD Oculus DK1 upgrade kit

[mcdohl]

any news?

[virror]

If there was, im pretty sure they would have posted them ; )

[timecop]

Hi LaserEdge,

thought this might be of interest to you, but some guys just put out a Kickstarter for a custom hdmi-mipi board with 9" screen. And they shot by their funding goal in like 3 days....

your board either unpaired or paired with 5.9inch Sharp Panel would sell like hotcakes.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/697 ... me_popular

more like HDMI to useless LVDS.
I love how their "development" includes buying $20 HDMI>LVDS conversion boards off ebay and knocking off VGA connector. Such a shame people these days use kickstarter as a storefront to resell Chinese crap... (If you need more proof, just take a look at recent "Able-HD" kickstarter.. lmfao)

[virror]

Well, ppl have always and will always try to make money of other ppls lack of skills. Thats what pretty much any company does. Thats why you buy a new stuff, because you can't or don't want to make it yourself.

[geekmaster]

Hi LaserEdge,

thought this might be of interest to you, but some guys just put out a Kickstarter for a custom hdmi-mipi board with 9" screen. And they shot by their funding goal in like 3 days....

your board either unpaired or paired with 5.9inch Sharp Panel would sell like hotcakes.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/697 ... me_popular

You have an extra "mi" in there. That is HDMI-Pi (as in Raspberry Pi). There is no "mipi". Just wishful thinking...

[Kernel32]

Hi LaserEdge,
... some guys just put out a Kickstarter for a custom hdmi-mipi board with 9" screen. And they shot by their funding goal in like 3 days....

your board either unpaired or paired with 5.9inch Sharp Panel would sell like hotcakes. ...

This could be true, but the important aspect is there are nearly 2 million Raspberry Pi microcomputers sold worldwide as of today. That resolves in much larger number of potential costumers and market scale than in case of Oculus Rift DK1 owners.

Our advantage is, a board developer can simply do a crowdfunding probe by asking rifters "Would you pledge $ X for this product?" and continue without much risk of failure. The market is well defined.

[wileythecoyote]

Has anyone come across of suitable oled panel yet?
Besides the resolution one of the biggest shortcomings of the dk1 is the poor contrast rating of 800:1.
That's probably reasonable for a monitor, but for a vr headset that's just too low.
Oleds typically yield over 2000:1 contrast ratios.
I'd love to see for example galaxy note's 5.7 inch full hd screen on rift.

[remosito]

Hi LaserEdge,
... some guys just put out a Kickstarter for a custom hdmi-mipi board with 9" screen. And they shot by their funding goal in like 3 days....

your board either unpaired or paired with 5.9inch Sharp Panel would sell like hotcakes. ...

This could be true, but the important aspect is there are nearly 2 million Raspberry Pi microcomputers sold worldwide as of today. That resolves in much larger number of potential costumers and market scale than in case of Oculus Rift DK1 owners.

Our advantage is, a board developer can simply do a crowdfunding probe by asking rifters "Would you pledge $ X for this product?" and continue without much risk of failure. The market is well defined.

First of all, Yes misread that as mipi, but tbh didn't really read it carefully after seeing it comes bundled with a 720p screen!


YES! 2M Rasperry Pi users!

Part of which would be totally going crazy bananas over LaserEdges board like us! Bolstering the buyer number massively!!!

Which is why I posted it in the first place.....

[remosito]

as this seems to have become the "post new displays" thread:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad+Min ... down/19374

same driver as normal IPad. Maybe eDP connector as well???

[Kernel32]

Yesterday, in my sleep I found a cinch video input in Nexus 7 tablet and all the happiness made me woke up. It was of course only a silly dream (and quite disturbing), but there is something to it.
The 200 dolar 1920×1200 Nexus 7 II has two physically identical video inputs for what seems as generic 1.2 MP front and 5 MP rear cameras. Rear camera simultaneously records and displays FulHD video. A simple custom app is able to only display/forward the image.

Pushing video trough camera input could be easier to setup as opposed to direct display feed. It is a 11 pin connector, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Link - possibly a CSI - Camera Serial Interface, a MIPI Alliance Standard.

Could that be of any use?

EDIT: The 5 MP rear camera looks very similar (lens, front housing, pin count) to what recently occured in Rapberry Pi 5MP camera module. It may be even the same manufacturer (Sunny Optical Technology) and/or chip and/or interface . (speculation) There is another Sunny Tech autofocus camera in the image attached that looks VERY similar to Nexus rear camera.

[jquantum]

About using camera input would it not be processing raw information? Would there be processing and input lag? If you could catch and redisplay the input feed prior to processing it then why not? I always thought the image was captured and the data processed via hw. If it's software then it's probably possible.

[zalo]

That's very creative, but with the way that these tablets are designed, I doubt it could be done easier/better than using the displays themselves.

Plus, you have all that extra weight from the battery unless you take that out and solder its leads to a wall plug.

[Vimax]

I'm still eagerly waiting for a solution from laseredge. That seems to me to be the solution most within our reach and also the easiest to implement.
The no news part cuts my hopes in half though...

[remosito]

Did y'all see Iribe's talk at the AMD Dev Summit from last week???

http://youtu.be/tL6hVtEkV9Q

Was wondering how the news that Consumer Version (and DK2??? oh please!!!) will ditch LCD and go OLED in low persistence "strobing" at 85+Hz to eliminate the motion blur issues.nHow that has affected y'alls desire to do diy HMDs/upgrades????

Oh yeah. Iribe as well mentioned this lil tidbit about them internally having latency down to 15ms. Which seems to be based on new/different engine rendering techniques... (that would have to be picked up by game devs I imagine)

That was a truckload of OMG he dropped there. And have to say it did take quite a bite out of my enthusiasm about DIY. Sure as hell made my hyped up meter for Consumer Kit go through the roof....


And boy, Oculus has been holding back before on releasing info about all the dark arts stuff they are doing in their labs. They must be up to sacrificing austriches if they can give us 15ms latency 85+Hz low persistence OLED Consumer Version!!!

[geekmaster]

... Was wondering how the news that Consumer Version (and DK2??? oh please!!!) will ditch LCD and go OLED in low persistence "strobing" at 85+Hz to eliminate the motion blur issues.nHow that has affected y'alls desire to do diy HMDs/upgrades???? ...

But without a MUCH higher display refresh rate, strobing the image will only increase stroboscopic motion ghosting, which I find even more annoying than motion blur. In fact, John Carmack mentioned in his blog that software motion blur may need to be ADDED to compensate for stroboscopic motion ghosts.

The balance between motion blur and stroboscopic motion ghost seems to be a personal choice, and the only way around that is a much higher framerate (1000 Hz or more, according to Michael Abrash).

[blazespinnaker]

How about intercepting the rendering pipeline at a late stage somehow and feeding that across the wire to have it finally rendered on the Tablet?

[remosito]

... Was wondering how the news that Consumer Version (and DK2??? oh please!!!) will ditch LCD and go OLED in low persistence "strobing" at 85+Hz to eliminate the motion blur issues.nHow that has affected y'alls desire to do diy HMDs/upgrades???? ...

But without a MUCH higher display refresh rate, strobing the image will only increase stroboscopic motion ghosting, which I find even more annoying than motion blur. In fact, John Carmack mentioned in his blog that software motion blur may need to be ADDED to compensate for stroboscopic motion ghosts.

The balance between motion blur and stroboscopic motion ghost seems to be a personal choice, and the only way around that is a much higher framerate (1000 Hz or more, according to Michael Abrash).

I have zero first hand experience with stroboscopic motion ghosting at any frequency, let alone at a whole range.

But from the Iribe talks it seems Oculus is solidly convinced that it's a better experience at 100ish Herz than LCD motion blur...

I wish I could attend that Valve event in January. Am very convinced the prototype HMD they will be showing will be such a OLED strobing setup. Heck Valve might even have the clout to talk a display maker to part with one of those 6" 1440p OLED prototype displays (now I am dreaming)....

Edit: Just reread Abrashs blog posts and while he does write that he is more sensitive to the stroboscopic motion ghosting than most people. The general impression I got was that even he thinks it's the smaller of the two evils....

[Fredz]

Edit: Just reread Abrashs blog posts and while he does write that he is more sensitive to the stroboscopic motion ghosting than most people. The general impression I got was that even he thinks it's the smaller of the two evils....

What he thinks about low-persistence displays :

For the most part, it looked fantastic. Both the other player and the grid on the walls were stable and clear under all conditions.

His only nitpick was with a visual instability that seemed to appear only in a very specific case ("tron-like" horizontal lines) but generally not in games :

it is certainly true that the visual instability effect is not very visible playing, say, Half-Life 2 on a low-persistence HMD. (...) It’s unclear whether the visual instability effect is a significant problem, since in our experiments it’s less pronounced or undetectable with normal game content.

So to me it looks like the solution for HMD is clearly backlight strobing with 120Hz displays, LightBoost-style.

[geekmaster]

I cannot find the blog post by John Carmack about stroboscopic motion ghosts. However, this "black frame insertion" simulation of LightBoost is rather convincing of what it can do:
http://www.testufo.com/#test=blackframes
Not having seen a LightBoost display personally, I would like to see a LightBoost display up close and personal. I have been going on what I had read from John Carmack and Michael Abrash, plus some experiments I did in the Tuscany demo (as detailed in past posts).

[blazespinnaker]

hey gm, http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/19/tech-surpass/

[MSat]

AFAIK, there's no ghosting inherent in strobing/low persistence displays. The ghosting arises from objects in the scene not being in the correct locations as you move your head due to the latency between the motion sensor's reading, the computed positional value and finally the pixels drawn on the screen. This also explains why you don't notice the ghosting (as much) when you don't move your head, even if objects in the scene are moving. In the case of the dev kit, the problem is exacerbated by it using full persistence displays.

The biggest reason we probably want higher than 60hz refresh rates for low persistence displays is to minimize annoying flicker. Remember how annoying 60hz was on CRTs? I couldn't stand looking at monitors with anything lower than 75, and my personal machines were typically set at 100.

The most reasonable solution to reducing ghosting seems to be in quantifying the latency in the entire chain from head motion to pixel switching, and filling in discrepancies with motion tracking prediction algorithms. When you have that information, you can make sure that when the scene is finally strobed to the user, everything is in the correct place.

[remosito]

I cannot find the blog post by John Carmack about stroboscopic motion ghosts. However, this "black frame insertion" simulation of LightBoost is rather convincing of what it can do:
http://www.testufo.com/#test=blackframes
Not having seen a LightBoost display personally, I would like to see a LightBoost display up close and personal. I have been going on what I had read from John Carmack and Michael Abrash, plus some experiments I did in the Tuscany demo (as detailed in past posts).

Or make a lil trip to this one and get a preview of where it is all headed HMD wise:
http://www.steamdevdays.com/

Mike Abrash talk on "What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years"????

What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be
within Two Years
Mike Abrash

We’ve figured out what affordable Virtual Reality (VR) hardware will be capable of within a couple of years, and assembled a prototype which demonstrates that such VR hardware is capable of stunning experiences. This type of hardware is almost certainly going to appear in short order, and the time to starting developing for it is now. This talk will discuss what the hardware is like, and the kinds of experiences it makes possible. A few attendees will be randomly selected to try out the prototype following the talk.

[virror]

Did y'all see Iribe's talk at the AMD Dev Summit from last week???

http://youtu.be/tL6hVtEkV9Q

Was wondering how the news that Consumer Version (and DK2??? oh please!!!) will ditch LCD and go OLED in low persistence "strobing" at 85+Hz to eliminate the motion blur issues.nHow that has affected y'alls desire to do diy HMDs/upgrades????

Oh yeah. Iribe as well mentioned this lil tidbit about them internally having latency down to 15ms. Which seems to be based on new/different engine rendering techniques... (that would have to be picked up by game devs I imagine)

That was a truckload of OMG he dropped there. And have to say it did take quite a bite out of my enthusiasm about DIY. Sure as hell made my hyped up meter for Consumer Kit go through the roof....


And boy, Oculus has been holding back before on releasing info about all the dark arts stuff they are doing in their labs. They must be up to sacrificing austriches if they can give us 15ms latency 85+Hz low persistence OLED Consumer Version!!!

Interesting stuff, nice to hear they already have an OLED prototype working, even though im not very surprised about it : )

[remosito]

Interesting stuff, nice to hear they already have an OLED prototype working, even though im not very surprised about it : )

Of course not, that was acutally know. What is very surprising that they are so sure about OLED Consumer Kit. There is a big difference
between making a prototype and shipping million(s) of kits. That difference is sourcing the screens for a good enough price!
Them so boldly talking about means imo that they have a deal pretty much done.

[Marus]

Toshiba already has solution for HDMI -> MIPI (DSI) display in one single chip (7x7 mm):
The Toshiba TC358779XBG is a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) to MIPI® Display Serial Interface (DSI) converter chipset with video de-interlacing, scaling and format conversion.
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/ ... dBrief.pdf
Massive production starts Dec 2013.
Per http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_ ... 13_689.jsp
Sample pricing for the TC358779XBG device is $5.00 (U.S.). Sample shipments are currently available with mass production scheduled for December, 2013.

[jquantum]

Toshiba already has solution for HDMI -> MIPI (DSI) display in one single chip (7x7 mm):
The Toshiba TC358779XBG is a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) to MIPI® Display Serial Interface (DSI) converter chipset with video de-interlacing, scaling and format conversion.
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/ ... dBrief.pdf
Massive production starts Dec 2013.
Per http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_ ... 13_689.jsp
Sample pricing for the TC358779XBG device is $5.00 (U.S.). Sample shipments are currently available with mass production scheduled for December, 2013.

I'm positive people have already noted this chip. Assuming MIPI panels behave like OLED panels then... the problem is that you can't just connect the "HDMI" pins to HDMI and the "MIPI" to the display, and plug it into a power source.

Various panels will have different methods and requirements to just turn on and the panels pinout isn't always known.


----
But the thing is though that's what LaserEdge and these other MIPI device people are figuring out, either via reverse engineering or requesting specs from the source.

[MSat]

Toshiba already has solution for HDMI -> MIPI (DSI) display in one single chip (7x7 mm):
The Toshiba TC358779XBG is a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) to MIPI® Display Serial Interface (DSI) converter chipset with video de-interlacing, scaling and format conversion.
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/ ... dBrief.pdf
Massive production starts Dec 2013.
Per http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_ ... 13_689.jsp
Sample pricing for the TC358779XBG device is $5.00 (U.S.). Sample shipments are currently available with mass production scheduled for December, 2013.

That looks like a pretty sweet part. The audio interface is also a useful feature.

[ripcurl123]

Toshiba already has solution for HDMI -> MIPI (DSI) display in one single chip (7x7 mm):
The Toshiba TC358779XBG is a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) to MIPI® Display Serial Interface (DSI) converter chipset with video de-interlacing, scaling and format conversion.
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/ ... dBrief.pdf
Massive production starts Dec 2013.
Per http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_ ... 13_689.jsp
Sample pricing for the TC358779XBG device is $5.00 (U.S.). Sample shipments are currently available with mass production scheduled for December, 2013.

all that in one chip just amazing, techs moving so fast now!

[cgp44]

oh at $5 sample available now, Ive just filled out an enquiry form.
Please let us know if anyone has successfully purchased the chip.

The chip has 80 pins at 0.67mm spacing. I have tried to solder 0.4mm
lugs on a galaxy S4 mipi dsi test cable using a wire cradle technique.
My attempts were successful (no solder bridging between tiny space).

These chips are cheap and once wires can be attached (no need for the complexity and hassle of
bga placement vendors), will make two eyed dsi mipi displays affordable.

The board creation technique I am thinking of is forgoing the traditional tracks on a pcb, with wires laid out on
paper, clued, with some heat resistant epoxy at the soldering places.

[jquantum]

BTW, anyone take a dive at the signetfpd that was earlier in the thread?

[ripcurl123]

BTW, anyone take a dive at the signetfpd that was earlier in the thread?

the signetfpd is just too expensive by the time you add post its roughly 400 us dollars more or less ,plus theres no guarantee it will work well, there also may be a dk2 coming before the consumer rift , im surprised nothings happened yet also i think everyones also waiting for laser edge board im more excited about toshibas chip which will be in mass production dec 2013.
good times coming cant wait

dave..

[jquantum]

BTW, anyone take a dive at the signetfpd that was earlier in the thread?

the signetfpd is just too expensive by the time you add post its roughly 400 us dollars more or less ,plus theres no guarantee it will work well, there also may be a dk2 coming before the consumer rift , im surprised nothings happened yet also i think everyones also waiting for laser edge board im more excited about toshibas chip which will be in mass production dec 2013.
good times coming cant wait

dave..

I'm surprised too considering some of the people wanting the dev kit should be early and mainstream adopters.

Im looking forward to times to come though as well

[geekmaster]

hey gm, http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/19/tech-surpass/

They are claiming it is a fake attribution. It did seem a little suspicious when I stumbled across it... Perhaps I need a new sig?

EDIT: Okay, signature updated. Better?

[KBK]

It's a good one GM. (your new one)

We are at that place, in ourselves, in all things.

I can't find it right now, but there was a recent article about a scientific study that was done, in order to check and find what level we self-editorialize at, with our visual system. I might have found it at physorg.

It turns out we do so, at a very comprehensive level. That we really do see just about everything. And the result is a narrow channel of self-editorialization, down to a narrow and selective flow and reaction, one created by our given individual neural selection pathways (genetics, individual vs general) stacked on top of individual learning of 'things'. Then even more self editorialization for the memory process, which is again a self created and enacted system (laid on top of the given basic system we may be enabled with).

[jquantum]

http://imgur.com/mlYIOBj


Screen door effect on a 1080x1920 5.5" panel

- it's just a closeup of the screen using a magnifying glass and a phone camera.

[zalo]

The new toshiba chip will be great as a drop in to the current devkit:

The maximum resolution supported is 1920 x 1200 @ 24 bpp at a refresh rate of 60 fps. The device supports common 3D video formats and protocols compatible with the HDMI 1.4 standard. The TC358779XBG supports a MIPI DSI interface up to 4Gbps to an LCD display panel with configurable 1, 2, 3, or 4 data lanes with lane speeds of up to 1 Gbps per lane.

But it appears to be incapable of supporting higher resolutions or framerates.

Oh well, $5 is pretty darn good. Especially because it meshes perfectly with the Nexus screen this thread was started on.

[Endemo]

I got a SHARP LS059T1SX01 for sale if anyones interested.
Its not used. Goes for 60$ plus shipping. Its located in germany but can ship worldwide. Payment via paypal. PM if interested.

Endemo

[yunti]

The new toshiba chip will be great as a drop in to the current devkit:

The maximum resolution supported is 1920 x 1200 @ 24 bpp at a refresh rate of 60 fps. The device supports common 3D video formats and protocols compatible with the HDMI 1.4 standard. The TC358779XBG supports a MIPI DSI interface up to 4Gbps to an LCD display panel with configurable 1, 2, 3, or 4 data lanes with lane speeds of up to 1 Gbps per lane.

But it appears to be incapable of supporting higher resolutions or framerates.

Oh well, $5 is pretty darn good. Especially because it meshes perfectly with the Nexus screen this thread was started on.

So what would it take to get it to work with either the nexus screen or any of the sharp screens? I presume we would need the pinouts of any of the screen - and presumably each MIPI pinout is unique?

What else would be needed?

[jquantum]

The new toshiba chip will be great as a drop in to the current devkit:

The maximum resolution supported is 1920 x 1200 @ 24 bpp at a refresh rate of 60 fps. The device supports common 3D video formats and protocols compatible with the HDMI 1.4 standard. The TC358779XBG supports a MIPI DSI interface up to 4Gbps to an LCD display panel with configurable 1, 2, 3, or 4 data lanes with lane speeds of up to 1 Gbps per lane.

But it appears to be incapable of supporting higher resolutions or framerates.

Oh well, $5 is pretty darn good. Especially because it meshes perfectly with the Nexus screen this thread was started on.

So what would it take to get it to work with either the nexus screen or any of the sharp screens? I presume we would need the pinouts of any of the screen - and presumably each MIPI pinout is unique?

What else would be needed?

At the bare minimum I'd assume you'd need to know the pinout of both the chip and the panel and the specs for the output and input.

[cegli]

I'm not a display expert (not even close), but here are the steps I can think of that would need to be taken:

1. Acquire 7" 1920x1200 MIPI screen (LD070WU2) for about $50-75 and Toshiba TC358779XBG (~$5).
2. Figure out how to use the 80 pins on the TC358779XBG, which is 7mm x 7mm (0.64mm pitch). Do one of the following:
-----a. Do a hacky solution where you solder wires directly to the pins. This would be fragile and frustrating in my opinion.
-----b. Make a real PCB and soldered it down.
-----c. Make some kind of breakout board with wider spaced pins and solder it down. Ideal for DIYers.
3. Figure out the pinout of the LD070WU2. I've looked all around and can't find anything. There should be 4 differential data lanes (2x4 wires), and a differential clock. If I had a bare screen in front of me, I have no idea how to tell which data lane is which, and what is positive and negative.
4. Get some kind of adapter for the LCD screen cable, so it can be connected to the TC358779XBG board. The cable on the Kindle Fire/Nexus 7 is a weird square plug. I'm not sure how you'd connect that to anything. Maybe Signet FPD has a cable.
5. Attach the 8 HDMI Data/CLK pins from the TC358779 to a female HDMI socket.
6. Connect the rest of the pins on the TC358779. I can't find a TC358779 datasheet, but it at least needs power (3.3v and 1.8v?). Resetn = 1'b1. Standby = 1'b0 I assume. You may need to grab power off one of the other ICs in the Oculus Rift... The TC358779 has a refclock? Don't know if that needs to be driven with something. Hopefully you can leave the rest of the pins Hi-Z.
7. The TC358779 will have to be configured and timing information will need to be programmed. Looks like it has an I2C bus? I guess you would need it to be attached to an arduino or something to configure it properly...
8. Speaking of timing information, you have to figure out the timing information! I have no idea again how to get this.

If you completed 1-8, you would have a 1080p screen that can be driven through HDMI. Now you just need to:

9. Figure out how to put all that junk in the rift securely.
10. Spoof the EDID data so games recognize it as a rift.

Now cross your fingers and hope it plays games? Looks like quite a nightmare to me. Let me know if you guys think this process makes sense, or if you know the answers to any of the questions!