Japan Display Inc. (JDI), a display conglomerate created by Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi, today announced the mass production of a new high pixel density, 2.1-inch 1,058 LCD display created for VR ‘glasses’ style headsets.

Update (1:25 PM ET): German publication MIXED (German) has confirmed with LYNX founder Stan Larroque that the upcoming LYNX R-1 headset is using the new JDI displays, which like Pico VR Glasses prototype have been clocked to 90Hz. We’ve reached out to Pico for comment as well and will report back when/if we get an answer.

The low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) TFT-LCD panel is said to use a special optical design that is intended to appeal to manufacturers looking to build smaller, lighter glasses-type headsets. Notably, the company says in a press release that its new display is used in VR glasses that have already been introduced to the market.

The company’s new 2.1-inch 1,058 ppi panel boasts a 1,600 × 1,600 resolution in its square format; JDI is also offering variants with corner-cut shapes. Clocked at 120Hz, the panel has a 4.5 ms response time, global blinking backlights, and a brightness of 430 nits.

Although unconfirmed at this time, Pico’s impressive VR Glasses prototype unveiled at CES earlier this year included a 1,600 × 1,600 panel, albeit clocked at 90Hz, which likely has more to do with the constraints of a mobile chipset’s ability to render at a supposed full 120Hz capability.

Why so small? Pico is able to offer this smaller form factor by using much thinner ‘pancake’ optics, which cut the optical path significantly by ‘folding’ it back on itself through the use of polarized light and multiple lens elements.

SEE ALSO
Hands-on: Pico 'VR Glasses' Prototype is the Most Impressive VR Viewer Yet

JDI’s previous VR display, revealed in Summer 2018, was larger at 3.25 inches, but at a slightly lower pixel density of 1,001 ppi. The panel, which was 2,160 × 2,432 resolution and also clocked at 120Hz, did however boast a lower latency of 2.2 ms.

It seems with this downsizing from larger, more conventional display down to smaller ones, JDI is making a significant bet on the upcoming appeal of smaller form factor headsets. A few key trade-offs to VR ‘glasses’ as they are now is off-board processing, either by a dedicated compute unit or smartphone, typically a lack of 6DOF tracking, and a slightly lower field of view. That said, removing user friction by making VR headsets lighter and smaller may appeal to those looking to watch traditional streaming video and browse the 2D web.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Rudl Za Vedno

    Same res, lower FOV so why happy face?… meh I’ll pass.

    • Mike

      LCD = hell no. I wouldn’t even care if they made it 8K per eye – LCD is a dealbreaker, unless the headset is strictly for business purposes.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Depends, OLED also has it’s drawbacks..

        • mellott124

          It does but those deep blacks… miss them. Would love to have them for Saints and Sinners.

          • Immersive Computing

            Westworld was unplayable on my Index, even with display brightness settings, had to refund.

            Games developed for OLED (Vive and Rift CV1) would benefit from regrading colour/brightness for LCD?

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Hmmm.. that’s a shame, it surprises me that a professional team like the one working on Westworld didn’t check their game in multiple headsets with different displays, or at least fix the game once they got their hands on an Index (Although the Rift S also has LCD displays).
            You did try the Gamma adjustment they suggest?

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Maybe the blacks with these new displays are better than what previous LCD displays have produced.. But it’s a shame it’s a lower FOV.. These microdisplays is like going back to the old days of the Vuzix VR920 and earlier..

          • sasha

            Long office hours but still unable to attain everything you genuinely deserve. A family vacation planned for a long time however unable to go. Your office work doesn’t enable you to devote much needed time with your loved ones. If you happen to be going through all this? In that case, we have useful solution available for you. A job opportunity which is totally internet based. It implies you can work from anywhere in the world for small amount of hours and can get around $11000. It truly is a wonderful chance to be your own boss as well as live the way in your own terms . Check out this awesome job opportunity >>> earn60keachmonth.voten.in

        • Mike

          I assume you’re talking about pixel structure and black smear. Black smear can be eliminated by limiting the black level (either by default or by software) – even when limited, it’s like 10 times better than LCD. About the Pentile pixel structure – OLED is completely capable of RGB, it just costs more. The PSVR is RGB OLED. The one true drawback of OLED is price.

      • TJ Studio

        Since when do you care about OLED so much and nothing else?

        • Mike

          Since having compared the two side-by-side. The difference is night-and-day. LCD is immersion-breaking, especially in dark environments.

      • mfx

        Prefer a good LCD with RGB subpixels with crisp image than a pentile oled with big screen door effect, high res input need for low piqué result and white color that appears lower res than green with weird aliasing on vertical lines. Oled is worth it only if it’s an RGB oled like in the PSVR.
        We need to specify that before the marketing “geniuses” get us some so called 2k pentile screens that look way worse than a 1.5k RGB one, wasting our ressources for an uglier picture.
        So dark blacks yeah but RGB first.

        • Mike

          RGB at relatively low resolutions (such as 1440p) actually looks worse than Pentile. This is because the human eye is evolved to easily detect straight lines such as those of the neatly-lined-up subpixels of RGB. Only at around 2160p is RGB is a good idea compared to Pentile. Then much above that RGB doesn’t matter much anymore, since the optical trick Pentile is based on works best at high pixel densities.
          Have you compared LCD and OLED side-by-side? I have. I can never go back to LCD now.

          • mfx

            I have experience with htc vive, quest, and psvr, and damn the best picture was the psvr by far, even though it has the smallest definition.

            What you say is purely a false statement, it’s proven by a + b that Pentiles definition provides less good quality and detail than the equivalent in RGB, whatever the definition is.
            How could it be better than RGB when by definition, the Pentile tech is basically a harsh downgrade of the RGB tech (for ease of manufacturing reasons) ?
            It’s like pretending that for low definition a video encoding at 4:2:0 chroma sampling is better looking than 4:4:4 chroma sampling…. it just makes no sense at all.

            However I can’t speak for LCD vr black level as I always had oled experiences.

          • Mike

            The PSVR has abnormally small pixel spacing, and likely a slight SDE filter.

            RGB has slightly more detail and less gaps in the image when zoomed in for VR. But it has the downside of the pixels being neatly lined up in straight lines, which the human eye is good at seeing. Pros-and-cons.

      • Adrian Meredith

        Oleds in VR aren’t true black anyway, have black smearing, nasty pentile layout and are more expensive. LCD don’t have as good contrast but are better in every other way.

        • Mike

          The OLED Odyssey(+) has absolute black levels. All other OLED headsets do not have black smearing. The black smearing of the Odyssey(+) can be eliminated with a plugin that slightly limits the black levels (which is still like 10 times better than LCD). Pentile is not intrinsic to OLED, it’s just most common due to price – the PSVR is OLED RGB. And the Odyssey+ has the same SDE as the 2160p RGB Reverb due to its SDE filter. There are no real advantages to LCD other than price.

  • Arashi

    Yeah like headset formfactor is what’s most important to consumers. Sigh. Do these companies even listen? Get us High res and wide FoV.

    • mfx

      Yes it is dude …
      putting a half kilo fridge on your head is maybe an ok thing for you but that will never please more than a few percent of the population. By improving the form factor, it is millions and millions of newcomers… which will lead to more content and more rnd … which will lead to the creation of more things you ll love. So try to see a bit more long term and less silly self centred here.

      • Cragheart

        yeah but res and fov > formfactor

        • Lol

          Are you kidding me? Most people don’t even have the computer specs to use a pimax hmd. If you want more fov and resolution, buy a shitty unpolished pimax.

          • Ad

            Where does Pimax come into this? He may as well mean the quest, these displays are really small.

          • JesuSaveSouls

            Pimax needs to drop those base stations and get onboard with camera sensors attached to the headsets.

          • Ad

            No they don’t. That would make them incompatible with all controllers on the market and force customers to use theirs. Pimax should keep SteamVR tracking so people can use knuckles and use one tracking solution across multiple headsets.

      • Arashi

        Out of all the things that are wrong with current VR, the form factor is one of the least important issue’s, to pretty much any VR user. First get us good VR, then make it smaller.

        • mfx

          What makes me stop playing VR after one hour max is the discomfort I feel because of the weight of my headset and the pressure of it against the face because it’s 500 grams to stick to the head.

          Believe me, seeing screen door effect especially with those disgusting Pentile screens and bad quality image at the edge of the way too limited FOV is also bothering me at lot ;)

          I just say that for some people it’s number 2 in the list of things to improve and not number one.

          • Ad

            It’s not the form factor necessarily. A smaller headset isn’t as important as the weight distribution, the comfort design and support, and the padding. My index doesn’t feel uncomfortable after 6 hours even though it’s bigger than my Vive was.

            The problem with “glasses” is that they will fail to have proper support or distribution, they’ll just make it look small. All the weight in the front and maybe a hook around the ears.

          • K E

            We don’t know if the strict “glasses” form factor is viable though. The Huawei glasses, apparently, weigh 166 grams. That’s actually a lot of weight to put on your nose. The solution might be a hybrid of some sort.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Which headset are you using? As I can play comfortably for hours on end with the Vive Pro strapped to my head.. A big improvement over the original Vive which was always a bit loose..

        • Andrew Jakobs

          I think the current VR is very good.. Ofcourse it can be much better, but that requires much more GPU power which at this time is only available in highend GPU’s and even those cannot handle the highter resolution with wide FOV and 90+fps.. So until the GPU power for providing that is in a graphicscard/soc that sells at max $250 it isn’t really interesting for the masses.. But Nvidia already has the next generation GPU’s in line which will increase the power to drive those displays you want, and then we might see manufacturers using those displays.. Let’s not forget, those hightend headsets you want are much more expensive as the current Index, which means out of the range for the masses, which in turn will prevent manufacturers from doing those headsets at this point of time, only once the unitprice of fabrication comes down to a price they can sell at consumer prices, only then will VR take off.. And that’s still a couple of years away..

          • SendsV8

            Wow, someone in these discussions actually gets it.

            We all want better resolution, less SDE, wider FOV, etc. But the reason we are waiting so long for a company to deploy these specs, and will continue to wait for much longer, is that one needs to have the juice to power it all without adding $1000+ to the cost of ownership.

            They might be able to compensate for the extra GPU expense with Varifocal tech but that adds mechanical complexity and weight that isn’t fully sorted yet either.

            To get what we want at a reasonable consumer price we need:

            1. Better comfort for playing longer, i.e. less weight, better ergonomics, less nausea for half the population that has trouble accomodating.

            2. Affordability. Not appealing just to the .01% who can afford a couple grand to buy into next gen VR. That means more than the headset kit but affordable processing power.

            3. All the tech specs we’re demanding.

      • Lol

        thank you, someone who actually gets it

      • Ad

        This isn’t true. Newer headsets are already lighter but what’s a lot more important are the actual factors of comfort, like weight distribution, padding and support design, and refresh rates/control. Glasses fail completely on all of these.

      • dk

        also half kilo is on the light side of things at this point …some r much more than that

    • Mei Ling

      “Yeah like headset formfactor is what’s most important to consumers. Sigh. ”

      Form factor is incredibly important; the lighter and smaller these devices are the less you’d feel like you’re wearing something which goes toward improved immersion.

      • Ad

        Again, the size of the headset isn’t important, it’s the distribution and design. That’s why a quest is the least comfortable headset yet the smallest and the index is the most yet the biggest.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Hmmm, still think the Vive Pro is really comfortable.. Even if it’s such a large headset..

      • Julianjscvc

        smaller != lighter

        No matter the size of the headset itself, the halo strap or flexible strap is still the same size and you barely shave off any weight

    • Ad

      Yup

  • mfx

    That’s such a great news to read.

    I am so much looking forward to talk about VR glasses and not more VR headsets :)

    • gothicvillas

      I prefer vr helmets

    • Ad

      Glasses are a waste of time, you give up way too much for way too little. Glasses is for AR.

  • Ad

    A shame that don’t try a duel display foveation style set up.

    But anyway 3doF is dead and we need to push the whole industry to call them Personal Media Displays, 360 Viewers, something like that. They’re not VR headsets and it hurts all of us if it’s called that.

  • imborad

    This display is gonna be used for oculus quest style vr glasses, and other lowerend,

    I LOVE DEMONCRATIC AMMERTICA!

  • Julianjscvc

    This is the same PPI as HP Reverb from last year, just smaller due to being 1600×1600 rather than 2160×2160. I’ve tested these on Huawei VR Glass. The display is glitchy (random noise, flashes), not sure if similar manufacturing defects to HP Reverb.

    Also to people saying this will provide more comfortable VR due to smaller form factor:
    Not true.
    Not only is FOV reduced or at least not improving, but glasses-like design like with Huawei distributes most of the weight to the front of your head. And the hooks around your ear don’t firmly hold the headset in place and slip unless you have a small head size.
    The weight of VR Glass is also not impressive being over 300 grams. You need thick plastic whether your screen is small or large to protect the display glass as well as keep the lens in a tight distance and orientation to the display.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      I agree with you, glasses aren’t as comfortable for VR as a halobased headstrap like the Vive Pro (I’m biased now as I have one, but I have used some different headsets before). Also still have VR glasses like the Vuzix VR920, and they weren’t comfortable to wear, they didn’t sit as tight to my face as they are really just glasses without an extra strap to keep the glasses tight to your face..

    • mellott124

      I saw it on the Pico glasses and I thought it looked great. Still needs more pixels but the Pico with VIM optic was one of the best I’ve ever seen.

      • Julianjscvc

        Oculus Rift S/Go/Quest vertical FOV is only 93 degrees with a 48mm lens height.
        LG360 released back in 2016 without pancake lenses had only 29mm lens diameter. Huawei VR Glass is not much different with 33mm lens diameter.

        I understand first impressions may be good but do the math, 69% of lens height means 64 degree vertical and horizontal FOV.

  • Jim P

    I moved from Rift S to Quest for good color. There was news of a company that made LCD with deep blacks. So there is hope

  • The barrier to VR adoption is cost. If these are lower cost that are improved over other budget displays then, yeah, go for it. In the world of TV, vastly more budget LCD sets are sold compared to high end OLED.

  • cataflic

    For larger fov we must have a different form factor.
    This kind of display will be for lowend hmd.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Depends, it is possible (in the near future) to do larger FOV without a bulky headset. But ofcourse you’ll always will have it at least the size of swimming goggles (the small ones) or decend sunglasses as you want to block out any light.. But personally I don’t mind the larger headset, as long as it’s comfortable. I own the Vive Pro and I think it’s very comfortable (I like the tight fit (after you turn the dial) as I hate having loose stuff on my head), it’s a big BIG improvement over the original Vive (never had the deluxe strap for that one) or DK2 or Vuzix VR920..

      • cataflic

        I’m only talking of display dimensions…2000×2000 is a square form factor, 3000×2000 is a rectangular form factor …if you want to render the human fov (about 180°x130°) you must cover that dimension.
        You can do it also with monster screen resolution and wasting pixels around but now every pixel is a cost and cost is the thing.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          I cannot agree more with you, I also think the rectangular form factor would be better for real VR displays which would improve the FOV.. And I don’t mind if it doesn’t mean a higher resolution in all directions.. I’m pretty satisfied with the current HTC Vive Pro in regard to displays resolution and would only ‘want’ a higher horizontal FOV and getting rid of the awful fresnel lenses, as that’s what’s bothering me more than resolution/fov (and as I read the lensmod isn’t perfect either, and I still don’t understand why HTC didn’t use those type of lenses themselves with the slight optimizations for the Headset itself)..

          • cataflic

            anyway …today it’s clear all of the hmd are converging toward a double 2048×2048 display…than there will be a downpricing of that kind of display(2 years) and next gen hmd will mount a better display, hoping for a larger fov and invsible sde(4k or more per eye).
            AR still waiting for good…

  • Julianjscvc

    Regarding ergonomics and FOV:

    Oculus Rift S/Go/Quest vertical FOV is only 93 degrees with a 48mm lens height.
    LG360 released back in 2016 without pancake lenses had only 29mm lens
    diameter. Huawei VR Glass is not much different with 33mm lens diameter.
    All three have convex lens surface facing the eye, the pancake lens is not flat, so you can’t get your eyes closer and get a bit more FOV.

    Do the math, 69% of lens height means 64 degree vertical and horizontal FOV. Even if we round it to 70 degrees, it’s still not good.

    Now for the form factor. I’m attaching photos of LG360 with conventional lenses and Huawei with pancake lenses. The difference in HMD thickness is just 10mm. Is that really https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0fca892e53a19ef17a3d4a97cd3aa3dc5633df7940190df1f4837319e9512483.jpg enough to get hyped about? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75e56a87963f434d0327adc96233a7ad8101d111c2296067901de6486c1a4788.jpg

    Weight:
    Huawei Glass: 171 grams
    LG360: 140 grams.

  • Kimberle McDonald

    Still waiting for a “future proof” VR headset with optics and FOV that far exceed current capabilities. You can adjust software. Hardware is set. Give me something 4K-per-eye capable at the very least. Software and graphic cards will soon catch up. My visor would actually last a little while under that scenario.

    • Clownworld14

      Would be too expensive to develop right now, and thus not many customers – technology always takes babysteps, and when customers buy, the money in the industry grows to develop better stuff. Nobody expected 1 terrabite drives in the 80’s, nor are we expecting incredible vr just yet, its good that we have what we have.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      What’s the use of ‘future proof’ headsets if it costs way too much to develop/manufacture such headset at this time.. Better displays and sensors get cheaper every year, so it would make no sense for a manufacturer to produce a consumer ‘future proof’ headset at this point.. I know you want better headsets, but it’s not commercially interesting to produce such a headset at this time, it would cost $1500+ or more which would prevent it from having a big market. Creating such headsets is only interesting if you ask even more for it and it will only be available to big industry/militairy which don’t mind spending $10K for a headset.

  • I’m very curious about the Lynx headset, actually. After having tried it, I will also get if I’m interested in this kind of displays or not

  • There seems to be a whole slew of these semi-VR goggles with tiny screens. The tiny screens seem great, but then they skimp out on all of the important stuff like 6DOF and hand tracking. What’s the point? It’s goggles that are made useless. It’s just bizarre. Why run the entire field just to stop before the goal and sit on the ball?