What resolution is necessary to read standard text with VR? I'd imagine it would start to become usable for this at 4k per eye, and even then I suspect it would be limited.
4k per eye would definitely be good enough. Text still wouldn't be crisp and clean, but it would be very readable.
VR headsets don't distribute pixels evenly across the entire view-space, the lenses concentrate the pixels toward the middle of your vision. So if for example you had a display that took up the center 25% of your vision in VR, it might have 50% of the actual display pixels. 50% of 4k is 1080p.
So you'd end up with a display that looks pretty large, but is only 1080p. Not optimal, but definitely usable.
VR headsets don't distribute pixels evenly across the entire view-space, the lenses concentrate the pixels toward the middle of your vision. So if for example you had a display that took up the center 25% of your vision in VR, it might have 50% of the actual display pixels. 50% of 4k is 1080p.
So you'd end up with a display that looks pretty large, but is only 1080p. Not optimal, but definitely usable.