| How can you possibly get full detail on a Quest 3? The resolution of the horizontal on a Quest is 2064 pixels. However this fills the headsets entire ~110 degree horizontal FOV. Also, you are not seeing the edges of the panels, so we need to eliminate some of those pixels you can't technically even see to around say 2000 (cut off 32 on each side which I think is fair). Now a 1080p video has a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels. You only have a 2000 pixel canvas that fills up your 110 degree FOV. Now sure, if you zoom your virtual movie theater screen to fill your entire FOV, then you can say you are seeing the whole 1080p video resolution. But nobody I have ever heard of watches movies at a horizontal FOV of 110 degrees. Industry standards are around 35-45 degrees. Yes I personally think that is a bit low. I have a 150" projection screen at home, and I sit at about a 53 degree horizontal FOV. I wouldn't want any closer. This represents sitting like 1/3 to the front of a typical movie theater. However, even at a 55 degree virtual screen, that means the virtual screen is only 1000 pixels across on a Quest 3. this isn't even full 720p resolution which would need 1280 pixels across. Let alone 1080p needing 1920 pixels across. Now the AVP does better obviously. It's 3680 pixels across 100 degree FOV. If we subtract a few due to not seeing the edge and say about 3600 pixels, and if we say the virtual screen is again 55 degree horizontal FOV, then that gives us a virtual theater screen of about 1850. A little shy of the 1920 for 1080p. So at best, if you make your virtual screen huge, like 60 degree horizontal FOV, then I could concede you get about a 720p virtual screen in a Quest 3 and about a virtual 1080p screen in a AVP. Last point I will make is that even at this it's not quite equivalent because you lose a bit of resolution too due to your head being slightly askew and the video pixels not being able to line up straight with the physical virtual theater screen pixels in the headset. So the resulting image becomes a bit softer since the pixel mapping isn't 1:1. I haven't used an AVP, but I have used many other VR headsets including a Quest 3, and the quality of the virtual movie screen looks quite low to me. Nowhere near even my old 1080p projector on my 150" projector screen. Let alone my current 4K projector on the 150" screen. |
So the 2064 pixels becomes about 2500 in practice. So a screen width of 1920 is perfectly doable.
The image doesn't get "softer", surprisingly, because of the constant resampling at 90 or 120 hZ with tiny constant head movement. Any individual frame might be a little softer, but the actual viewing experience doesn't lose any detail at all.
Yes, the virtual screen is huge. It's like IMAX. But it's not a problem -- it's actually great. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Now when I go to a movie theater, I find the screen annoyingly small.
If you find the quality of the virtual screen on the Quest 3 to be low, first make sure you use an app like Skybox that lets you make the screen as large as desired. And then second, do a live comparison with the same content on your laptop (play a file, not a streaming service that might deliver a different bitrate). You'll find that you really are seeing all the same 1080p detail.