VR - Page 15

Flexible OLED technology and VR headset developer Royole announced that it received a $80 million series Pre-D funding from the Warmsun Holding Group. Royole raised around $280 million since its inception in 2012 - and the current valuation is set at around $3 billion!

So what does Royole do to justify such a lofty valuation? A couple of months ago Royole launched its first product, the Royole Moon foldable VR headset - that uses OLED microdisplays to achieve a PPI of over 3,000. The $799 Moon also includes noise-cancelling headphones and runs on the company's own Moon OS.

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay, VR/AR, graphene and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to November 2016.

The OLED for VR/AR Market Report:

• Why OLEDs are adopted in almost all VR HMDs
• What kind of displays are required for VR and AR applications
• What the future holds for the VR and AR markets
• Current and future VR and AR systems

The report package provides a great introduction to the emerging VR and AR market, and details the role that OLED displays will have. Read more here!

Researchers from the Fraunhofer FEP announced a new development that can reduce the power consumption of OLED microdisplays. The power reduction is enabled by new chip and control electronics, that now only handles pixel changes and does not refresh the entire display all at once.

The researchers say that this development enabled a drastic reduction in power consumption - which is somewhat surprising. The new microdisplays (which are monochrome - green) use 1 to 4 mW, which they say is a fraction of the power consumed by the Fraunhofer's previous generation display - a color (WOLED+CF) bi-directional OLED (so this is not a fair comparison of course).

During a display seminar in Korea, Park Won-sang, SDC's principal engineer, said that the company is expecting VR and AR applications to increase demand for high-end OLED displays. Park says that smartphone-based VR device shipments will grow to 66 million units in 2017, up from 4 million units in 2013 (this data originates from ABI Research).

VR and AR technology demands very high-end displays, and OLEDs are seen as the ideal technology - as it features high response time and better contrast compared to LCD displays. The biggest challenge, according to Park, is the power consumption that needs to be increased to enhance the AR and VR experience.

Sony launched its PlayStation VR HMD last week in Japan and according to Media Create over 51,500 units were sold within one week - over 90% of available stock. Most consumers chose the bundle which includes the headset, a camera and the Move controllers.

Sony's PlayStation VR uses a 5.7" FHD (1920x1080) AMOLED display (produced by Samsung Display), 360-degree tracking and 3D audio. It is exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and costs around $400 (headset only).

Oculus has acquired InfiniLED, a Micro-LED display developer based in Ireland. Oculus did not say the amount of money it paid, but it did confirm the acquisition and said that the team joined Oculus Research in a new office dedicated to research in Cork.

Oculus is currently using dual 3.1" 1200x1080 VR AMOLED displays produced by SDC. This is an interesting acquisition which follows Apple's acqusition of Micro-LED developer LuxVue in 2014. There were some reports in June 2016 that Apple is looking to develop a Micro-LED display for future smartwatches, although this was not confirmed.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin developed a 2K x 2K OLED microdisplay based VR HMD, which is now being offered to partners (the company's first licensee is probably ODG). The company is also developing its next-gen 4K OLED microdisplays.

eMagin needs to find a high-volume production partner if it wants to enter the consumer market (eMagin announced production expansion will not be enough) and eMagin already stated that it is in talks with potential foundry partners. One of these partners is AMD - which we already know is working with eMagin.

In March 2015 the Fraunhofer FEP demonstrated its second-generation bi-directional OLED microdisplays, with a resolution of 800x600 (SVGA), up from VGA in the first generation first unveiled in 2012.

The Fraunhofer is now making a new development platform of these bi-directional eyeglasses, based on the new microdisplays, available to clients creating proprietary products. The updated platform has a new hardware design with standard HDMI and USB interfaces. The new eyeglasses were developed as part of the FAIR project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay, VR/AR and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to September 2016.

The Flexible OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!

One of the key requirements for VR application is high-density displays, as small-sized displays are magnified to cover our whole field of view. Some estimate that realism VR demands around 2,000 PPI.

During SID 2016, Samsung announced it developed a 806 PPI AMOLED especially for VR application. This is an upgrade from current OLEDs, but still a far cry from the 2,000 PPI mentioned above.