November 16, 2015 -As featured on VIRTUAL REALITY REPORTER- https://virtualrealityreporter.com/serious-simulations-launches-zero-frame-latency-wireless-vr-processor-professional-grade-simulation-provider/
Serious Simulations LLC is an Orlando based VR company is a provider of human motion based, mixed and virtual reality training systems. Serious Simulations has its own custom built wireless head and helmet mounted displays (HMDs). The HMDs are available separately and also as components of Serious Simulations’ professional grade VR simulation and training systems for military, police, emergency responders and other trainees for complex or dangerous tasks.
The company designs training systems using custom made hardware and software components for specific skill training needs, combined with motion tracking systems, wireless communications devices, display technologies and commercial game engines. The company is a partner in the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) network.
Serious Simulations is launching a unique product that drastically improves wireless Virtual Reality display performance for high resolution screens. Through its patent pending two-step process, the company manipulates simulation/game video streams in the GPU by conducting pre-wireless transmission image processing.
By industry standard, the wireless transmissions are sent in landscape mode only, so upon reception by the HMD’s receiver, the Serious Simulations specially designed “reformatter” device re-organizes the pixels on-the-fly for delivery directly to the display screens. The process works for all high resolution displays such as the LCD, LED, OLED, and AMOLED screens popular in cellular phones and tablets. The speed of the Serious Simulations device is such that it takes less than 20 micro-seconds to deliver the first pixel of the wireless image from the GPU to the screen, and actually gains speed during the process.
To put the speed concept in layman’s terms, even if video could be delivered as fast as a bolt of lightning, Serious Simulations images are delivered 486 times faster. Such speeds enable reduction of more than 25 percent of a wireless virtual reality system’s total pipeline latency, and typically eliminates at least 17 milliseconds for a 1920 x 1080 video resolution. The process also totally negates the need for frame rotation software, which is 1000 times slower than this new process, Chambers explained.
“While designing our wireless Head/Helmet Mounted Displays (HMDs) using high resolution small format cell phone/tablet displays, we found it necessary to innovate a new approach to overcome the significant processing delays that existed between wireless transmitters that are natively landscape devices, and cell phone displays that are natively portrait devices,” said Christopher Chambers, Co-Founder and CEO of Serious Simulations.
“This method is so fast it is literally a zero-frame latency procedure, and is essentially a zero-time latency procedure, Chambers said. “Eliminating big chunks of latency greatly improves the VR experience, enhances the suspension of disbelief for better training or entertainment, and greatly reduces the chances of trainee or player discomfort. Our goal is to advance the notion that high resolution wireless VR displays can and should be as efficient as wired VR displays. It really is time to untether the VR user community,” he said.
“SEA VR provides us a perfect launch pad for Serious Simulations’ newest VR device. The conference is well attended by VR thought leaders, industry members, and enthusiasts. The VR community can immediately benefit from our technology since we are ready to book orders for our reformatting device, and license its technology,” said Damon Curry, vice president of technology at Serious Simulations.
Serious Simulations designs virtual reality hardware and software including the world’s only wireless Peripheral Vision Immersive Device (PVID – a dual screen wireless HMD that enables true human peripheral vision in a virtual reality experience). Now, their VR processor device makes the PVID and their other HMDs the fastest wireless displays in the world as well.