...
The only remaining issue is the screendoor effect which I suspect will only be solved with higher resolutions unless Frontier can pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat.
I can share a little anecdotal information here, I believe.
Some idiot had to try breaking his very expensive toy apart, to add diffusers, and since nobody else was doing it, I decided to pick up the idiot mantle...
So... I tried with a pair of mobile phone screen protectors of "Tech Armor" brand, applied directly to the display panels, and these were my results:
As expected; The granularity was really bad -- With this type of anti-glare screen protector, even an unaided eye, when the sheet is applied to a phone screen, can see the fixed grain pattern, along with the chromatic abberrations in it (think shimmery rainbows), and its average desaturation effect -- Not surprisingly, this made for an undesired "anchoring" sensation inside the HMD - much like the "looking-through-black-silk"-y pattern, that the displays themselves exhibit in low-light scenes. Having the unmoving pattern "superimposed", makes it look like you are looking at an animated image (EDIT: ...which you
are, of course :7), instead of out into open space. There was also a lot of contrast to grain edges.
As for the sought softening of the image;
it turned out very well balanced, actually; Diminishing the sharp black "troughs" between subpixels, without bleeding over so much that the image becomes blurry -- a very pleasing amount; I might have liked a
smidgen more, but it looked good.
Now; This did had a rather interesting negative effect: Where usually the screen door effect turns the screen into an eye-straining busy anthill of pinprick elements, when looking around, I found the diffused image could be accused of having become almost
too stable. The eye has a hard time keeping track of those pesky ants, that normally scurry every which way across the view, whereas the nicely solid diffused pixels became like a superbly resolveable tiled wall - very easy to lock onto and follow with your gaze, and thus we are again back to a fixed pattern that moves along with your head, as you look around.
At the end of the day; Even though I managed to drop and physically damage one of the display panels when taking the screen protectors out again, and am now waiting for a quote on how much it is going to cost me to have it replaced; If I could come across a better diffusing material, that does not not have the grain, I would definitely try it again - I think the SDE is that bad.
:7
