NVIDIA: VR indistinguishable from reality is still 20 years away

UploadVR sat down with Jason Paul, NVIDIA's general manager of virtual reality strategy, to talk about the future of the technology. One of the interesting things he shared is that he believes we're about 20 years away from virtual reality headsets and GPUs that can offer an experience that's indistinguishable from reality:

“I actually sat down and did the math one time,” Paul recalled. “Based off how many pixels we would need to be able to push and mapping that out alongside our upcoming new GPU releases, it would take us about 20 years to achieve resolutions that can match the human eye.”

Paul describes sight as a “highly differing sense,” capable of detecting even the smallest inconstancies in its perceptions. For VR to reach a level of resolution capable of convincing our eyes that the simulated world is in fact real, we are going to need another 20 years of GPU development.

Paul also added that NVIDIA is pouring a lot of resources in techniques that can accelerate this timetable. This includes features like foveated rendering, a technique that uses eye tracking to lower the resolution of parts of the image you're not looking at.