CES 25: Optix’s incredible definition, Brelyon multifocal display, and LG’s true 3D display

I have still a lot of things to tell you about my experience at CES. In this post, I want to describe three interesting pieces of hardware that I’ve tried: it’s going to be all about visual displays, each one with its own peculiarity!

Optix optical system

I went to check out Optix because my CES-mate Tyriel Wood suggested I try it after he enjoyed its demo. And after having put my eyes on its optical system, I understood why he gave me that suggestion.

Optix is a company making optical systems for XR headsets. They don’t want to build headsets themselves, just provide optical systems to OEMs to implement in their devices. And from my hands-on, I have to say, they do a pretty good job.

My first demo was with a display for AR glasses, but it had some troubles, so we switched to VR.

They made me try an optical system for VR with 4K x 4K resolution per eye, based on microOLED, and it made me go in awe. The visuals were incredibly crisp, the 3D overlap was good, and the colors were very bright. The content of the headset looked stunning to me, as you can see from these through-the-lens pictures that I made.

Through the lens of the Optix 8K VR Pancake display system

Look at the bright colors and the definition of the images

The only drawback was the FOV: the company claims 115° of horizontal FOV, but in my humble opinion, it was lower than that. But it’s pretty normal that microOLED-based VR headsets have a slightly smaller FOV than their LCD counterparts.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that these have been among the best VR visuals I have seen in my whole CES experience. And it’s good to know that this optical system has already been implemented in Skyworth’s Pancake XR headset.

Skyworth Pancake XR is using Optix’s visual system

Optix was also showing another optical system featuring diopter adjustment and eye tracking (with foveated rendering). The diopter adjustment was able to compensate for myopia from 0 to -8, but I can’t judge its quality since I’m not affected by myopia.

The specs of the headset with foveated rendering

I could see a sort of Apple Vision Pro menu with behind it some virtual hills. After an initial calibration, I was able to look at the menu icons to make them become bigger (as happens on the Vision Pro). The point of the demo was not only the menu being interactive, but also the whole system having foveated rendering. Ideally, foveated rendering should not be noticeable, because the actual point is to have a part of the visuals being crisp and the others being degraded but you not noticing this trick happening. Anyway, in this demo, my eyes could perceive that something was happening: it was something very subtle, like some slight movement, like a wave effect happening in the visuals as soon as my eyes moved. It was slightly perceiveable, but it was there, and Optix confirmed me they are working to fix this problem. Just as a final curiosity: the headset of this demo had no tracking at all, it was a 0DOF headset.

The test headset for foveated rendering. In violet, you can see the IR LEDs used to illuminate the eyes

In general, I think Optix is doing a pretty good job with its visual systems. If they keep providing this high definition of visuals, many OEMs will be interested in collaborating with them.

Brelyon multifocal display

Brelyon is a company manufacturing special immersive monitors. They do not make VR headsets but displays that in some use cases may be used instead of VR headsets.

A Brelyon monitor appears as a big bulky monitor, that is much larger than taller, and that has a depth that reminds me of the old CRT monitors. In front of the display, there is a sort of curved glass that acts as a lens, and the display inside looks curved, too. This is a recording I’ve made of one of the displays available at the booth so that you can see how it was looking at it.

The idea is to have a wide-FOV immersive monitor without wearing a headset on your head. You can connect this display to your desktop PC instead of the normal LCD display and have a much more immersive view of the virtual images you are looking at.

When looking at the Brelyon displays at the booth, I had a clear perception of the depth of the visuals of the videos that were shown there. I assumed the display was a stereoscopic one, but coming back home and reading the materials about this product on its website, I discovered that actually the display is monoscopic but it offers parallax and multi-focus, so your eyes are still able to perceive the depth of objects. Just to simplify, imagine that this display is able to render some “layers” of the shown video, and these layers are at different depths: since your eyes can focus at different depths, and moving a bit the head, you can perceive the layers moving differently (parallax effect), you still have some sort of 3D perception, even if the display is monocular. You can hear more about this in the promotional video that Brelyon made about its product:

This video explains the innovation behind the Brelyon displays

When I tried Brelyon, I thought it was not mindblowing, but it was still an interesting product able to offer enjoyable visuals. The wide FOV is nice, and the 3D effect given by the multi-focus is quite good, it is probably the best monocular depth effect that I had besides my experience with lightfields. The resolution is very good (8K), colors are ok, but probably not as bright as I would have liked.

It’s also notable that there are two models, one that is very big and one that is smaller and so can fit more on an office desk. They were also showcasing embedding such a monitor inside cars so as to have more “immersive” information on your car infotainment system.

Brelyon display installed in a futuristic car

As much as some people in the company compare it with VR headsets, I think it’s a totally different type of product. I didn’t feel immersed in the videos when I was trying the Brelyon displays. It was much more immersive than a traditional monitor, but far less immersive than a VR headset. And also far more expensive. When I asked the price of a Brelyon display, I was answered $12,000. And the display is suggested to be used by only one user at a time, exactly like a VR headset. For $12K, I can buy like 24 Quest 3, or 3 Vision Pros and still have money left for a vacation. Besides that, as I’ve said, VR can make me feel much more into the action.

A user watching content on a Brelyon display

I see this kind of display to be useful for some niche enterprise use cases. For instance, a big Brelyon display can be installed inside a booth in an exhibition or in a shop window, so that the passers-by can stop for a moment and see a sort of immersive video without having to wear any devices. Or people working with 3D, or graphics in general, may appreciate having a wide-FOV curved display with also some sort of 3D-ish features that can easily connect with their existing desktop computer.

LG true 3D display

Talking about 3D displays, I think nothing can beat what LG had in its booth. It was 3D in the literal sense of this expression…

This is a true 3D effect…

And that’s it for today! As usual, I ask you to be very kind and support me by resharing this article with your friends and by subscribing to my newsletter if you haven’t done it yet! Thank you!

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