The American OLED microdisplay manufacturer eMagin is developing an HMD that will use the latest displays developed by the company, as well as its own optical system. Thanks to this, they will achieve a very reduced size and weight compared to devices such as Oculus Rift, which uses the screen of a smartphone.
This new device, with which the eMagin staff is very excited, has the provisional name of IHMD (Immersive HMD), and they claim that its non-traditional approach will achieve a “radically improved and unique” shape. eMagin hopes to have the first prototype by the end of the year (next month), which will have a resolution of 4 megapixels per eye (2K x 2K) and a viewing angle around 100º, and its goal is to conquer the high-end gaming market, although we all know that for that it takes more than a hardware device and for now they have not revealed anything about SDKs, compatibility with games and others.
Although eMagin is a manufacturer of microdisplays, IHMD will not be the first HMD manufactured by the company, since 2005 they launched the Z-800 viewer (which you can see in the image above) with two 800×600 OLED microdisplays, which provided a 105″ virtual screen about 3 and a half meters away. Its price around $ 800 and its diagonal FOV of 40º made it not too successful, a situation that they hope to turn around with IHMD.
