ENABLING WIRELESS VIRTUAL REALITY
Fortunately, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have recently unveiled a prototype system called “MoVR” that allows gamers to use any VR headset wirelessly.
In tests, the team showed that MoVR can enable untethered communication at a rate of multiple Gbps, or billions of bits per second. The system uses special high-frequency radio signals called “millimeter waves” (mmWaves) that many experts think could someday help deliver blazingly-fast 5G smartphones.
“Replacing the HDMI cable with a wireless link is very challenging...requires sustaining data rates of more than 6 Gbps while the user is moving and turning,...
...systems also can’t use compression to accommodate lower data rates.
The CSAIL team instead turned to mmWaves, ...the team developed MoVR to act as a programmable mirror that detects the direction of the incoming mmWave signal and reconfigures itself to reflect it toward the receiver on the headset.
Abari says that future versions of MoVR’s hardware could be as small as a smartphone, allowing for users to put several devices in a single room. This would enable multiple people to play a game at the same time without blocking each others’ signals.
See the full story here: http://www.csail.mit.edu/enabling_wireless_virtual_reality