It's really just math. You can't simulate a 3840 x 2160 screen with a 1920 x 1920 headset. So until the headsets get more resolution than monitors the monitors will look better. Especially for text.
Doing a test right now, I'm focusing on the 13-inch computer screen where I'm typing this and holding up a large container of cashews directly to the right of the display. It's literally less than 30 degrees to the right of my focus, and the word "cashews" is in half-inch-high letters, and I can't remotely read the word without moving my eyes over to it.
Plus the portion of your eye that sees in high resolution is ridiculously small—1% of your field of view. And your eye and brain just hide that fact by making your eye constantly jitter to see a larger area.
I've monitored how I use 4K screens in the 28" size range. I would not normally move my head at all to look at different parts of the screen. I would only move my eyes. With two such screens side-by-side, I would turn my head just a little bit to focus on one screen or the other. Or, I found I would often hold one head position that is neutral between the two, and then use approximately 2/3 of each screen, with the far outer edges neglected or used to banish less relevant communications and status apps that I only check once in a while.
And, these screens are not filling my field of view by any means. So, I'd really need a far higher resolution headset if it is going to give me a good immersive field of view and be a reasonable monitor-replacement. I fear that fovea-tracking will remain scifi dreams in my lifetime, so the reality is we need to render full resolution throughout the field of view to be prepared for where the eye gaze might go in the next frame.
This is not at all true. All of the AVP, the Quest Pro, and the PSVR2 do eye tracking based foveated rending. They lower the clarity of the things you're not looking at. And reviewers say it works perfectly, like magic. They are unable to "catch" the screen adjusting for what they're looking at.
Are they actually doing some kind of optical shifting of a limited pixel display? Or you just mean they do some kind of low-res rendering mode to populate most of the framebuffer outside a smaller zone where they do full quality rendering?
In other words, are they just allocating rendering compute capacity or actual pixel storage and emission based on foveal tracking?
This exactly. They don't reduce the resolution too much, but it's visible to an outside observer watching on a monitor.
As well, given the oddities of human vision and how eyes focus, they can give more subpixels to the tiny area your eye is looking at to increase fidelity
That is apples to oranges. The virtual pixels are mapped over your entire field of view where the physical pixels are mapped directly to the 2D surface itself.
>they can give more subpixels to the tiny area your eye is looking at to increase fidelity
Again this is a property of the display system and can not be improved by software. Additionally only one part of the lens (usually near the center) will have the highest PPD. Looking anywhere but the center will have a lower PPD.
The display either has a sufficient pixel density or it doesn't. Foveated rendering let's you cheat the details you render outside the focal point, but since your eyes can move to any portion of the display, the entire display needs to have a high-enough DPI that, once your eye moves to focus on that section, the content rendered in that location will be sharp.
Regardless, the question isn't if it's better or the same. The question is if its viable considering the author is saying the idea is "Ridiculous"
So a 4k TV is 3840x2160. The equivalent resolution is... 3840x2160. The number of pixels in 3840x2160 is 1x the number of pixels in 3840x2160, not 3x.
People who have tried the demos say that it is a seamless experience. Moving your eyes and head around, you see things rendered at a 4K resolution but it appears that the space around you is unbounded.
I don't know why people keep repeating this myth. It's just not how it works. It's not moving around pixels in the physical display.