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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

> but I can't get unlimited AR desktops for software development etc?

You can't because it's computationally impossible. There is simply no computing device that can render unlimited high-res desktops at 60Hz per eye.

Not to mention the need to stream all that data to the headset - since you're not going to put a high-end graphics card needed to even attempt this in anything approaching a wearable form factor. Good luck getting multiple 4k or even just HD streams between your laptop and your AR headset over Wi-Fi.

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To clarify, I should have said virtual "desktops" instead of monitors. I don't even need all desktops to be active at once, but be available in physical spaces for me to access in a way that is more intuitive and customizable than pressing the F2 button on my Macbook keyboard and then hovering my cursor over the desktops bar. That would totally suffice. Also, somehow that bar can show what's on each virtual desktop, and in real time, so I know that's at least possible.

> Also, somehow that bar can show what's on each virtual desktop, and in real time, so I know that's at least possible.

That bar shows a small lower-res preview of each of the desktops, it is not rendering all the desktops at full 4K res. Essentially the smaller a window appears on the screen, the lower effort is needed to draw it.

AVP knows exactly which monitor you are looking at. The mac doesn't need to render all monitors at full resolution, just the one being looked at.

True, but apart from video/games/possibly a browser they absolutely don’t need to refresh at 60hz. I’m surprised they couldn’t somehow work in a “one nice screen, the rest refresh when needed” solution - though maybe that’s just too clunky for Apple.

Rest of the VR industry already systems that only really put the rendering hardware to use where you're looking it's called Foveated rendering, because essentially your eyes can't even see the detail in the edges of vision even if it were rendered there. Handles this all very fast and seamlessly.

Not a stretch the same thing could be applied to a virtual desktop environment especially when you have eye tracking.

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