Don’t pay up for a view — bring the view to you.
Builders these days routinely provide even first-time home-buyers with amenities that, only a century ago, royalty would have coveted. But there’s one thing that modern builders can’t provide in most cases: a grand view.
I’m a bit surprised that they can’t do so, at least in a virtual way, given how fast flat-screen tech has been developing. I saw this news item from CES about new 55-inch OLED TVs, and realized that the old sci-fi dream of rooms with virtual views is about to become a reality.
There are still hurdles. The screens need to be larger – picture window size – with better-than-HD resolution and much lower power consumption. They need somehow to convey 3D-like image depth (see video below for an example). OLEDs and even bleeding-edge quantum dot displays still have problems producing robust blue pixels. Real-time imagery won’t be possible until super-high-bandwidth infrastructure is in place. Etc.
Still, it’s encouraging that some companies (see here and here) are starting to offer products in this market. Maybe in ten years the technology will be good enough for mass production — and sadly, maybe real views by then will have begun to seem static and boring.