One use is VR, where the field of view is huge. The industry size and distance recommendations have a TV take up about 30° of your field of view, which works out to 128 pixels per degree for a 4k screen. For a headset with a 100° field of view (most are a little higher than this at this point, or at least claim to be, but it’s a good baseline) you’d be looking at a 12k resolution to get the same level of clarity. But, of course, you’d need to run it at a very high framerate to avoid simulator sickness, whereas 4k often gets away with just 30 fps. Delivering power over the same cable also means just one cable.
Currently there are no GPUs to drive that high a resolution and framerate. But the cable was one limiting factor there, made especially frustrating by nVidia sticking to displayport 1.4 for so long.
One use is VR, where the field of view is huge. The industry size and distance recommendations have a TV take up about 30° of your field of view, which works out to 128 pixels per degree for a 4k screen. For a headset with a 100° field of view (most are a little higher than this at this point, or at least claim to be, but it’s a good baseline) you’d be looking at a 12k resolution to get the same level of clarity. But, of course, you’d need to run it at a very high framerate to avoid simulator sickness, whereas 4k often gets away with just 30 fps. Delivering power over the same cable also means just one cable.
Currently there are no GPUs to drive that high a resolution and framerate. But the cable was one limiting factor there, made especially frustrating by nVidia sticking to displayport 1.4 for so long.