Continuous depth augmented reality display device

摘要

Near-eye displays with focus cues attract a lot of attention from display society since they can provide more immersiveand comfort experience. However, there are several challenging issues to implement near-eye displays with focus cues.First, most prototypes still suffer from the contrast or resolution degradation which is drawback in reconstructingcontinuous focus cues. Second, providing multiple focus cues usually involves complex or large optical design thatprevent comfort experience. Third, rendering process for layered structures demands a large computation load so that itis hard to realize real-time operation. Here, we will investigate several ideas to solve or mitigate these challenges.Foveated retinal optimization enhances the central contrast by considering human visual characteristics. After acalibration process, foveated retinal optimization could be employed without a gaze tracking system because pupillocation, gaze direction, and distribution of optical nerves are correlated. Hybrid multi-layer displays are a convincingapproach to achieve advantages of additive and multiplication displays. Combining additive and attenuated layers,hybrid multi-layer displays have relatively small form factor and higher brightness while providing continuous focuscues within the range of 1.8 diopter. Recently, we conceived a novel prototype that supports a large number of layerswithin the large depth of field. This system provides semi-original contrast, large depth of field, and quasi-continuousfocus cues at 60 frames per second. We believe this approach may open a new possibility for near-eye displays forrepresentation of continuous depth.