Split-Lohmann Multifocal Displays

PubDate: June 2023

Teams: Carnegie Mellon University

Writers: Yingsi Qin Wei-Yu Chen Matthew O’Toole Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan

PDF: Split-Lohmann Multifocal Displays

Abstract

The Split-Lohmann Display is a near-eye 3D display capable of generating a dense set of focal planes simultaneously using a single exposure. Our key innovation is an optical arrangement, which we refer to as Split Lohmann, that enables a high degree of local control in depth selection on a traditional display. Given a scene in the form of an RGBD image, we use a RGB display to project the color image while a phase spatial light modulator (SLM) shows a simple analytical function of the depth map. This produces a 3D multifocal scene without requiring time multiplexing. Shown above in is focus stack acquired from our lab prototype using an observer Nikon Z5 camera that is not tethered to the display. Split-Lohmann displays enjoy a number of desirable features including the ability to handle scenes with complex depth maps over a large working range, at high spatial and depth resolutions, and a large étendue. The extreme simplicity of our computational pipeline also enables real-time operations for interactive 3D content.