Wide Field Of View Varifocal Near-Eye Display Using See-Through Deformable Membrane Mirrors

Title: Wide Field Of View Varifocal Near-Eye Display Using See-Through Deformable Membrane Mirrors

Teams: Nvidia

Writers: David Dunn (NVIDIA, UNC);Kaan Akşit;David Luebke

Publication date: March 19, 2017

Abstract

Accommodative depth cues, a wide field of view, and ever-higher resolutions all present major hardware design challenges for near-eye displays. Optimizing a design to overcome one of these challenges typically leads to a trade-off in the others. We tackle this problem by introducing an all-in-one solution – a new wide field of view, gaze-tracked near-eye display for augmented reality applications. The key component of our solution is the use of a single see-through, varifocal deformable membrane mirror for each eye reflecting a display. They are controlled by airtight cavities and change the effective focal power to present a virtual image at a target depth plane which is determined by the gaze tracker. The benefits of using the membranes include wide field of view (100° diagonal) and fast depth switching (from 20 cm to infinity within 300 ms). Our subjective experiment verifies the prototype and demonstrates its potential benefits for near-eye see-through displays.