40‐2: Demonstration of a Novel Single‐Layer Double‐Pass Optical Architecture for a Pupil‐Matched Occlusion‐Capable Optical See‐Through Head‐Mounted Display

Abstract

The rendering of mutual occlusion in optical see‐through head‐mounted displays (OST‐HMDs) poses several complex challenges. This paper discusses in detail these challenges and presents a novel optical architecture for enabling a compact, high performance, occlusion‐capable optical see‐through head‐mounted display (OCOST‐HMD) with correct, pupil‐matched viewing perspective. The proposed design utilizes a single‐layer, double‐pass architecture, offering a compact OCOST‐HMD solution to alleviate several of the main issues facing the state‐of‐art OST‐HMDs today. Our design is capable of rendering per‐pixel mutual occlusion with correct viewing perspective between virtual and real views while achieving a very wide see‐through field of view (FOV) in a wearable formfactor. Based on this optical architecture, we design and build a compact binocular prototype. The prototype offers a virtual display with an FOV of 34° by 22° with a wide see‐though FOV of 90° by 50°, within which about 40° diagonally is occlusion‐enabled. Further, the prototype system affords an angular virtual display resolution of 1.06 arc minutes per pixel, along with a modulated optical see‐through angular resolution of 1.0 arc minutes.