An Approach to a Retinal Projection Display with Wide Viewing Zone

Abstract

It is necessary for Mixed Reality technology to use a see-through Head-Mounted Display (HMD) in which both the real world and virtual world can be seen at the same time. A conventional see-through HMD has a fixed focal point for the virtual images on the spatial light modulator, while the eye dynamically accommodates to the changing fixation point of real objects. Therefore, both real and virtual objects cannot be steadily observed because an observer can only accommodate to one of them. In order to overcome this problem, a Retinal Projection Display has recently been proposed. In a Retinal Projection Display, an image is projected onto a retina directly, so we can view images with long focal depth by using the principle of the Maxwellian View. However, the viewing zone in the Maxwellian View is very narrow because the center of the pupil has to correspond to the converging point of the rays. This paper proposes a new method of a Retinal Projection Display which has a wide viewing zone, and describes an experimental result.