Super multi-view three-dimensional light-field display technology for head-mounted virtural reality

Abstract

Existing head-mounted Virtual Reality presents depth perception mainly through stereoscopic display technology which is based on biocular-parallax. The loss of nonocular physiological depth cues resulted in visual fatigues, an urgent open problem inhibiting the forward steps of head-mounted Virtual Reality. The super multi-view (SMV ) technique is seen as an ideal 3D display technology, which can provide multiple physiological depth cues, i.e., offering comfortable three-dimensional vision. However, the complex optical structures in present SMV systems make them not suitable for the head-mounted Virtual Reality applications. A SMV technique, constructed by one projection unit for one eye, is proposed in this paper for head-mounted Virtual Reality. The unit consists of a microdisplay, a rectangular projecting lens, and M gating apertures attached to the projecting lens. The clear apertures of the M gating apertures are horizontally aligned, and can be gated sequentially at an equal time interval Δt/M. Through the lens, the virtual image of the microdisplay is projected onto the display zone, which is divided into N (N < M) segments. When a gating aperture is gated at a time-point, the N segments are presented to N different viewpoints respectively. At this time-point, each segment is refreshed with partial perspective views converging to the corresponding viewpoint. Through gating different gating apertures lens sequentially and refreshing the different segments of the display zone synchronously, the proposed system can present multiple viewpoints with the corresponding whole perspective view to the eye. When the time interval Δt and viewpoint-interval are designed small enough, a SMV display gets realized. The proposed system takes a thin optical structure, shrinking the real 3D technology to head mounted Virtual Reality applications.