Waveguide holography for 3D augmented reality glasses.

Near-eye displays are fundamental technology in the next generation computing platforms for augmented reality and virtual reality. However, there are remaining challenges to deliver immersive and comfortable visual experiences to users, such as compact form factor, solving vergence-accommodation conflict, and achieving a high resolution with a large eyebox. Here we show a compact holographic near-eye display concept that combines the advantages of waveguide displays and holographic displays to overcome the challenges towards true 3D holographic augmented reality glasses. By modeling the coherent light interactions and propagation via the waveguide combiner, we demonstrate controlling the output wavefront using a spatial light modulator located at the input coupler side. The proposed method enables 3D holographic displays via exit-pupil expanding waveguide combiners, providing a large software-steerable eyebox. It also offers additional advantages such as resolution enhancement capability by suppressing phase discontinuities caused by pupil replication process. We build prototypes to verify the concept with experimental results and conclude the paper with discussion.

Expanding energy envelope in holographic display via mutually coherent multi-directional illumination.

Holographic display is considered as the most promising three-dimensional (3D) display due to its unique feature of reconstructing arbitrary wavefronts. However, the limited étendue, which hinders the immersive experience of observers, remains a major unresolved issue in holographic display technique. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to tweak the constraints of étendue by expanding the energy envelope in holographic display via mutually coherent multi-illumination. The proposed concept contains both a light source design for generating a mutually coherent multi-directional wave and a computer-generated hologram optimization framework for providing high-resolution 3D holograms. To verify the proposed approach, a benchtop prototype of a holographic near-eye display providing an intrinsic large exit-pupil is implemented. The experimental results clearly show that the exit-pupil is effectively expanded by four times and an appropriate viewpoint image is reconstructed according to the view position.

Ultrahigh-definition volumetric light field projection.

We introduce a projection-type light field display featuring effective light modulation. By combining a tomographic display with integral imaging (InIm) technology, a novel optical design is capable of an autostereoscopic light field projector. Here, the tomographic approach generates a high-resolution volumetric scene, and InIm makes it possible for the volumetric scene to be reconstructed on a large screen through a projection. Since all the processes are realized optically without digital processing, our system can overcome the performance limitations associated with the number of pixels in the conventional InIm displays. We built a prototype display and demonstrated that our optical design has the potential of massive resolution with a full-parallax in a single device.

Vision-correcting holographic display: evaluation of aberration correcting hologram.

Vision-correcting displays are key to achieving physical and physiological comforts to the users with refractive errors. Among such displays are holographic displays, which can provide a high-resolution vision-adaptive solution with complex wavefront modulation. However, none of the existing hologram rendering techniques have considered the optical properties of the human eye nor evaluated the significance of vision correction. Here, we introduce vision-correcting holographic display and hologram acquisition that integrates user-dependent prescriptions and a physical model of the optics, enabling the correction of on-axis and off-axis aberrations. Experimental and empirical evaluations of the vision-correcting holographic displays show the competence of holographic corrections over the conventional vision correction solutions.

Occlusion-capable see-through display without the screen-door effect using a photochromic mask.

Conventional occlusion-capable see-through display systems have many practical limitations such as the form factor, narrow field of view, screen-door effect, and diffraction of a real scene. In this Letter, we propose an occlusion-capable see-through display using lens arrays and a photochromic plate. By imaging the occlusion mask on the photochromic plate with near-UV light, the visible light transmittance of the plate changes. Since no black matrix lies on the photochromic plate, our system provides a clear real scene view without the grid structure of the pixels and can prevent diffraction defects of the real scene. We also alleviate the drawback of a narrow field of view using the lens arrays for a reduced form factor.

LensIet VR: Thin, Flat and Wide-FOV Virtual Reality Display Using Fresnel Lens and LensIet Array.

We propose a new thin and flat virtual reality (VR) display design using a Fresnel lenslet array, a Fresnel lens, and a polarization-based optical folding technique. The proposed optical system has a wide field of view (FOV) of 102°x102°, a wide eye-box of 8.8 mm, and an ergonomic eye-relief of 20 mm. Simultaneously, only 3.3 mm of physical distance is required between the display panel and the lens, so that the integrated VR display can have a compact form factor like sunglasses. Moreover, since all lenslet of the lenslet array is designed to operate under on-axis condition with low aberration, the discontinuous pupil swim distortion between the lenslets is hardly observed. In addition, all on-axis lenslets can be designed identically, reducing production cost, and even off-the-shelf Fresnel optics can be used. In this paper, we introduce how we design system parameters and analyze system performance. Finally, we demonstrate two prototypes and experimentally verify that the proposed VR display system has the expected performance while having a glasses-like form factor.

Eye-box extended retinal projection type near-eye display with multiple independent viewpoints [Invited].

We introduce an approach to expand the eye-box in a retinal-projection-based near-eye display. The retinal projection display has the advantage of providing clear images in a wide depth range; however, it has difficulty in practical use with a narrow eye-box. Here, we propose a method to enhance the eye-box of the retinal projection display by generating multiple independent viewpoints, maintaining a wide depth of field. The method prevents images projected from multiple viewpoints from overlapping one other in the retina. As a result, our proposed system can provide a continuous image over a wide viewing angle without an eye tracker or image update. We discuss the optical design for the proposed method and verify its feasibility through simulation and experiment.

Extended-viewing-angle waveguide near-eye display with a polarization-dependent steering combiner.

A waveguide-based near-eye display (WNED) with an extended viewing angle using a polarization-dependent steering combiner (PDSC) is proposed. The novel eyepiece-combiner is composed of polarization gratings and polarization optics attached to the outcoupler part of the waveguide, which can control the output beam path depending on the polarization state. The viewing angle limited by the grating properties can be extended up to twice. Also, an ultrathinness of about 1.4 mm is suitable for the WNED. The demonstrated prototype system achieves a horizontal field of view of 33.2°, which is 2 times wider than the conventional structure (without the PDSC). The proposed configuration can resolve the viewing angle issue for the WNED.

Toward the next-generation VR/AR optics: a review of holographic near-eye displays from a human-centric perspective.

Wearable near-eye displays for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) have seen enormous growth in recent years. While researchers are exploiting a plethora of techniques to create life-like three-dimensional (3D) objects, there is a lack of awareness of the role of human perception in guiding the hardware development. An ultimate VR/AR headset must integrate the display, sensors, and processors in a compact enclosure that people can comfortably wear for a long time while allowing a superior immersion experience and user-friendly human-computer interaction. Compared with other 3D displays, the holographic display has unique advantages in providing natural depth cues and correcting eye aberrations. Therefore, it holds great promise to be the enabling technology for next-generation VR/AR devices. In this review, we survey the recent progress in holographic near-eye displays from the human-centric perspective.

Compact noise-filtering volume gratings for holographic displays.

A compact noise filtering method for holographic head-mounted displays (HMDs) is proposed. Conventionally, twin, DC and high-order noise from the spatial light modulators is filtered by a spatial stop filter with a 4-f system. Since the 4-f system requires a long optical path length, the noise filtering system usually occupies most of the volume in holographic displays. In the proposed method, only thin angular stop filters (ASFs) are used for noise filtering. The ASFs do not require a bulky 4-f system while performing the same function as the conventional method. The proposed method is verified experimentally. Our study provides an important solution for realization of compact holographic HMDs.

Dual-focal waveguide see-through near-eye display with polarization-dependent lenses.

A waveguide near-eye display (NED) with a dual-focal plane using a polarization-dependent lens device is proposed. The novel optical device is composed of a geometric phase holographic lens, a wave plate, and a circular polarizer, which is operating as a concave lens or a see-through optical window, depending on the polarization state of the input beam. Such property and ultra-thinness of about 1.5 mm can be applied to a combiner-eyepiece lens for augmented reality. This optical device attached to the waveguide provides two depth planes with polarization multiplexing. We have demonstrated that our proof-of-concept system has image planes at infinity and 20 diopters. The devised system can be expected to offer a better immersive experience, compared to a NED system with a single-focal plane.