Pinlight displays

Abstract

Figure 1: A) A sparse array of point light sources, called pinlights, fill the eye's image plane when held defocused near the eye. B) Prototype optical see-through display consisting of pinlight arrays and spatial light modulators (LCDs). The spatial light modulators code the defocused pinlights to form an image on the retina. C) A photograph taken through our prototype display using a camera that approximates the human eye. D) A comparison of the field of view of our prototype display (110 • ) to state-of-the art commercial optical see-through glasses. Ship model by Staffan Norling. AbstractWe present a novel design for an optical see-through augmented reality display that offers a wide field of view and supports a compact form factor approaching ordinary eyeglasses. Instead of conventional optics, our design uses only two simple hardware components: an LCD panel and an array of point light sources (implemented as an edge-lit, etched acrylic sheet) placed directly in front of the eye, out of focus. We code the point light sources through the LCD to form miniature see-through projectors. A virtual aperture encoded on the LCD allows the projectors to be tiled, creating an arbitrarily wide field of view. Software rearranges the target augmented image into tiled sub-images sent to the display, which appear as the correct image when observed out of the viewer's accommodation range. We evaluate the design space of tiled point light projectors with an emphasis on increasing spatial resolution through the use of eye tracking. We demonstrate feasibility through software simulations and a real-time prototype display that offers a 110 • diagonal field of view in the form factor of large glasses and discuss remaining challenges to constructing a practical display.

The personal cockpit

“…This includes significantly broader fields of view (e.g. [132]), and mobile and miniaturized depth based sensors (e.g. Google Tango, Occipital, Microsoft HoloLens) especially suitable for portable and wearable applications.…”

The road to ubiquitous consumer augmented reality systems

“…Computational displays combine displays, computation, optics, and knowledge of the human visual system in novel ways. The Pinlight display (Maimone et al, ) was the first example I saw that achieved a wide FOV display in a form factor resembling normal glasses. It had low image quality so it does not by itself solve the entire problem, but nonetheless the Pinlight display is a milestone, suggesting it may be feasible to achieve wide FOV in a compact form factor.…”

Systematic method for modeling and characterizing multilayer light field displays

“…Several different optics architectures have been explored to implement LF-3D displays, such as super multi-view systems utilizing an array of projectors [17] or integral imaging methods using a lenslet array or pinhole array [13,19]. A computational multilayer light field display is a relatively new, emerging method of implementing LF-3D displays.…”

“…Engineering prototypes of computational LF-3D display systems have been demonstrated, and some aspects of the imaging properties such as the depth of field (DOF) have been investigated [14][15][16]19,[21][22]27]. For instance, adapted from the well-known parallax-barrier autostereoscopic displays by introducing content-adaptive optimization to compute the proper attenuation values for the mask layers, Wetzstein et al demonstrated a new tensor display comprised of a stack of time-multiplexed light-attenuating layers illuminated by a directional backlight [16].…”

“…More recently, Wetzstein et al extended their multi-layer factored light field autostereoscopic display method and demonstrated a light field stereoscope for immersive VR applications [15]. The pinlight display, consisting of a spatial light modulator (SLM) and an array of point light sources, namely the pinlights, may also be considered as a computational multi-layer display where the back layer of light attenuators next to the backlight is replaced by a pinhole array or an array of point sources [19].…”