Vari-Focal Plane Head-Mounted Display

A vari-focal or multi-focal plane head-mounted display (HMD) technology is one of our most recent display projects to address a fundamental problem inherent to the existing stereoscopic display technologies. In a typical stereoscopic display, the eyes of a user are forced to accommodate to a fixed focal distance while changing their convergence angles to view 3D content rendered at different depths. Existing stereoscopic displays are therefore incapable of correctly rendering focus cues and force the decoupling of the accommodation and convergence cues which are naturally coupled in viewing a real-world scene. Many psychophysical studies suggest that this fundamental problem likely contributes to the perceived depth compression phenomena and visual fatigue when using stereoscopic displays. We recently explored an elegant method to design an HMD with addressable focal planes. The focal plane of the display is dynamically controlled, matching the depth cue of virtual objects with the focal distance of the display.