Towards Multifocal Displays with Dense Focal Stacks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a virtual reality display that rapidly generates dense focal stacks by precisely tracking a focus-tunable lens, enabling a multifocal display that addresses vergence-accommodation conflicts.

Contribution

It presents a novel VR display system capable of producing 1600 focal planes per second using high-speed focal length tracking and a focus-tunable lens.

Findings

Achieves 1600 focal planes per second.

Addresses vergence-accommodation conflict in VR.

Demonstrates dense focal stack generation.

Abstract

We present a virtual reality display that is capable of generating a dense collection of depth/focal planes. This is achieved by driving a focus-tunable lens to sweep a range of focal lengths at a high frequency and, subsequently, tracking the focal length precisely at microsecond time resolutions using an optical module. Precise tracking of the focal length, coupled with a high-speed display, enables our lab prototype to generate 1600 focal planes per second. This enables a novel first-of-its-kind virtual reality multifocal display that is capable of resolving the vergence-accommodation conflict endemic to today's displays.