Research

With AR and VR displays, we aim to deliver visual experiences that are indistinguishable from reality - a bar we call the Visual Turing Test. This sets a high bar for the technology that is being used to deliver the photons to the user’s eyes.

The resolution should match the resolution of the human eye for all gaze angles across the entire visual field. The system should account for a standard range of eye accommodation and the interface optics should correct for or be compatible with prescription correction. The dynamic range and peak brightness of the system should meet the levels that can be experienced by the user in real life in both indoor and outdoor environments. The performance for each characteristic can be achieved individually in proof-of-concept, bench-top set-ups, but to get the desired level of performance in a wearable device, novel methods for targeted light delivery are needed. Solving this globally is impossible therefore we seek to solve it locally as a function of eye state.

Designing such a system will require both continuous knowledge of the eye conditions and the anticipated optical performance under these conditions to effectively correct for the combined system. We anticipate that in the near term the benefit of early integration and co-design of display and eye tracking sub-systems will allow us to make the best possible tradeoffs between performance and system complexity. In the long term, to ensure the efficient use of generated display photons and image rendering compute, the eye tracking and light delivery will have to converge into a seamless single system.

Here we will provide a brief overview of the optimizations space that can be leveraged by combining state of the art display and eye tracking technology. We will also provide rationale that supports the need to consider both display and eye tracking technologies as two inseparable architectural elements of a single light projection system.