ThinVR: A VR display approach providing wide FOV in a compact form factor, Intel Labs

Intel Labs: Ronald Azuma, Alexey Supikov, Joshua Ratcliff, Santiago Alfaro
This talk describes ThinVR: An approach to build near-eye VR displays that simultaneously provides a very wide (180 degree horizontal) FOV and a compact form factor. The key is to replace traditional large optics with curved microlens arrays and to place the optics in front of curved displays. We had to design custom heterogeneous optics to make this approach work, because many lenslets are viewed off the central axis. To ensure the existence of an adequate eyebox and to minimize pupil swim distortions, we had to design and build a custom optimizer to produce an acceptable heterogeneous lenslet array. We prove this approach works through prototypes with both static and dynamic displays. To our knowledge, this is the first work to both convincingly demonstrate and analyze the potential for curved, heterogeneous microlens arrays to enable compact, wide FOV near-eye VR displays.

Virtual demo at SIGGRAPH 2020 in Emerging Technologies
Best Paper award at IEEE VR 2020

Find more info here:

Speaker's bios:

Ronald Azuma is a Principal Engineer and Research Manager in Intel Labs. Prior to Intel, he helped start the Nokia Research Center Hollywood and worked at HRL Laboratories. He is known for being a pioneer in AR and is generally credited with defining the term "Augmented Reality." He built the world's first working AR system and wrote a paper that is the single most referenced publication in the field of AR. In 2016 he became an IEEE Fellow.

Alexey Supikov is research scientist at Intel Corporation investigating novel computational display approaches and digital holography. He has 20+ years of experience in the areas of computer graphics, computational geometry, physics simulation, parallel computing, HW platforms research and numerical optimization. He has 13 publications (including SIGGRAPH, Eurographics) and 20+ patents on ray tracing/global illumination, light field displays, computer vision and computational holography.

Joshua Ratcliff is a Research Scientist at Intel Corporation with over 10 years of experience. His research interests are in the intersection of HCI, graphics, and display systems. He holds 15+ patents in the areas of XR, light field displays, graphical interfaces and wearable computing.

Santiago Alfaro is a Research Scientist in Intel Labs where he builds prototypes for complex optical experiments while also designing user experiences of future VR, AR and Light Field technologies. He has also explored novel visual experiences and haptic interfaces. He joined Intel Labs in 2015 after finishing his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab. Before that he received a M.S. in Design Technology from the Media Lab and a Master of Industrial Design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.

#VirtualReality​ #Microlens​ #WideFOV​
@Intel

[superguy]

Is the team working on this open to discussion??