‘Focal Surface Display’ technology could allow people who wear corrective lenses to wear their VR viewers comfortably without their prescription glasses.
Oculus Research has published article about its new ‘Focal Surface Display’ technology and he will present his research at SIGGRAPH 2017, which will take place in July. You can see more details in its corresponding entry on the Oculus blog.
Focal surface images mimic the way our eyes naturally focus on objects at different depths. Instead of trying to add more and more focus areas to get the same degree of depth, this new focus changes the way light enters the screen using spatial light modulators (SLM) to bend the viewer’s focus around 3D objects, increasing depth and maximizing the amount of space represented simultaneously.
All this adds up to improved image sharpness and a more natural viewing experience in VR.
[…]
Combining leading hardware engineering, scientific and medical imaging, computer vision research and state-of-the-art algorithms to focus on next-generation VR, this project takes a highly interdisciplinary approach that, to our knowledge, has never been tested before. Even it can allow people who wear corrective lenses to wear their VR viewfinders comfortably without their glasses.
In short, the grace of the system is that it allows you to bend the light of an image selectively to vary the focus of its parts, basically as would the lenses of glasses or the crystals of our eyes. The display would have the effect of having programmable glasses that could replace prescription glasses in virtual reality. As expected, the article comments that it is necessary to integrate an eye tracking system.
They also comment that the technology is not yet perfected, but is an intermediate step to achieve it. The spatial light modulators that are used are too small and only give 15% of FOV, in addition eye tracking must be integrated into them; the algorithms must be improved, among other problems that will be solved.
They plan to share their findings with the entire virtual and augmented reality community.
Research is still in its infancy, so it will still take some time to incorporate into future viewers; at least we know it is feasible, an innovation that could dramatically improve visual clarity and depth of focus for virtual and augmented reality.
Spatial Light Modulators (SLM).
Presentation of the Focal Surface Screen.
