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 Technol