Super wide field of view head mounted display using catadioptrical optics

Many virtual reality, mixed reality, and telepresence applications use head mounted displays (HMD HMD systems are portable and can display stereoscopic images. However, the field of view (FOV) of commercial HMD systems is too narrow for conveying the feeling of immersion. The horizontal FOV is typically around 60°, significantly narrower than that of the human eye. In this paper, we propose new display optics for a super wide FOV head mounted display. The proposed optics consists of an ellipsoidal and a hyperboloidal mirror that will display distortionless images by using the characteristics of the mirrors, even if the image has a large FOV. We constructed a prototype HMD system with a 180° horizontal × 60° vertical FOV that includes the peripheral vision of the human eye. The FOV has a 60° × 60° overlap area that can display stereoscopic images. We estimated the resolution, focus, and aberration of the prototype in an optical simulation and experimentally confirmed that the prototype displays distortionless wide FOV images.