Improved Head-Mounted Displays for Immersive Virtual Reality

The NVIS/UCF team conceptualized an advanced HMD design using traditional pancake optics and recently patented diffractive optical elements to create a new optical layout that will advance the state-of-the-art of today''s immersive display technology.The completed Phase I research validated the feasibility of this new HMD design for the Close Quarter Battle simulator being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) under the Office of Naval Research. The proposed HMD provides the user with1280x1024 24-bit color pixels per eye across a total horizontal field-of-view of 100 degrees by a vertical field-of-view of 68 degrees. Funding for the Phase II Base Effort will allow NVIS and the optical engineers from UCF to optimize this design forfabrication and manufacture one prototype for NRL. Follow on funding for the proposed Option will allow the NVIS team to pursue emerging technologies that may prove to further lighten and reduce the overall size of the HMD, ensuring the design remainsstate-of-the-art for transition into Phase III. The CQB application is an urban combat simulator and as such, it requires an extremely immersive HMD with excellent ergonomics. The proposed HMD was designed specifically for this demanding trainingenvironment. The same parameters that make the proposed HMD suitable for urban combat training; i.e., optimized form-factor and weight, wide field-of-view, and a high contrast, high resolution image, will allow it to be widely accepted across DOD andother government agencies to replace existing HMD products being used for applications ranging from tank simulators, ship-handling trainers, and astronaut spacewalk training. In the private sector, automotive manufactures are currently using HMDs fordesigning automotive interiors and simulating human interaction within the vehicle. Similar systems are in use for heavy equipment manufactures. A wide field-of-view HMD would be of great interest to enhance the realism of the simulation for theseapplications.