Compact near-eye display optics
AssigneeGoogle Inc.
InventorsJerome Carollo, Xinda Hu, Serge Bierhuizen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods that employ a near-eye display system including an optical assembly are described. The optical assembly may include a head-mounted display device worn by a user in which the head-mounted display device adapted to house an image projecting device and an optical assembly. The optical assembly may include, for at least one eyepiece, a first flat filter stack operable to be oriented in a first direction. and a second flat filter stack operable to be oriented in a second direction. The near-eye display system assembly may also include a display panel adapted to receive image content from the image projecting device, wherein the display panel is adapted to be oriented in the second direction.
Claims20
A near-eye display system assembly comprising:
- a head-mounted display device including an image projecting device and an optical assembly, the optical assembly including for each of a first eyepiece and a second eyepiece,
- at least one lens;
- a first flat filter stack including at least one surface coated with a flat beam splitting layer;
- a second flat filter stack stacked between the at least one lens and the first flat filter stack;
- and
- a display panel adapted to receive image content from the image projecting device,
- wherein each display panel is tilted from a non-zero tilt of a normal direction of the respective display panel to a first angle with an optical axis of the at least one lens, and each respective first flat filter stack is tilted from a non-zero tilt of a normal direction of each respective first flat filter stack to a second angle with the optical axis of the at least one lens, the first angle being different than the second angle.
A method of filtering light for a near-eye display system, the method comprising:
- receiving a light beam at a display panel and from a display that directs light through a first linear polarizer in a first filter stack, the first linear polarizer transmitting the light beam into a first quarter-wave plate in the first filter stack, the light beam becoming circularly polarized in a first direction and being further transmitted through a beam splitter in the first filter stack, the beam splitter operable to transmit at least some of the light beam to a second quarter wave plate in a second filter stack;
- transmitting a first portion of the light beam from the second quarter wave plate to a polarizing beam splitter in the second filter stack to transform the first portion into a linearly polarized light beam, wherein the polarizing beam splitter is operable to reflect a second portion of the linearly polarized light beam through the second quarter wave plate to the beam splitter, the second portion becoming circularly polarized in a second direction after reflecting off of the beam splitter;
- and
- transmitting the second portion from the beam splitter through the second quarter wave plate and through the polarizing beam splitter, through a second linear polarizer in the second filter stack, and through at least one lens to provide a refracted image to an eyepiece of the near-eye display system,
- wherein the display panel and second filter stack are arranged in parallel and tilted from a normal to the optical axis of the at least one lens to adjust focus for the near-eye display system.
A system comprising:
- an interactive head-mounted display device adapted to house an image projecting device and an optical assembly, the optical assembly including, for a first eyepiece and a second eyepiece,
- at least one refracting lens;
- a first flat filter stack including at least one surface coated with a flat beam splitting layer;
- a second flat filter stack stacked between the at least one lens the first flat filter stack;
- and
- a display panel adapted to receive image content from the image projecting device;
- and
- at least one processor for handling image content for display on the image projecting device,
- wherein each display panel is tilted from a non-zero tilt of a normal direction of the respective display panel to a first angle with an optical axis of the at least one lens, and each respective first flat filter stack is tilted from a non-zero tilt of a normal direction of each respective first flat filter stack to a second angle with the optical axis of the at least one lens, the first angle being different than the second angle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.