The outstanding feature of Avegant’s light field technology
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality headsets have evolved quite a bit over the last few years. Improvements in resolution, lag, and other factors, have led to new, extremely immersive systems. However, one missing feature is still holding back the technology. The natural integration of digital objects into the real world is a technical challenge.
Most of today’s displays consist of a two-dimensional display that’s placed at a fixed distance from the user’s eyes. This creates a conflict for our eyes and brain, which in the real world are used to a linked adjustment of the angle between the eyes (the vergence) and the focus plane (the right depth). If a tracked object changes depth, then vergence movement would initiate to correct the difference in angle.
The recent proof-of-concept systems use up to three display planes, allowing us to experience a discrete near, a mid-range and a far layer to focus on, but for a better, more immersive 3D experience we’ll need the ability to experience a continuous focal range. That’s what a company called Avegant thinks it can change.
Impressive multi-focus effect
Avegant, the head-mounted display maker has announced a new display that uses “a new method to create light fields” to simultaneously display multiple objects at different focal planes. While all digital light fields have discrete focal planes, according to Avegant CTO Edward Tang, the new technology can interpolate between these to create a “continuous, dynamic focal plane”. “This is a new optic that we’ve developed that results in a new method to create light fields,” says Tang.
The light field displays are capable of multiple focal planes, which give virtual objects a realistic appearance at various distances. For instance, an object placed in a user’s immediate vicinity would be displayed in sharper focus than objects meant to be situated in the background. As a result, users can interact with objects and interfaces with more precision and observe the content with greater comfort to the eye.
Avegants light field prototype
“Since announcing our first Light Field displays earlier this year, Avegant has been flooded with requests from companies that can’t wait to get their hands on this new technology. Demand took off like a rocket, so we’re launching a development kit designed specifically to meet that demand,” said Eric Trabold, chief business officer at Avegant, in a statement.
By making the kits available to others, Avegant expects to become a catalyst for electronics manufacturers to develop their own products more rapidly. Avegant has already begun working on prototypes with a number of hardware and software makers.