Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new mixed reality headset, an ‘eyeglasses-like’ 3D headset that they say is a big step towards passing the “Visual Turing test”.
The new ‘holographic’ display, described in a new paper featured in Nature Photonics, features a display with a 3mm thickness, with potential to disrupt education, entertainment, virtual travel, communication and other fields, according to the researchers.
The development was led by Gordon Wetzstein, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University
The headset design integrates a custom waveguide that steers the image to the wearer’s eye, creating a ‘holographic’ image which is enhanced by a new AI-calibration method that aims to optimise image quality and three-dimensionality, resulting in a large field of view and a large ‘eyebox’, the area in which the pupil can move and still see the entire image.
The researchers say that the effect is a crisp 3D image that fills the user’s field of view for an immersive 3D experience.
Wetzstein commented: “We want this to be compact and lightweight for all-day use, basically. That’s problem number one – the biggest problem.
“The eye can move all about the image without losing focus or image quality. The world has never seen a display like this with a large field of view, a large eyebox, and such image quality in a holographic display. It’s the best 3D display created so far and a great step forward – but there are lots of open challenges yet to solve.”