Holographic three-dimensional virtual reality and augmented reality display based on 4K-spatial light modulators

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a holographic three-dimensional (3D) head-mounted display based on 4K-spatial light modulators (SLMs). This work is to overcome the limitation of stereoscopic 3D virtual reality and augmented reality head-mounted display. We build and compare two systems using 2K and 4K SLMs with pixel pitches 8.1 μmand 3.74 μm, respectively. One is a monocular system for each eye, and the other is a binocular system using two tiled SLMs for two eyes. The viewing angle of the holographic head-mounted 3D display is enlarged from 3.8° to 16.4° by SLM tiling, which demonstrates potential applications of true 3D displays in virtual reality and augmented reality.