Study on distortion correction of head-mounted displays based on hardware system

Abstract

Thin, wide field-of-view HMDs with free-form-surface prism (FFSP) have been widely applied in the fields of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Because the optical distortions affect the quality of the displayed images, distortion correction becomes a key problem. Optical distortions can be corrected with an optical system, but the weight and complexity of the HMDs will be added. In order to overcome such problem, a real-time algorithm based on field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) for the distortion correction of FFSP-based HMDs is presented in this paper by analyzing the distorted characteristics of the optical system, in which a distorted image with predistortion information is constructed. The framework of the hardware implementation is also presented. The property of the proposed solution is analyzed and verified through a real FFSP-based HMD. Experimental results prove the feasibility of the proposed method. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.