Hughes Aircraft Company

Helene H Jones

Lacy G Cook

Eric Charles Haseltine

Roger J Withrington

Catadioptric area-of-interest display projectors produce displays having resolution of substantially less than 10 arc minutes per line over a wide field of view. Such projectors include an external entrance pupil for receiving images of substantially collimated light, and optics for conveying such light onto and through an opening in the surface of an aspheric mirror, and then through an opening in a spherical mirror so that light emerging from the opening in the spherical mirror is displayed on a curved screen surface with such high resolution. A projector system includes this projector and a mirror for steering collimated light from the entrance pupil of the projector into the projector optics. This system, when placed in a flight simulator at the periphery of a flight simulator dome for projection of such light images onto the inner curved surface of the dome, provides high resolution images to viewers located at the center of the dome.

Catadioptric projector, catadioptric projection system and process

There is disclosed an integrated optical design of head-up displays suitable for use in aircraft cockpits and the like. The display system is comprised of a holographic optical element used as the combiner for presenting a direct view of the exterior on which are superimposed image signals generated by a source device such as a cathode ray tube and transmitted to the combiner through an optical system including a relay lens containing tilted and decentered optical elements to compensate for the aberration present in the holographic optical element. There are further disclosed four relay lens design forms particularly suited for use in the design of such holographic head-up displays. The disclosure includes integrated designs in which (a) the holographic element may or may not be constructed with aberrated wavefront and (b) a beam splitter is incorporated for insertion of a stand-by sight, possibly also being tilted for the correction of aberrations.

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Culver City, CA, United States of America

Helene H Jones