Apple Inc.

Oculus, Vr, LLC

Facebook Technologies, LLC

Yury Anatolievich Petrov

John N Border

Victoria C Chan

Andreas G Weber

Edward S Huo

Tobias Eble

Yoshihiko Yokoyama

Julius G Krumbiegel

Fletcher R Rothkopf

Chaohao Wang

Ricardo Jansson Motta

Jason C Sauers

Sheng Zhang

Noah Denis Bedard

Jeffrey C Olson

Mark F Flynn

Branko Petljanski

Brett D Miller

Volga Aksoy

Daniel R Hennigan

Wei-Liang Hsu

Brandon E Clarke

Redirected walking methods are described that may be implemented in virtual reality (VR) systems for guiding or redirecting users' movements within constrained physical environments or in unconstrained physical environments, while the users perceive that they are freely moving about within virtual worlds provided by the VR systems. The methods may involve rendering views of a VR world based at least in part on a user's movements in the real environment, adjusting the views according to the user's position and movements with respect to objects in and boundaries of the real environment, and displaying the adjusted views to the user. In response to visual cues introduced by the methods, the user may adjust their path in the real world environment. For example, a rotation of the VR environment introduced by a shift of one or more views may cause the user to turn in a direction opposite to the rotation.

Redirected walking in virtual reality environments

An electronic device such as a head-mounted device may have a user display for displaying an image to a user. The image may be displayed at an eye box after passing through a lens that is interposed between the display and the eye box. A forward-facing component such as a forward-facing camera and/or an externally viewable display may be supported in the housing. The forward-facing component may be overlapped by an optical system. The optical system may have a double-folded light path that virtually shifts the position of the forward-facing component. The optical system may have a reflective polarizer and a partially reflective mirror that are separated by a given distance. The optical system may virtually shift the forward-facing component toward the eye box by twice the given distance.

Head-mounted device with virtually shifted component locations using a double-folded light path

An electronic device may include a display system with a pixel array and a catadioptric lens. The display system may include a linear polarizer through which image light from the pixel array passes and a first quarter wave plate through which the light passes after passing through the polarizer. The lens may include a partial mirror, a second quarter wave plate, and a reflective polarizer. A third quarter wave plate may be formed between the linear polarizer and the pixel array to mitigate ghost images. Control circuitry may predict potential ghost images based on the geometry of the lens and data from an image frame. Tone mapping circuitry may adjust contrast of the image frame within a region overlapping the predicted ghost image. The control circuitry may adjust luminance of the image frame outside of the region overlapping the predicted ghost image.

Optical system with ghost image mitigation

Some implementations provide a multi-focus display system that renders images at multiple focus distances for display in conjunction with the use of appropriately powered lenses. For example, an HMD may include a fast switching lens element that allows quickly alternating between two or more focus distances. The displayed images are configured to correspond to the alternating focus distances by adjusting a high-frequency part of the images. This can provide a more natural user experience that will include near objects that require the user's eye to focus on a close focal depth plane and far objects that require the user's eye to focus on a far focal depth plane. Moreover, the user experience can be provided with little or no loss of brightness and without requiring processor and resource intensive computations.

Rendering for multi-focus display systems

Some implementations disclosed herein include devices, systems, and methods that display images at multiple focus distances on HMDs. The systems can avoid or mitigate vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) and depth-blur conflict (DBC) experienced by users on traditional HMDs. Some implementations use a geometric phase lens and a circular polarization switch. The geometric phase lens passively changes its power depending on the light's circular polarization. The circular polarization switch changes the polarization of the light at appropriate times. With the circular polarization switch and geometric phase lens positioned over an HMD screen, the system can quickly change the apparent distance to the screen, which in turn changes the accommodative state of the eye needed to focus on the rendered image.

Multi-focal display based on polarization switches and geometric phase lenses

A scene camera system that includes two or more mirrors that reflect light from a respective portion of a field of view (FOV) in front of the system and two or more cameras that each capture the light reflected by a respective one of the two or more mirrors. By using the mirrors to reflect the light, the cameras' entrance pupils are imaged to a location closer to a user's eyes to thus achieve a more accurate representation of the perspective of the user.

Mirror-based scene cameras

A head-mounted device may include a display system and an optical system in a housing. The display system may have displays that produce images. The optical system may have Fresnel lenses through which a user of the head-mounted device may view the images. The Fresnel lenses may have concentric rings with slope facets and draft facets angled parallel to the chief rays. Light scattering in the Fresnel lenses may be reduced by coating the draft facets with opaque masking material and/or by aligning concentric rings of the opaque masking material that are supported on a transparent substrate with the draft facets. A central portion of the Fresnel lens that is free of facets may be enlarged to reduce scattering. The Fresnel lenses may have wedge-shaped cross-sectional profiles and may have outer portions that are thicker than inner portions. Gradient-index material may be used in forming the Fresnel lenses.

Head-mounted display device with Fresnel lenses

An electronic device may include a display with a concave surface. A linear polarizer may be formed on the concave surface. A quarter wave plate may receive light from the linear polarizer. A catadioptric lens may have first and second lens elements. The first lens element may have first and second opposing surfaces. The second lens element may have opposing third and fourth surfaces. The first surface may be convex and may face the display. The fourth surface may be concave. The second surface may be concave. The third surface may be convex and may match the second surface. An additional quarter wave plate may be formed as a coating on the third surface. A partially reflective coating may be formed on the first surface. A reflective polarizer may be formed as a coating on the fourth surface. An additional polarizer may be formed on the reflective polarizer.

Optical system

A virtual reality headset includes multiple illumination sources emitting light towards a user's eye and an image capture device capturing light reflected by the user's eye. The image capture device captures images of light from the illumination sources reflected by the user's corneas when the user looks at a specific location in the virtual reality headset. Based on locations of light having at least a threshold intensity in the captured images, the position of the center of user's eye's pupil is determined in three dimensions and used to determine a distance between the center of user's eye's pupil and a reference point relative to the illumination sources. Distances between centers of pupils of the user's eyes and reference points are used to determine a distance between the centers of the pupils of the user's eyes and a distance from the corneas to an optical system of the headset.

Determining interpupillary distance and eye relief of a user wearing a head-mounted display

A virtual-reality navigation controller includes a base, a seat, a vertical support to support the seat on the base, and a rotatable connector between the seat and the vertical support to tilt the seat about a rotational center of the rotatable connector in response to directional forces exerted by a user seated on the seat. The virtual-reality navigation controller further includes a motion-detection controller to measure pitch corresponding to the tilt of the seat resulting from the directional forces.

Navigation controller for virtual-reality systems

A virtual-reality navigation controller includes a base and a seating portion. The seating portion includes a seat for supporting a weight of a user seated thereon, and a back-rest coupled to the seat to move integrally with the seat and to support the user's back. The virtual-reality navigation controller further includes a displacement connector between the seating portion and the base to reciprocate the seating portion upwards and downwards, and a motion-detection controller to measure upwards and downwards displacement of the seating portion. The displacement connector is configured to move the seating portion upwards along with the user to support the user when the user ascends from the seat during virtual-reality activities. The displacement connector is further configured to move the seating portion downwards at a slower maximum speed than the upwards movement, when the user's body rests back on the seat.

A headset (e.g., VR headset or AR headset) displays a three-dimensional (3D) virtual scene and includes a distance element to dynamically adjust a distance between an optics block and an electronic display included in the headset based on a location in the virtual scene where the user is looking. The headset tracks the user's eyes to approximate gaze lines and determines a plane of focus for a frame of the virtual scene as the intersection of the gaze lines. The distance element adjusts a distance between an optics block and an electronic display so that the optics block is focused at the plane of focus, which keeps the user's eyes in a zone of comfort as vergence and accommodation change.

Eye tracking for mitigating vergence and accommodation conflicts

A virtual-reality system includes a head-mounted display system comprising an eye tracker and a display screen comprising an array of pixels. The virtual-reality system monitors movement of a user's eye using the eye tracker. A first plurality of frames for virtual-reality images is displayed on the display screen using a first persistence in accordance with a first display mode. The persistence is a percentage of a frame duration during which the array of pixels is activated. While displaying the first plurality of frames in accordance with the first display mode, a saccade of the user's eye is detected. In response to detecting the saccade, the virtual-reality system switches from the first display mode to a second display mode having a second persistence that is greater than the first persistence. In the second display mode, a second plurality of frames for the virtual-reality images is displayed using the second persistence.

Growing community of inventors

Half Moon Bay, CA, United States of America

Yury Anatolievich Petrov