Lenslet VR: Thin, Flat and Wide-FOV Virtual Reality Display Using Fresnel Lens and Lenslet Array

We propose a new thin and flat virtual reality (VR) display design using a Fresnel lenslet array, a Fresnel lens, and a polarization-based optical folding technique. The proposed optical system has a wide field of view (FOV) of 102°x102°, a wide eye-box of 8.8 mm, and an ergonomic eye-relief of 20 mm. Simultaneously, only 3.3 mm of physical distance is required between the display panel and the lens, so that the integrated VR display can have a compact form factor like sunglasses. Moreover, since all lenslet of the lenslet array is designed to operate under on-axis condition with low aberration, the discontinuous pupil swim distortion between the lenslets is hardly observed. In addition, all on-axis lenslets can be designed identically, reducing production cost, and even off-the-shelf Fresnel optics can be used. In this paper, we introduce how we design system parameters and analyze system performance. Finally, we demonstrate two prototypes and experimentally verify that the proposed VR display system has the expected performance while having a glasses-like form factor.