A wide-field-of-view catadioptrical head-mounted display

The head-mounted display (HMD) has been used widely as a visual presentation device in virtual reality, composite reality, and telepresence. However, the HMDs which are on the market have only a very narrow angular field of view, which is less than 60° in the horizontal direction. This is very narrow compared to the human field of view and is far from generating a feeling of presence. The poor feeling of presence is considered to be a factor that degrades the sense of realism for the user and the operating efficiency in the virtual space. In this paper, we propose an HMD with a wide field of view based on a catadioptrical system composed of hyperboloidal and ellipsoidal mirrors. The proposed HMD achieves a horizontal view angle of 180°, which covers the human peripheral field of vision. This wide field of view gives the user a stronger feeling of reality and ambience. The proposed HMD has a binocular overlap area of 60° from the center, which helps to achieve stereoscopic vision by presenting parallax images.