Double Maxwellian foveated display

Conventional near-eye displays (NEDs) used for augmented and virtual reality applications face the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC), a mismatch between eye convergence and image focal depth, that causes discomfort to the wearer. To address this issue, Maxwellian displays have gained attention for their ability to project always-focused images. But the structure of the human vision system has high resolution in the foveal region, which reduces in the peripheral region, while the existing displays provide uniform resolution. If in a Maxwellian system, the resolution of the display can be tailored according to the requirements of the vision system, which will improve vision comfort and reduce the image computation time significantly. However, the optical realization of such a system is difficult. Here, we propose a novel guided double Maxwellian foveated NED using holographic optics to harness the benefits of both foveated and Maxwellian configurations. This optical design integrates a holographic pin-mirror waveguide to deliver high-resolution data in the foveal region and a concave mirror-based Maxwellian lightguide to display reduced-resolution information in the peripheral region. The proposed system is validated through optical simulation and experimental demonstration.