Full-color time-sequential super multi-view near-eye display with front-lit waveguide illumination

Light field (LF) displays can offer a quasi-natural three-dimensional (3D) viewing experience by tailoring the four-dimensional light information. However, the primary drawback of conventional LF displays is their limited image quality due to restricted information. To address this limitation, time-multiplexing techniques are employed, but the resulting system configurations are often impractical for achieving compact systems. Here, we present a compact time-sequential super multi-view LF near-eye display integrated with a front-lit, multi-directional illumination module for virtual reality application. This illumination module consists of an RGB light-emitting diode array and a waveguide, allowing us to exploit a high-speed reflective-type spatial light modulator and provide high-bit depth, full-color 3D scenes with quasi-continuous parallax in a compact form factor display. The prototype is implemented for a live demo and evaluated with both simulation and experiment. Our work provides a viable path towards the wide adoption of 3D virtual reality head-mounted displays.