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Near-Eye Light Field Displays

Douglas Lanman
Demos
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this demo1 month2014–2018 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN cites it in Magic Leap and VR threads as a clear overview of how light fields could solve focus and bulk problems.

A SIGGRAPH 2013 demo from Douglas Lanman and NVIDIA of near-eye light field displays, which allow much thinner head-mounted displays that still show accurate focus and depth cues.

“It gives a very clear overview of the concept and prototypes.” (HN, 2014)

2 recommendations · 4 citations · Demos · intermediate · partly dated

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@VikingCoder Oct 2014 Recommends
on HN thread Google May Lead $500M Round in Magic Leap Virtual Reality Tech
Watch this video at the 4 minute mark: [this video] It explains what they're talking about. Your eyes can focus on different parts of the view - it's not just an infinite depth-of-field display like we're used to. It's like the display version of a Lytro camera.
Explains focus-capable displays, like a display version of a Lytro

Citations, criticism and jokes

@Sephr May 2016 Cites it
on HN thread How big an issue is the nausea problem for VR products?
Read more
They're comparing apples to oranges. The $80,000 military VR headsets of 1989 absolutely did not use OLED or OLED light field displays. They've only recently been available from manufacturers at any price with their current pixel density and refresh rate (OLED has always had amazing response time, but refresh rate has been lacking until recently) specifications. Even the most expensive research OLED panels with high enough pixel densities for VR have only existed since the early-mid '00s. The studies he linked to are from 1989. > Depth perception The author neglects to mention that OLED light field displays have already solved this problem completely. See [this video] The technology already exists (you need a pair of expensive MicroOLED displays and some special lenses), it's just not available at a consumer price point. > Momentum For someone involved with military devices, it's surprising that this guy has never heard of galvanic vestibular stimulation. GVS will never be easy and will always require very, very extensive calibration per-user, but it's still possible to use for simulating perceived movement. This isn't that important for me personally, as I've never experienced VR sickness even when playing fast-paced high-momentum VR games for multiple hours at a time. I could see people who get VR sickness wanting this, as GVS would help prevent it from happening.
Cited as showing depth perception problem solved by OLED light fields
@kbenson Dec 2016 Cites it
on HN thread Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion
What about Near-Eye Light Field Displays[1][2]? From what I've seen those look to have promise in solving some focus problems and some of the problems with how cumbersome most VR/AR displays are. As a bonus, they can correct for prescriptions. 1: [this video] 2: [link]
Suggested as promising approach to focus and bulk problems
@kbenson Feb 2018 Cites it
on HN thread Magic Leap One Video – Diffractive Waveguides Confirmed
I'm still waiting for more info on Near Eye Light Field devices.[1][2] Actually, it appears there's more on this now[3][4], but the video's audio is a weird translation of some paper or something. 1: [link] 2: [this video] 3: [link] 4: [link]
Cited as source on near-eye light field devices

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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