The Past, Present, And Future Of Head Mounted Display Designs

Head-mounted displays present a relatively mature option for augmenting the visual field of a potentially mobile user. Ideally, one would wish for such capability to exist without the need to wear any view-aided device. However, unless a display system could be created in space, anywhere and anytime, a simple solution is to wear the display. We review in this paper the fundamentals of head-mounted displays including image sources and HMD optical designs. We further point out promising research directions that will play a key role towards the seamless integration between the virtually superimposed computer graphics objects and the tangible world around us