Foveation-based reduced resolution driving scheme for immersive virtual reality displays

This paper introduces a foveation-based driving scheme that can extend line times for high-resolution and wide viewing angle displays in virtual reality applications. In the proposed one, a panel receives the substantially reduced vertical resolution image with consideration of human visual system based on the distance from the foveation point, which also leads to the dramatic data bandwidth reduction. Then, the foveated-rendering image of the full resolution is recovered in the panel by means of multi-output driving shift registers that can apply the same gate pulses to multiple lines. These multiple lines are simultaneously charged with one same line data and multiple resolutions can be presented automatically on a high resolution display. It is verified that effective numbers of lines are reduced to 30.3% and 21.0% for 4,800 × 4,800 and 9,600 × 9,600 resolutions, respectively. Consequently, line times can be extended to 330.0% and 476.2%. In addition, the subjective evaluation has ensured that the foveation-based driving scheme is applicable to high resolution and wide viewing angle displays without any perceivable degradation of image qualities.