The Problem of Persistence with Rotating Displays

Motion-to-photon latency causes images to sway from side to side in a VR/AR system, while display persistence causes smearing; both of these are undesirable artifacts. We show that once latency is reduced or eliminated, smearing due to display persistence becomes the dominant visual artifact, even with accurate tracker prediction. We investigate the human perceptual mechanisms responsible for this and we demonstrate a modified 3D rotation display controller architecture for driving a high speed digital display which minimizes latency and persistence. We simulate it in software and we built a testbench based on a very high frame rate (2880 fps 1-bit images) display system mounted on a mechanical rotation gantry which emulates display rotation during head rotation in an HMD.