Retinal image quality in near-eye pupil-steered systems

State-of-the-art near-eye displays often compromise on eye box size to maintain a wide field of view, necessitating a means for steering the eye box to maintain alignment with a moving eye. The design space of such pupil-steered systems is not well defined and the implications of imperfect steering on the perceived image are not well understood. To better characterize the pupil steering design space, we introduce a generalized taxonomy of pupil-steered architectures that considers both system and ocular factors that affect steering performance. We also develop an optical model of a generalized pupil-steered system with a wide-field schematic eye to simulate the retinal image. Using this framework, we systematically characterize retinal image quality for different combinations of design parameters. The results of these simulations provide an overview of the pupil steering design space and help determine relevant psychophysical experiments for further evaluation.