Wide-field-of-view naked-eye virtual reality 3D light field display system based on multichannel image-space stitching

A wide-field-of-view (FOV), continuous large-depth-range, naked-eye virtual reality (VR) three-dimensional (3D) light field display based on multichannel image-space stitching is proposed. The system consists primarily of a light-field generation module and a remote-image formation module. Three ultra-short-throw projectors, a directional diffuser, and a lenticular lens array generate three object-space light fields, which are subsequently magnified and spatially stitched in image space by a beam splitter and three edge-spliced freeform mirrors. This architecture achieves continuous-depth naked-eye VR display with a 90° horizontal FOV while maintaining adequate display resolution. For accurate multichannel content generation, an independent voxel-based object-image mapping model is established for each channel. According to the target image-space light field, the corresponding object-space 3D light field modulated by the directional diffuser and lenticular lens array is calculated for each projector, and pixel-composite encoding is employed to generate the projection images. Experimental results demonstrate clear, highly immersive and stereoscopic naked-eye VR 3D light-field visualization for various application scenarios over a continuous depth range of 3-20 m from the observer.