Design of a See-through Off-Axis Head-Mounted-Display Optical System with an Ellipsoidal Surface

A new method to design a see-through off-axis head-mounted-display (OA-HMD) optical system with an ellipsoidal surface is proposed, in which a tilted ellipsoidal surface is used as the combiner, which yields the benefits of easier fabrication and testing compared to a freeform surface. Moreover, we realize a coaxial structure in the relay lens group, which is simple and has looser tolerance requirements, thus making assembly easier. The OA-HMD optical system we realize has a simple structure and consists of a combiner and 7 pieces of coaxial relay lenses. It has a 48° × 36° field of view (FOV) and 12-mm exit pupil diameter.