Stanford Researchers Personalize Virtual Reality Displays to Match a User's
  Eyesight
From: ECN Magazine - 02/14/2017

Some new technologies can be tuned to our personal characteristics, like the
voice recognition on smartphones trained to recognize how we speak. But that
isn’t possible with today's virtual reality headsets. They can't account for
differences in vision, which can make watching VR less enjoyable or even
cause headaches or nausea.

Now researchers at Stanford's Computational Imaging Lab, working with a
Dartmouth College scientist, are developing VR headsets that can adapt how
they display images to account for factors like eyesight and age that affect
how we actually see.

The problem that the researchers set out to solve is that the display screens
on VR headsets don't let our eyes focus naturally. In real life, once our
eyes focus on a point everything else blurs into the background. VR makes
focusing more difficult because the display is fixed at a certain point
relative to our eyes. This eyestrain can cause discomfort or headaches.

Importantly, the effects of visual conflicts in VR may affect younger and
older people differently. For example, people over the age of 45 commonly
experience presbyopia - a difficulty focusing on objects close up. Younger
people don't generally have presbyopia but they may have vision issues that
require them to wear glasses. In either case, current VR headsets don’t take
these vision difficulties into account.

In conjunction with the eye-tracking technology, software ascertains where
the person is trying to look and controls the hardware to deliver the most
comfortable visual display. The software can account for whether a person is
nearsighted or farsighted but cannot yet correct for another vision issue
called astigmatism. With these displays, VR users would not need glasses or
contacts to have a good visual experience.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.ecnmag.com/news/2017/02/stanford-researchers-personalize-virtual-reality-displays-match-users-eyesight
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/13/personalized-virtual-reality-displays-match-eyesight

Links:
Stanford's Computational Imaging Lab
http://www.computationalimaging.org

Gordon Wetzstein
http://web.stanford.edu/~gordonwz/cv