Today’s VR headsets suffer from significant contrast degradation and excessive power usage because the light from current LCDs and self-emissive displays floods the magnifier lens with such a wide angle that only a small amount of that light arrives directly at the user’s eye.

Panamorph’s multi-patented Directed BackLighting (DBL) technology concentrates the light going through an LCD display into a much smaller angle, thereby concentrating the light at the user’s eye, reducing power requirements by over 65% and increasing contrast by 2-3 times for much better black levels.

DBL is very simply implemented by use of an off-axis concave mirror to project the light from an off-axis LED array though multiple reflections and polarization manipulations, then through the LCD panel as the aperture stop of the lighting system and then to form an image of the LED array at the optical system exit pupil, resulting in a compact arrangement averaging less than 9mm of depth behind the LCD panel for a panel of 2.56” diameter.