Microsoft patents AR glasses that hide your eyes from others
This filing describes a new type of see-through lens for mixed-reality headsets that uses a special patterned layer to guide virtual images to your eyes. It includes a specific design feature that stops light from leaking out of the lens toward the outside world, a problem known as 'eye glow.'
In the filing’s own words
A mixed-reality waveguide combiner for use in an optical display system of a head-mounted display (HMD) device for mixed-reality applications in which virtual images are displayed over views of the real world by an HMD device user is disclosed. A gradient refractive index is utilized in a surface relief grating having depth-modulated grating structures along with a thickness-modulated residual layer. A foundation layer, providing a contrasting refractive index to that of the gratings and the residual layer, may be utilized to provide increased resistance against parasitic diffraction away from the HMD device user towards the surrounding world-side environment. Such world-side leakage causes a phenomenon known as “eye glow” which can reduce social comfort by obscuring the user's eyes or undesirably increase HMD device observability.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A see-through waveguide combiner, employable by a user in a mixed-reality display system, the waveguide combiner combining virtual images with views of a real world by the user, comprising: a transparent substrate propagating virtual images in-coupled from a display engine in total internal reflection along a propagation direction; and an output-coupling surface relief grating (SRG) disposed on the substrate, the SRG including grating structures having increasing depth along the propagation direction of the virtual images, the output-coupling SRG configured for output-coupling the virtual images from the see-through waveguide combiner to an eye of the user, wherein the output-coupling SRG comprises a residual layer underneath the grating structures, the residual layer being disposed over the substrate and having a modulated thickness profile along the propagation direction of the virtual images, and wherein the output-coupling SRG comprises a gradient refractive index profile along the propagation direction of the virtual images.
Facts
- Company
- Microsoft (Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC)
- Official title
- MIXED-REALITY WAVEGUIDE COMBINER WITH REDUCED WORLD-SIDE LEAKAGE
- Publication number
- US20260259362A1
- Application number
- 19066903
- Filed
- Feb 28, 2025
- Published
- Sep 3, 2026
- Inventors
- 2
- Claims
- 20
Classified under
G02B 6/0036 Physics & computingG02B 6/0016 Physics & computingG02B 6/0045 Physics & computingG02B 6/0065 Physics & computingG02B 27/0172 Physics & computingG02B 2027/0178 Physics & computingMore from Microsoft in AR, VR & displays
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.