Apple files for patent for ‘foveated display’ for ‘Apple Glasses’

Apple has filed for a patent (number 20210142736) that involves the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented reality/virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD).

In the patent filing, the tech giant says it can be challenging to display images on a display in a head-mounted device. High-resolution images are visually attractive, but may be difficult or impossible to present to a user without using large amounts of image data bandwidth and consuming large amounts of power. 

Apple notes that a HMD may  (of course) have displays that are viewable by the eyes of a viewer through lenses. The company’s idea is for the Apple Glasses display to have regions of lower and higher resolution to reduce data bandwidth and power consumption for the display while preserving satisfactory image quality. 

Here’s the summary of the patent filing: “An electronic device such as a head-mounted device may have displays. The display may have regions of lower and higher resolution to reduce data bandwidth and power consumption for the display while preserving satisfactory image quality. Data lines may be shared by lower and higher resolution portions of a display or different portions of a display with different resolutions may be supplied with different numbers of data lines. 

“Data line length may be varied in transition regions between lower resolution and higher resolution portions of a display to reduce visible discontinuities between the lower and higher resolution portions. The lower and higher resolution portions of the display may be dynamically adjusted using dynamically adjustable gate driver circuitry and dynamically adjustable data line driver circuitry.”

When it comes to Apple Glasses, such a device will arrive this year or 2022, depending on which rumor you believe. The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) thinks Apple will at least preview it before the end of the year. 

It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be eventually be available in both. The Apple Glasses may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that Apple Glasses could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.”