Future Apple Vision Pros may have features to deal with “flicker judder,” according to a new Apple patent filing.
About the patent filing
It relates generally to electronic devices, and, more particularly, to electronic devices such as head-mounted devices. In the patent filing, Apple notes that electronic devices such as head-mounted devices can have cameras for obtaining a live video feed of a physical environment and one or more displays for presenting the live video feed to a user. The physical environment can include one or more light sources.
The cameras can acquire images for the live video feed at some frame rate. The displays can output the live video feed at some frame rate. The light sources can be modulated at some frequency that is different than the frame rate of the cameras and displays.
However, Apple says that if care isn’t taken, the light sources in the environment can result in noticeable judder in the live video feed. Apple’s patent filing involves Vision Pro features to overcome such issues.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “A method of operating an electronic device such as a head-mounted device to mitigate judder, double images, ghosting, and other display artifacts is provided. The method can include acquiring images of a scene with one or more cameras, outputting the acquired images of the scene with one or more displays, sensing light in the scene with a flicker sensor, obtaining a frequency and a phase of the sensed light, and setting or locking a frame rate of the cameras based on the frequency of the sensed light.
“The method can also include shifting or locking exposure periods of the cameras based on the phase of the sensed light. Determination of whether judder is present can involve computing a display artifact severity parameter and comparing that parameter to a threshold.”
