A Low Cost Video See-Through Head Mounted Display for Increased Situation Awareness in an Augmented Environment

A head mounted display is developed for use in an immersive augmented reality simulator for virtual training. The simulator requires a video see-through parallax-free display to accurately mix the real and virtual worlds. High field of view is also required to allow use of peripheral vision in order to create a higher sense of awareness for the user. Due to high cost associated with commercial off-the-shelf display systems, a custom solution is designed and developed by combining hardware and software. It is shown that it is possible to build a low cost display system that provides the necessary attributes and acceptable compromises for the current type of application.