Simulating the appearance of mid-air imaging with micro-mirror array plates

To develop mid-air imaging optical systems, several simulation methods have been used by tracking ray paths that generate a mid-air image as well as undesired images. Although these methods can simulate viewing space and the undesired images of mid-air imaging optical systems, the appearance lacks in terms of chip artifacts, shape of the undesired images, and luminance. In this study, we found that the appearance of a mid-air image and characteristics of micro-mirror array plates (MMAPs) can be reproduced by computer graphics-based simulation using ray tracing with the appropriate modeling parameters of the MMAPs. To simulate the appearance of the mid-air image, we investigated appropriate modeling methods for MMAPs. We also evaluated the validity of the simulation by comparing the characteristics of the rendered mid-air images with the actual mid-air image. Furthermore, we demonstrated several prototypes by employing our method in the actual design of optical systems. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )