Transparent Mask: Face-Capturing Head-Mounted Display with IR Pass Filters

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) using a head-mounted display (HMD) have been rapidly becoming popular. Lots of HMD products and various VR applications such as games, training tools and communication services have been released in recent years. However, there is a well-known problem that the user's face is covered by the HMD preventing the facial expression from being captured. This strongly restricts VR applications. For example, users wearing HMDs normally cannot exchange their face images. This degrades communication quality in virtual spaces because facial expressions are an important element of human communication.