The use of monochrome Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) systems is becoming prevalent in today's complex flight mission environment. These HMD systems are often implemented in flight vehicles as integrated multifunction displays for flight, weapon, and sensor systems information. The display formats have been primitive in terms of graphic capabilities, being confined by the stroke, with limited raster-fill, technology employed. However, many of the emerging concepts for advanced displays are predicated on raster formats, with full color, high resolution images, to be presented with stereoscopic cueing in wide Field of View (FOV) displays, fused with sensor imagery or sensor-based information. Full color capability is utilized not only as an additional information coding process, but also for increased image realism and for display declutter. Moreover, the use of stereopsis cueing for enhanced situational awareness and display declutter is often an integral part of these advanced concepts.

This paper will describe the derivation of two methods to achieve a high resolution, full color, wide FOV, stereopsis HMD system. The first method provides a near-term, inexpensive and practical design for a color upgrade to an existing monochrome HMD, and the second method provides a longer term approach using a laser-scanned, fiber coupled system.