The demand for color head- and helmet-mounted displays (HMDs) is growing. Interest focuses on full-color systems, but a limited color repertoire is sufficient for some applications and can reduce cost and complexity significantly, especially when subtractive-color active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AMLCD) technology is used. We report a series of experiments that investigated important questions about the design and merits of two-primary color AMLCDs for HMD applications. Our main conclusion is that the image quality of a subtractive-color AMLCD with high (≥70%) aperture ratio is superior to a comparable, conventional color AMLCD. Evidence regarding requirements for resolution, aperture ratio, and gray scale is also provided.
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