While contrast ratio is supposed to indicate technical performance of a display system, often times it is confusing. To clear up the confusion, let's start with an important aspect of a display system’s contrast: color performance. For an 8 bit system, a display must have a contrast of 256:1 or better to show all the intended colors. That is, as long as the ratio between the brightest maximum state and darkest minimum state is 256:1, the display will be capable of representing 16.8 million colors in RGB (8 bit x 3 = 24 bit color). Then why do some display products have contrast ratios of 10,000:1 or even 1million:1? And do those products in fact perform significantly better? The answer is that the manufacturer is saying that in a completely dark environment, the stated contrast ratio can be experienced. However, since normal viewing environments are rarely completely dark, such contrast ratios will not be experienced.

Under normal viewing environments, where even the black state of all displays is not truly black anymore due to ambient light reflecting off the screen, the effective contrast may be no more than 80:1. However, that does not mean that display itself will only give a 0.5 million color performance. One would simply see 16.8 million colors with some ambient background. For example, imagine looking at your computer monitor in a completely dark room versus the same with the lights on. With the lights on, you can still see all the colors, but the dark areas will not be as dark.

We state two contrast numbers, one for the capability of our microdisplays (1200:1) and one for the HMD system (100:1) which accounts for the LEDs that illuminate our LCoS displays. This means it will display 16.8 million colors even with 10% transparency. Our HMD was designed to provide a Full HD viewing experience without disconnecting the users from their surroundings and to inspire augmented reality applications.