A head mounted display (HMD) system includes a display for emitting light toward an eye-ward side of the system and which allows both ambient light and emitted light to reach an eye of a user. The system provides augmented reality (AR) based viewing and includes a rotatable substrate supporting a set of light emitting elements (301). Each light emitting element is oriented toward a world side of the HMD system. A rotatable reflective surface is positioned on the world side of the set of the light emitting elements. The reflective surface reflects emitted light toward a user eye. A motor, coupled to the rotatable substrate and the rotatable reflective surface, rotates these elements about a common axis and a display driver selectively activates the light emitting elements during this rotation in accordance with an illumination sequence so as to provide an image.