Effects of ray position sampling on the visual responses of 3D light field displays.

Hekun Huang,Hong Hua

doi:10.1364/oe.27.009343

Abstract

A 3D light field display typically reconstructs a 3D scene by sampling either the projections of the 3D scene at different depths or the directions of the light rays apparently emitted by the 3D scene and viewed from different eye positions. These light field display methods are potentially capable of rendering correct or nearly correct focus cues and therefore addressing the well-known vergence-accommodation conflict problem plaguing the conventional stereoscopic displays. However, very limited efforts have been made to investigate the effects of light ray sampling on the quality of the rendered focus cues and thus the visual responses of a viewer in light field displays. In this paper, by accounting for both the specifications of a light field display system and the ocular factors of the human visual system, we systematically model and analyze the ray position sampling issue in the reconstruction of the light field and characterize its effect on the quality of the rendered retinal image and on the accommodative response in viewing a 3D light field display. Using a recently developed 3D light field display prototype, we further experimentally validated the effects of ray position sampling on the resolution and accommodative response of a light field display, of which the result matches with theoretical characterization.

Highlights

In recent years, several three-dimensional (3D) display methods, including holographic displays [1], volumetric displays [2], multi-focal plane displays [3,4,5,6], and light field displays [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], have been developed
Several three-dimensional (3D) display methods, including holographic displays [1], volumetric displays [2], multi-focal plane displays [3,4,5,6], and light field displays [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], have been developed. These methods are potentially capable of rendering correct or nearly correct retinal blur effects and stimulating natural eye accommodative response [18], and are considered as being less vulnerable to the well-known vergenceaccommodation conflict (VAC) problem than conventional stereoscopic displays which stimulate the perception of 3D space and shapes from a pair of two-dimensional (2D) perspective images with binocular disparities and other pictorial depth cues of a 3D scene seen from two slightly different viewing positions
With the goal of providing generalizable guidelines for engineering light field 3D (LF-3D) displays which can properly alleviate the VAC problem and create comfortable viewing experiences, in this paper, we present a systematic approach to model and analyze the effects of the positional sampling of rays on the qualities of the rendered focus cues in the process of reconstructing the light field of a 3D scene

Summary

Introduction

Several three-dimensional (3D) display methods, including holographic displays [1], volumetric displays [2], multi-focal plane displays [3,4,5,6], and light field displays [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], have been developed These methods are potentially capable of rendering correct or nearly correct retinal blur effects and stimulating natural eye accommodative response [18], and are considered as being less vulnerable to the well-known vergenceaccommodation conflict (VAC) problem than conventional stereoscopic displays which stimulate the perception of 3D space and shapes from a pair of two-dimensional (2D) perspective images with binocular disparities and other pictorial depth cues of a 3D scene seen from two slightly different viewing positions. The experimental results confirm the characterization obtained via our analytical simulations

Modeling ray sampling effects in 3D light field displays

Simulation setup and methods

Conclusion

Disclosures