A Reflectance Display

We present a reflectance display: a dynamic digital display capable of showing images and videos with spatially-varying, user-defined reflectance functions. Our display is passive: it operates by phase-modulation of reflected light. As such, it does not rely on any illumination recording sensors, nor does it require expensive on-the-fly rendering. It reacts to lighting changes instantaneously and consumes only a minimal amount of energy. Our work builds on the wave optics approach to BRDF fabrication of Levin et al. shortciteLevinBRDFFab13. We replace their expensive one-time hardware fabrication with a programable liquid crystal spatial light modulator, retaining high resolution of approximately 160 dpi. Our approach enables the display of a much wider family of angular reflectances, and it allows the display of dynamic content with time varying reflectance properties-"reflectance videos". To facilitate these new capabilities we develop novel reflectance design algorithms with improved resolution tradeoffs. We demonstrate the utility of our display with a diverse set of experiments including display of custom reflectance images and videos, interactive reflectance editing, display of 3D content reproducing lighting and depth variation, and simultaneous display of two independent channels on one screen.