Perceivable light fields: Matching the requirements between the human visual system and autostereoscopic 3-D displays

Recently, there has been a substantial increase in efforts to develop 3-D visualization technologies that can provide the viewers with a realistic 3-D visual experience. Various terms such as 'reality communication' have been used to categorize these efforts. In order to provide the viewers with a complete and realistic visual sensation, the display or visualization system and the displayed content need to match the physiological 3-D information sensing capabilities of the human visual system which can be quite complex. These may include spatial and temporal resolutions, depth perception, dynamic range, spectral contents, nonlinear effects, and vergence accommodation effects. In this paper, first we present an overview of some of the 3-D display research efforts which have been extensively pursued in Asia, Europe, and North America among other areas. Based on the limitations and comfort-based requirements of the human visual system when viewing a nonnatural visual input from 3-D displays, we present an analytical framework that combines main perception and human visual requirements with analytical tools and principles used in related disciplines such as optics, computer graphics, computational imaging, and signal processing. Building on the widely used notion of light fields, we define a notion of perceivable light fields to account for the human visual system physiological requirements, and propagate it back to the display device to determine the display device specifications. This helps us clarify the fundamental and practical requirements of the 3-D display devices for reality viewing communication. In view of the proposed analytical framework, we overview various methods that can be applied to overcome the extensive information needed to be displayed in order to meet the requirements imposed by the human visual system.