Holographic television : measuring visual performance with holographic and other 3D television technologies

Abstract

We are surrounded by visual reproductions: computer screens, photographs, televisions, and countless other technologies allow us to perceive objects and scenes that are not physically in-front of us. All existing technologies that reproduce images perform engineering tradeoffs that provide the viewer with some subset of the visual information that would be available in person, in exchange for cost, convenience, or practicality. For many viewing tasks, incomplete reproductions go unnoticed. This dissertation provides a set of findings that illuminate the value of binocular disparity, and ocular focus information that can be provided by some three-dimensional display technologies. These findings include new experimental methods, as well as results, for conducting evaluations of current and future display technologies. Methodologies were validated on an implementation of digital holographic television, an image capture and reproduction system for visual telepresence. The holographic television system, allows viewers to observe, in real-time, a remote 3D scene, through a display that preserves focus (individual objects can be brought into optical focus at the expense of others), and horizontal motion parallax (depth and other geometry of objects appears natural over a range of head movement). Holographic television can also emulate other precursor 2D and 3D display technologies. This capability was used to validate the evaluation methodologies (meta-evaluation) by comparing visual performance on simulations of conventional displays to results of past studies by other researchers.