Expert evaluation of a novel light-field visualization format

Light-field visualization is continuously emerging in industrial sectors, and the appearance on the consumer market is approaching. Yet this process is halted, or at least slowed down, by the lack of proper display-independent light-field formats. Such formats are necessary to enable the efficient interchange between light-field content creation and visualization, and thus support potential future use case scenarios of this technology. In this paper, we introduce the results of a perceived quality assessment research, performed on our own novel light-field visualization format. The subjective tests, which compared conventional linear camera array visualization to our format, were completed by experts only, thus quality assessment was an expert evaluation. We aim to use the findings gathered in this research to carry out a large-scale subjective test series in the future, with non-expert observers

Objective quality evaluation of an angularly-continuous light-field format

With the rapid advances in light-field display and camera technology, research in light-field content creation, visualization, coding and quality assessment has gained momentum. While light-field cameras are already available to the consumer, light-field displays need to overcome several obstacles in order to become a commonplace. One of these challenges is the unavailability of a light-field visualization format which can be used across various light-field displays. Existing light-field representations are optimized for specific displays and converting them for visualization on a different display is a computationally expensive operation, often resulting in the degradation of perceptual quality. To this end, an intermediate, display-independent and angularly-continuous light-field representation format has been proposed recently, targeted towards large-field-of-view light-field displays. In this paper, we evaluate the said data format in terms of degradation in objective quality under three compression methods. We found that, while offering display-independence, the intermediate light-field format maintains the same objective quality in general and achieves higher objective quality in some cases compared to the conventional linear camera representation

Light-field capture and display systems : limitations, challenges, and potentials

The recent advances in light-The recent advances in light-field acquisition and display systems bring closer the day when they become commercially available and accessible to wide audiences for numerous use cases. Their usefulness and potential benefits have already been disseminated in the field and they started emerging in both industry and entertainment applications. The long-term goal of the scientific community and future manufacturers is to research and develop fully immersive, yet seamless and efficient systems that can achieve the ultimate visual experience. However, certain paths leading to such goals are blocked by technological and physical limitations, and also significant challenges that have to be coped with. Although some issues that rise regarding the development of capture and display systems may actually be nearly impossible to overcome, the potential for light-field applications is indeed immense, thus worth the vast scientific effort. In this paper, we systematically analyze and present the current and future relevant limitations and challenges regarding the research and development of light-field systems. As current limitations are primarily application-specific, both challenges and potentials are approached from the angle of end-user applications. The paper separately highlights the use case scenarios for industry and entertainment, and for everyday commercial usage. Currently existing light-field systems are assessed and introduced from a technical perspective and also with regards to usability, and potential future systems are described based on state-of-art technologies and research focuses. Aspects of practical usage, such as scalability and price, are thoroughly detailed for both light-field capture and visualization

The interdependence of spatial and angular resolution in the quality of experience of light field visualization

Light field displays provide a natural sense of 3D visual experience through the glasses-free visualization of the content. It is enabled by the smoothness of the horizontal motion parallax, which is determined by the density of source images allocated to a given field of view. This measure is commonly known as angular resolution, and similarly to spatial resolution, has a fundamental effect on the visual experience. In this paper, we investigate how the reduction of angular and spatial resolution affect each other. Our hypothesis is that lowering spatial resolution to a certain extent does not degrade the perception of the parallax effect, in fact, it may improve it. We carried out a series of subjective tests on a real light field display to test this hypothesis, results of which are introduced in this paper

Real-time light-field 3D telepresence

Light-field technology is often looked at as the final frontier of glasses-free 3D visualization, as no additional viewing gear is required to experience its capabilities to their full extent. Among the numerous industrial and commercial use cases, light-field telepresence stands out, as such natural visualization may significantly boost the sense of presence. In this paper, we present a fully-implemented real-time light-field 3D telepresence system. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the implementation of the one-way system, highlighting how the achieved capabilities satisfy the reasonable requirements towards such system. The paper also discusses future enhancements to the 3D telepresence system, since its true potential is yet to be fulfilled