Prototyping a light field display involving direct observation of a video projector array

Joel Jurik, Andrew Jones, Mark T. Bolas, Paul E. Debevec

Abstract: We present a concept for a full-parallax light field display achieved by having users look directly into an array of video projectors. Each projector acts as one angularly-varying pixel, so the display's spatial resolution depends on the number of video projectors and the angular resolution depends on the pixel resolution of any one video projector. We prototype a horizontal-parallax-only arrangement by mechanically moving a single pico-projector to an array of positions, and use long-exposure photography to simulate video of a horizontal array. With this setup, we determine the minimal projector density required to produce a continuous image, and describe practical ways to achieve such density and to realize the resulting system. We finally show that if today's pico-projectors become sufficiently inexpensive, immersive full-parallax displays with arbitrarily high spatial and angular resolution will become possible.