Plenoptic Modeling and Measurements of Novel Displays

This doctoral dissertation investigates diverse topics in the ecosystem formed around novel display systems and geared towards augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality(VR) – a field which has progressed rapidly in recent decades along with the concept Metaverse. The chosen topics are addressed to help improve the immersive and presence experience for Metaverse from an interdisciplinary perspective. The topics include 1) Perceived opacity modeling of the virtual content for optical see-through augmented reality(OST-AR). Besides the characterization of traditional flat-panel displays, such as resolution, color fidelity, dynamic range, and refresh rate, novel displays for AR need new indicators to describe the ability of the system to present three-dimensional (3D) characteristics. The one discussed in this thesis is the transparency of the virtual object when occlusion happens between
virtual and real contents. 2) 3D content creation for VR experience in the form of a test-bed to simulate three typical 3D content creation algorithms. With the proposed system, the users can quickly compare different 3D content creation methods for the scenarios required. 3) A hybrid foveated and depth of field (DOF) rendering method is presented. Inspired and required by the high resolution and wide field of view (FOV) characteristics of headmounted display (HMD) devices, a more efficient rendering method is crucial to achieving a smooth VR experience. This thesis discusses the design of an efficient rendering algorithm based on the characteristics of the differentiation of human visual acuity over the retina. The proposed method is capable of providing high visual fidelity while also being computationally efficient.