Light-field Processing Unit for Extreme Multi-View Displays

The ability to resolve depth within a scene whether natural or artificial improves our spatial understanding of the scene and as a result reduces the cognitive load accompanying the analysis and collaboration on complex tasks.A light-field display projects 3D aerial imagery that is visible to the unaided eye (without glasses or head tracking) and allows for perspective correct visualization within the displays projection volume. Binocular disparity, occlusion, specular highlights and gradient shading, and other expected depth cues are correct from the viewers perspective as in the natural real-world light-field.Light-field radiance image rendering is the process of rendering all the perspective views present in the light-field from a 3D model regardless of viewer position. To implement multi-view rendering with a GPU requires that the host application dispatch a render pass for each viewpoint (micro-lens) required for the projection system; a light-field projection system may contain thousands of micro-lenses. Ultimately, the size, weight and power requirements (SWaP) requirements of a light-field display are largely a factor of radiance image computation. By removing the OS, CPUs and other PC system components, and refactoring the GPUs to render hogels in parallel, a more SWaP efficient light-field/multi-view rendering engine can be developed.