Objective and Subjective Assessment of Binocular Disparity for Projection-Based Light Field Displays

Light field displays offer glasses-free 3D visualization, as observers do not need any viewing device to see the content in 3D. The angular resolution of such displays not only determines the achievable smoothness of the parallax effect, but also shapes the valid viewing area of light field visualization; higher angular resolutions support greater viewing distances. Therefore, the binocular disparity of a light field display with a given angular resolution lessens, fades away as the viewing distance increases, and the once true 3D visualization slowly becomes perceptually equivalent to a common 2D projection. However, as the current use case scenarios of light field technology define relatively close observations, this topic is rather under-investigated. In this paper, we address the binocular disparity of projection-based light field displays. The results of objective and subjective studies are presented, in which multiple viewing distances were used to evaluate binocular disparity. Beyond the separate models, the paper analyzes the correlations between them and discusses potential applications for future use cases.