|
At the time of this paper, the advances in light field technology already offer 3D displays that immerse the users without the need for additional viewing devices. Despite the numerous advantages and attractive capabilities of such glasses-free 3D displays, their user interface methods are quite complicated and they are currently underwhelming when compared to conventional 2D displays, due to the fact that visual feedback can only be rendered sharply on the emission surface of light field displays. The sharp rendering of user interfaces is a necessity, as blur may hinder their fundamental functions. When it comes to 2D displays, many user interaction techniques and interfaces have been devised. Rendering a user interface on a 2D display could be done in various ways, such as rendering overlays on top of the rendered scene, or by using billboards. These are extensively used in modern video games. User interaction methods have proven their importance and added efficiency to virtual environments throughout the years. Due to their overall value and usefulness, interaction techniques develop immediately as new types of displays arise. With the recent advancements in visualization technologies, user interfaces have been redesigned for use in AR, VR and MR visualization. This includes on-screen augmentation, which enables interaction with visual content on the screen. Although light field displays contain immense potentials, only basic user interfaces have been devised thus far, including FOX (Focus Sliding surface), which grants users the option to scale and to rotate 3D objects. In this paper, we visualize the theater model on real light field displays and we test the different interactions by means of a monitor room. The theatre model is analogous to real-life theatres, where viewers may observe the theatrical presentation on the stage from various angles. The motivation to choose the theater model was the fact that light field visualization similarly allows multiple simultaneous viewers within its field of view, in which the content can be observed in an angle- dependent manner. Moreover, from the users’ perspective, the theater model is thus familiar and it provides high-quality visual feedback. Furthermore, theater stages encompass a lot of interactions, including rigging and flying systems, pulleys, rotating stages, lights, curtains etc. In order to test the different interaction methods on light field displays, a theater model depicting the virtual environment was implemented. Methods for rendering the monitor room and the results of the interactions are discussed in the paper, illustrated by images of the actual visualization on light field displays. It is shown that producing plausible results with no noticeable visual artifacts is challenging, yet possible. The scientific contributions of the paper also highlight the various novel user interfaces for future light field systems and services.
|
