EI 2020 Plenary: Quality Screen Time: Leveraging Computational Displays for Spatial Computing

This Plenary presentation was delivered at the 33d annual Electronic Imaging Symposium (26-30 January 2020) held in Burlingame, CA USA. For more information see: http://www.electronicimaging.org

Title: Quality Screen Time: Leveraging Computational Displays for Spatial Computing

Speaker: Douglas Lanman, Director of Display Systems Research, Facebook Reality Labs
(USA)

Abstract: Displays pervade our lives and take myriad forms, spanning smart watches, mobile phones, laptops, monitors, televisions, and theaters. Yet, in all these embodiments, modern displays remain largely limited to two-dimensional representations. Correspondingly, our applications, entertainment, and user interfaces must work within the limits of a flat canvas. Head-mounted displays (HMDs) present a practical means to move forward, allowing compelling three-dimensional depictions to be merged seamlessly with our physical environment. As personal viewing devices, head-mounted displays offer a unique means to rapidly deliver richer visual experiences than past direct-view displays that must support a full audience. Viewing optics, display components, rendering algorithms, and sensing elements may all be tuned for a single user. It is the latter aspect that most differentiates from the past, with individualized eye tracking playing an important role in unlocking higher resolutions, wider fields of view, and more comfortable visuals than past displays. This talk will explore such “computational display” concepts and how they may impact VR/AR devices in the coming years.

Biography: Douglas Lanman is the Director of Display Systems Research at Facebook Reality Labs, where he leads investigations into advanced display and imaging technologies for augmented and virtual reality. His prior research has focused on head-mounted displays, glasses-free 3D displays, light-field cameras, and active illumination for 3D reconstruction and interaction. He received a BS in applied physics with honors from Caltech in 2002, and his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Brown University in 2006 and 2010, respectively. He was a Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA Research from 2012 to 2014, a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Media Lab from 2010 to 2012, and an Assistant Research Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory from 2002 to 2005. His most recent work has focused on developing Half Dome: an eye-tracked, wide-field-of-view varifocal HMD with AI-driven rendering.

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