Carmack's comments about tone mapping

[3dcgi]

I got this Carmack quote from the following page at Tom's Hardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/business/02q3/020817/quakecon-06.html

The next evolution in the graphics development will be tone mapping and I think that the industry is already starting to move in that direction.

Here is a definition of tone mapping that I found concerning a product called RenderPark. This is from a quick search on Google.

The process of mapping radiometric intensity values to display colors is called tone mapping. The 'Tone Mapping' menu offers a variety of tone mapping strategies, allows to brighten or darken images artificially and lets you take advantage of a calibrated monitor.

It seems to me that tone mapping is a technology to allow colors to be more easily calibrated for consistency between computers, but does anyone have any more insight? i.e. how exactly will tone mapping be used and will there be any significant benefits?

 

[Basic]

A monitor can show 8-10 bits per component. Rel life light can have a dynamic range hundreds of times larger. What JC proposes is that you shold do the gfx calc with the real huge dynamic range, and then as a last step convert it to a monitor-friendly range. This convertion is the tone mapping.

 

[Dio]

I believe it is all to do with the simulation of eye behaviour based upon impinging light intensity. Examples include: the iris automatically scaling the input light level, after a short reaction time; lack of colour vision at low light intensities; oversaturation, where the light level is so bright all dynamic range is lost; colour range response changes on continual exposure; etc. etc....