HDR Displays?

[BlackAngus]

Hey all! Forgive me if this has been posted or this question has been asked.
I was reading this quote from David Kirk.

David Kirk: I think that High Dynamic Range Lighting is going to be the single most significant change in the visual quality over the next couple of years. It's almost as big as shading.
The reason for this is that games without HDR look flat. They should, since they are only using a range of 256:1 in brightness—a small fraction of what our eyes can see. Consequently, low-dynamic-range imagery looks flat and featureless, no highs, and no detail in the shadows, the lows. If you game using a DFP (LCD display), you probably can't tell the difference anyway, since most LCD displays only have 5 or 6 bits of brightness resolution—an even narrower 32:1 or 64:1 range of brightness. On a CRT, you can see a lot more detail, and on the newer high-resolution displays, you can see not only the full 8 bits, but even more. There are new HDR displays that can display a full 16-bit dynamic range, and I can tell you that the difference is stunning. When these displays become more affordable in the next year or two, I don't know how we'll ever go back to the old way.

What is he talking about when refering to these new HDR displays?
Are these CRT's or LCD's? Who is producing these? Seems kinda interesting, as I havent really seen any new "features" in a monitor for quite a while.

Thanks for all the input!
BA

 

[DemoCoder]

They demoed one at the last Siggraph. It replaces the backlight of a standard LCD with an array of LEDs can which separely manipulate the brightness behind the LCD multiplying the overall contrast ratio.

 

[Apple740]

Contrast ratio - 40.000:1

http://www.sunnybrooktech.com/products/index.html

No pricing.

(and i think the reaction time of these monitors suck bigtime. Only suitable for images?)

 

[Tim Murray]

so, you know the end of HL2? yeah, you'd go blind.

 

[Brimstone]

It would be awesome to play a WW2 flight simulator on one of these. Searching the skies looking for planes while you have the glare of the sun.

 

[Bjorn]

Some more information about the backlight system

http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/lmi/lmi103.html

And sony's first version of it:

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/QUALIA/jp/products/005/

10 000$ for the 46" version, actually cheaper then i thought it would be. Though not exactly cheap.

 

[Richard]

so, you know the end of HL2? yeah, you'd go blind.

You bring an interesting point, are games going to rely on the display hardware to mimic the organic reactions or present their world raw and let our eyes adjust accordingly? We need VR goggles damnit!

 

[Moloch]

So which lcd screens is he talking about that suck ass?
All of them, only cheapy ones??

 

[aranfell]

There would be no point in making the whole screen brighter -- it is the contrast from darkest to brightest regions that makes the difference. The images they displayed at SIGgraph appeared, overall, to be the same brightness as an ordinary screen. The difference was that the highlights were really bright, which had an amazing effect on the realism of the images.

At the SIGGRAPH demo, they claimed that they were in talks with manufacturers to bring out mass market versions in a couple of years at 1.5x to 2x the cost of an ordinary display. They also pointed out that their method reduces the power required by the display, since the backlight can be turned down for dark portions of the display.

Another interesting aspect of this display is their justification for why the back-light array can a lot coarser than the pixel array. They said that the eye can only see a contrast ratio of a couple hundred to one over a small region, so that multiple screen pixels can share a single backlight LED that is set to the brightest pixel in the region. Part of the cost of the display is processing the raw image to compute the backlight level per LED, the backlight level at each pixel (due to contributions from nearby backlight LEDs) and then to adjust the pixel levels accordingly.

BTW, HDR rendering is obviously necessary to drive such a display, but HDR rendering is useful even without an HDR display, since HDR rendering accurately captures regions where super-bright light has been reduced by reflection or refraction. That, at least, is an effect that can be demonstrated on ordinary monitors.

Enjoy, Aranfell

 

[Bjorn]

Another interesting aspect of this display is their justification for why the back-light array can a lot coarser than the pixel array. They said that the eye can only see a contrast ratio of a couple hundred to one over a small region, so that multiple screen pixels can share a single backlight LED that is set to the brightest pixel in the region.

How much coarser are we talking about here, half the resolution vs the pixels or ?

 

[nutball]

Another interesting aspect of this display is their justification for why the back-light array can a lot coarser than the pixel array. They said that the eye can only see a contrast ratio of a couple hundred to one over a small region, so that multiple screen pixels can share a single backlight LED that is set to the brightest pixel in the region.

How much coarser are we talking about here, half the resolution vs the pixels or ?

In the write-ups I saw of a tech much like this, each white-light LED illuminated a 3x3 array of LCD pixels.

 

[Cryect]

Another interesting aspect of this display is their justification for why the back-light array can a lot coarser than the pixel array. They said that the eye can only see a contrast ratio of a couple hundred to one over a small region, so that multiple screen pixels can share a single backlight LED that is set to the brightest pixel in the region.

How much coarser are we talking about here, half the resolution vs the pixels or ?

In the write-ups I saw of a tech much like this, each white-light LED illuminated a 3x3 array of LCD pixels.

I seem to recall the one for Siggraph was like a LED for every 10x10 or so going to look it up now.

Edit:
"760 LEDs have been mounted
behind an 18.1” L.G. Philips LCD with a 500 : 1 dynamic range
and 1280  1024 resolution"

So 1280*1024/760=~1725 sqrt(1725)=~42

So approximately 42x42 pixels per LED but they are arranged in a hexagonal fashion so thats not completely how its done but you can see the resolution is pretty low for the LED's

 

[Tim Murray]

so, you know the end of HL2? yeah, you'd go blind.

You bring an interesting point, are games going to rely on the display hardware to mimic the organic reactions or present their world raw and let our eyes adjust accordingly? We need VR goggles damnit!

those of us with one (or basically one) functional eye kick you in the balls for suggesting such a thing.

 

[MuFu]

Why are VR goggles a problem for someone with one functional eye (any more than the real world)?

 

[Richard]

Why are VR goggles a problem for someone with one functional eye (any more than the real world)?

Er... because with just one eye you wouldn't be able to pick up the stereoscopic effect?

The Baron: Heh, I was being sarcastic as in "why do you need fancy graphics effects to blind people when you can achieve the same effect by letting people use VR goggles for half-an-hour."

 

[KimB]

Well, personally I think more importantly for goggles of the future wouldn't so much be the sterioscopic effect but peripheral vision. It's unfeasible to have peripheral vision for a standard display, since you'd need to display over such a large area. But imagine goggles that had a screen with full peripheral vision? Aside from any extra depth you'd get, that alone would be fantastic.

 

[Remi]

BTW, HDR rendering is obviously necessary to drive such a display,...

Actually, you can also drive them with a non-HDR output and still get a pseudo-but-yet-convincing HDR effect...

 

[KimB]

How? If your framebuffer format doesn't support more than 8 bits per channel, how are you going to display more dynamic range?

 

[Remi]

From memory, SunnyBrook's display can use a 8bpc source, which I assume is "HDR-ized" by a custom gamma curve in order to make the bright parts brighter. I'm not sure where I read that info, probably in the "High Dynamic Range Display Systems" paper?
Btw, one of their interesting point is that the amount of perceived additional information in a HDR picture (compared to a non HDR) is small, the blank time (even when reduced) is probably more than enough to transmit that additional info over a DVI cable... Uncompressed OpenXR is an overkill for those displays.

 

[Alejux]

If I had to bet all my money on the display of the future, I would bet on VRD.
All we need is for the blue and green diode laser technology to mature , along with mems and a few other obstacles for size reduction, and we may have the ultimate head mounted display. With no limit in resolution, no eye strain, great contrast and very low power consumption.