Light-field capture and display systems: limitations, challenges, and potentials

The recent advances in light-The recent advances in light-field acquisition and display systems bring closer the day when they become commercially available and accessible to wide audiences for numerous use cases. Their usefulness and potential benefits have already been disseminated in the field and they started emerging in both industry and entertainment applications. The long-term goal of the scientific community and future manufacturers is to research and develop fully immersive, yet seamless and efficient systems that can achieve the ultimate visual experience. However, certain paths leading to such goals are blocked by technological and physical limitations, and also significant challenges that have to be coped with. Although some issues that rise regarding the development of capture and display systems may actually be nearly impossible to overcome, the potential for light-field applications is indeed immense, thus worth the vast scientific effort. In this paper, we systematically analyze and present the current and future relevant limitations and challenges regarding the research and development of light-field systems. As current limitations are primarily application-specific, both challenges and potentials are approached from the angle of end-user applications. The paper separately highlights the use case scenarios for industry and entertainment, and for everyday commercial usage. Currently existing light-field systems are assessed and introduced from a technical perspective and also with regards to usability, and potential future systems are described based on state-of-art technologies and research focuses. Aspects of practical usage, such as scalability and price, are thoroughly detailed for both light-field capture and visualization.