Physical and Perceptual Limitations of a Projector-based High Dynamic Range Display

High dynamic range (HDR) displays capable of reproducing scenes of high luminance (exceeding 2,000 cd/m2) and contrast (more than 10,000:1) are a useful tool for research on visual performance, image quality or colour appearance. In this paper, we describe a projector-based HDR display, giving details on its hardware components and software for driving and calibrating the display. We report the colorimetric properties of the display: the colour reproduction accuracy, colour gamut and local contrast dependent on the size of displayed checkerboard pattern. To verify whether our display can produce local contrast inducing the colour that appears perfectly black to the observer, we conducted an experiment with human observers. Our results indicate that for the test pattern, the effective local contrast of our display (2500:1) is sufficient to produce perfectly black colour, which requires a contrast between 1300:1 and 2400:1.