Head-Tracked Light Field Movies: A New Multimedia Data Type

This paper presents a new multimedia data type based on time-varying light fields. Such a light field movie may be precomputed using computer graphics, or photographically captured from real objects as they change over time. Such movies allow a user to experience motion parallax in response to head motion in addition to motion cues within the scene as well as stereo vision cues. Important elements to make such media practical include light field movie capture devices, effective compression schemes with real-time playback, and accurate head tracking. This paper addresses these areas and presents results from the current system as well as directions for future work.