Join SID Email List

The role of Perceptual Imaging in AR/VR/XR

Ajit Ninan, Sr. Director at Meta

Presentation Abstract

The complexity and challenges of wearing a display system on your head near your eyes are very different from a traditional display. These large displays require a different set of features for quality, comfort, and performance. For AR/VR, this change requires we address some key perceptual issues and make decisions in very different ways than its larger counterparts. Some example perceptual issues, the methodologies and metrics used to quantify what is important will be presented. We hope to trigger the industry to start thinking about standards and requirements and how we can build display systems that are impedance matched to the human visual system.
Ajit Ninan

Ajit Ninan recently joined Meta as Sr. Director leading the APIX team that works on display architecture, perception, and image quality. Prior to this he was at Dolby as VP of imaging in the advance technology group, working on HDR and Dolby Vision. He is best known for building “Pulsar” a first of a kind 4000nit WCG HDR display. “Pulsar” is recognized as the key that drove Hollywood to adopting HDR and is still the monitor used for color grading in the movie industry. He is the inventor of the local dimming Quantum Dot TV, after being told there was no way to build a wide color HDR display his team built “Maui” that received the ‘2014 Best in Show SID’ for a first ever local dimmed Quantum dot display. This became the reference monitor for the industry and was the starting point for QD TV tech in the industry. To bring this together at Dolby he led display system teams consisting of Vision Science, Color science, Optics, Mechanical, SW, Thermal, Electrical, FPGA/ASIC & Laser scientists.

Ajit’s background includes multiple companies from Motorola, Netlogic, and Luminous working on imaging and networking over the last 25+ years. He helped Dolby enter the display and imaging space and was responsible for technologies related to display systems, laser sources for cinema, and HDR ecosystems. In addition to display’s, he has worked on file formats, AR/VR ecosystems and related workflows. He personally holds more than 400+ patents, is a SMPTE Fellow with two Emmy’s and Hollywood’s Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Award for display engineering and changing the way the way the industry builds display. He was actively involved in standards including IEEE, JPEG and SMPTE standards groups. Ninan continues to push the boundaries on display innovation at Meta.