New Apple Patent: Light Field Cameras for more Immersive Video Calls with Augmented Reality

by markus · 2017-07-17

Apple’s latest light field patent describes the use of a camera array for immersive augmented reality (AR), live display walls, head mounted displays, video conferencing, and similar applications based on a user’s point of view. The patent application, simply titled “Light field capture”, talks about AR video conferencing where the user’s background can be replaced with other information (e.g. their own view of a scene, or live sports).

The invention also includes concepts including pixel culling (i.e. following the user’s movements and cropping to the interesting parts of the entire camera view), conversion of 3D data to 2D views for the left and right eyes of the second party,
Interestingly, the authors also mention the possibility for a hybrid display/camera-array that would integrate both devices into a single, light-field sensing screen.