High Dynamic Range Display of Authentically Illuminated Byzantine Art from Cyprus

Abstract

High-fidelity computer reconstructions of cultural heritage sites attempt to create a faithful representation of the past physical environment. This includes modeling the scene to high precision, and accurately simulating the distribution of authentic light energy within the scene. This does not, however, ensure that the displayed image will have a high fidelity visual appearance due to the limited dynamic range of typical computer displays. Such displays only have a range of about two orders of magnitude between minimum and maximum luminance. A welldesigned cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor may do slightly better than this in a darkened room, but the maximum display luminance is only around 100 cd/m2, which does not even begin to approach natural daylight levels of approximately 105 cd/m2. Furthermore, their inability to display 'true black' means that standard displays also struggle to show low-light images accurately. In this paper we compare images of computer reconstructions of Byzantine art from Cyprus illuminated with simulated modern lighting and the candle light which was present in Byzantine times on both a traditional and a novel High Dynamic Range display.