New High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays have the potential for moving human visual psychophysical research and computer simulations away from the limited luminance ranges found in traditional CRTs and into luminance ranges that are closer to those experienced by us in the real world. Before this novel technology becomes an accepted tool for psychophysical research and visualization, a thorough characterization of the device is needed. Here we present all steps of a basic characterisation for a 37flat-panel Brightside DR37-P HDR display controlled by a PC with two NVidia GeForce 7900GTX graphics cards. In this type of device a luminance output of up to 3000 cd/m2, is achieved by adding a fourth layer of LEDs as backlight to an LCD display. We propose a method for accurately presenting a desired luminance and chromaticity output despite the underdetermined problem (number of colorimetric dimensions is smaller than the number of device channels) so that full advantage can be taken of the increased capabilities of the monitor for use in controlled visual psychophysical experiments.
This research is supported by a joint EPSRC/dstl grant No. EP/D032008/1.