Fast and effective occlusion culling for 3D holographic displays by inverse orthographic projection with low angular sampling

Occlusion culling is an important process that produces correct depth cues for observers in holographic displays, whereas current methods suffer from occlusion errors or high computational loads. We propose a fast and effective method for occlusion culling based on multiple light-point sampling planes and an inverse orthographic projection technique. Multiple light-point sampling planes are employed to remove the hidden surfaces for each direction of the view of the three-dimensional (3D) scene by forward orthographic projection, and the inverse orthographic projection technique is used to determine the effective sampling points of the 3D scene. A numerical simulation and an optical experiment are performed. The results show that this approach can realize accurate occlusion effects, smooth motion parallax, and continuous depth using low angular sampling without any extra computation costs.