Visibility of transmissive liquid crystal displays under dynamic lighting conditions

Liquid crystal displays maintain superior contrast under bright sunlight conditions compared with cathode-ray tube displays. This attribute, along with reduced weight, volume, and power requirements, make liquid crystal displays especially desirable for use in vehicular applications. The present experiment was designed to determine the luminance requirements for transmissive liquid crystal displays viewed under a wide range of lighting conditions typical of many vehicular environments. Both the ambient illumination incident on the display surface and the forward-field-of-view adaptation luminance were parametrically manipulated. The visual task involved speeded spatial discrimination responses for detection of the gap in a modified Landolt-C acuity target. The results indicate that under the worst lighting conditions tested, a display luminance of approximately 180 cd/m2 yielded asymptotic spatial discrimination performance. The results have been incorporated into a predictive visual performance model for spatial discrimination tasks, which describes the present data well and represents a first step toward a device-independent model of display visibility.