The dynamic luminance range of many real-world environments exceeds the capabilities of current display technology by several orders of magnitude. Recently, new display systems have demonstrated, which are capable of displaying images with a dynamic luminance range much more similar to that encountered in the real world.
The paper summarizes how the human eye perceives high dynamic luminance ranges, sources of high dynamic range data, how the new display systems work, as well as their limitations. The paper discusses the need for a high dynamic range window manager and presents an initial implementation. Finally, the results of a preliminary evaluation are presented.