A
system and methods for a CODEC driving a real-time
light field display for multi-dimensional
video streaming, interactive gaming and other
light field display applications is provided applying a layered scene
decomposition strategy. Multi-dimensional scene data is divided into a plurality of data
layers of increasing depths as the distance between a given layer and the plane of the display increases. Data
layers are sampled using a plenoptic sampling scheme and rendered using
hybrid rendering, such as perspective and oblique rendering, to
encode light fields corresponding to each data layer. The resulting compressed, (layered) core representation of the multi-dimensional scene data is produced at predictable rates, reconstructed and merged at the
light field display in real-time by applying
view synthesis protocols, including edge
adaptive interpolation, to reconstruct pixel arrays in stages (e.g. columns then rows) from reference elemental images.