AROMA : Augmented Reality Optimized Tone Mapping

AROMA is a tone mapping operator designed to optimize the visual fidelity of images displayed on optical see-through augmented reality (AR) devices, which are often challenged by limited dynamic range and substantial ambient light interference. The system aims to faithfully preserve the perceived color, brightness, and contrast of source images with moderate dynamic range, even when the display's effective dynamic range is significantly lower than that of the content. Rather than enhancing or altering the original appearance, AROMA aims to maintain perceptual equivalence, replicating original intent as closely as possible on the target display. To achieve this, AROMA employs a global tone curve minimizing perceived contrast distortion, complemented by adaptive detail enhancement to selectively restore high-frequency details lost due to dynamic range compression, and color saturation correction. AROMA 's approach to dynamic range mapping accounts for ambient light by adjusting the tone curve to maximize the display's usable range, ensuring that the final image is both perceptually accurate and visually pleasing, even in challenging lighting environments. A subjective study was conducted, demonstrating that AROMA significantly improves perceived visual quality, achieving results equivalent to a 45–59% increase in display luminance. As a result, AROMA can be used to enable AR rendering at lower display power, producing substantial energy savings without compromising user experience. Finally, AROMA is lightweight and feasible within form-factor-constrained head-mounted AR displays — our implementation runs at 250 FPS on Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses. 1