A photon-based model of individual cones in the human eye perceiving images on digital display devices is presented. Playback of streams of pixel video data is modeled as individual photon emission events from within the physical substructure of each display pixel. The generated electromagnetic wavefronts are refracted through a four surface model of the human cornea and lens, and diffracted at the pupil. The characteristics of each of several million photoreceptor cones in the retina are individually modeled by a synthetic retina model. Photon absorption events map the collapsing wavefront to photon detection events in a particular cone, resulting in images of the photon counts in the retinal cone array. The rendering systems used to generate sequences of these images account for wavelength dependent absorption in the tissues of the eye and the motion blur caused by slight movement of the eye during a frame of viewing.