3D without the glasses

Abstract

A glasses-free three-dimensional display technology has been invented that may be an exciting alternative to current solutions for mobile devices. It makes use of an optical effect known to school physics students. See Letter p.348 Glasses-free three-dimensional (3D) displays could revolutionize areas such as data visualization, medical training and entertainment, particularly if adapted to mobile devices. Holography can provide ideal 3D viewing but is too slow or expensive for many applications. Multiview approaches are the alternative, exploiting various geometric optical tricks to create 3D images that can be viewed from many directions at the same time. A team working at Hewlett-Packard's laboratories in Palo Alto has developed a new multiview 3D display that is particularly well suited to mobile devices, which require thin displays with high spatial resolution and a wide-angle view zone. Central to the new device is a set of directional grating pixels, associated with different views and colours, etched on the backlight surface. The display uses an LED-lit backlight very similar to those in use in LCD screens today, and is demonstrated in action in transparent hand-held prototypes showing animated sequences of up to six different 200-view images at a resolution of 127 pixels per inch.