Integral photography using hexagonal fly's eye lens and fractional view

Abstract

We have developed a new integral photography (IP) system that incorporates a hexagonal fly's eye lens sheet to create a fractional view. In a fractional view, the ratio between the lens and pixel pitches of the IP image is intentionally chosen to be a non-integer so that the directions of all the rays emitted from each pixel on the LCD panel located behind the sheet become quasi-random. Creating a fractional view simultaneously increases the effective number of individual views and the resolution of each view. Furthermore, initial production costs can be decreased because the fractional view can be created using inexpensive off-the-shelf lens sheets together with a variety of common flat panel displays that have different pixel pitches. The difference in pitch is compensated for using computer software. The problem is that fractional views were originally only used with lenticular-lens based displays that have a horizontal parallax; therefore, some extension is necessary if fractional views are to be used with displays that have a full parallax. Furthermore, a typical flat panel display, such as an LCD, consists of RGB subpixels that are in positions that are slightly shifted relative to each other. We have developed a way of extending existing fractional views in order to cope with the full parallax obtained by a fly's eye lens sheet and the pixel shift. We demonstrated that good binocular vision can be obtained when using two hexagonal fly's eye lens sheets that were made without any relation to an LCD.