Autostereoscopy

The Nintendo 3DS video game console family uses a parallax barrier for 3D imagery; on a newer revision, the New Nintendo 3DS, this is combined with an eye tracking system.

A parallax barrier is a device placed in front of an image source, such as a liquid crystal display, to allow it to show a stereoscopic image or multiscopic image without the need for the viewer to wear 3D glasses. The principle of the parallax barrier was independently invented by Auguste Berthier, who published first but produced no practical results,[6] and by Frederic E. Ives, who made and exhibited the first known functional autostereoscopic image in 1901.[7] About two years later, Ives began selling specimen images as novelties, the first known commercial use.

In the early 2000s, Sharp developed the electronic flat-panel application of this old technology to commercialization, briefly selling two laptops with the world's only 3D LCD screens.[8] These displays are no longer available from Sharp but are still being manufactured and further developed from other companies. Similarly, Hitachi has released the first 3D mobile phone for the Japanese market under distribution by KDDI.[9][10] In 2009, Fujifilm released the FinePix Real 3D W1 digital camera, which features a built-in autostereoscopic LCD measuring 2.8 in (71 mm) diagonal. The Nintendo 3DS video game console family uses a parallax barrier for 3D imagery; on a newer revision, the New Nintendo 3DS, this is combined with an eye tracking system.

The principle of integral photography, which uses a two-dimensional (X–Y) array of many small lenses to capture a 3-D scene, was introduced by Gabriel Lippmann in 1908.[11][12] Integral photography is capable of creating window-like autostereoscopic displays that reproduce objects and scenes life-size, with full parallax and perspective shift and even the depth cue of accommodation, but the full realization of this potential requires a very large number of very small high-quality optical systems and very high bandwidth. Only relatively crude photographic and video implementations have yet been produced.

One-dimensional arrays of cylindrical lenses were patented by Walter Hess in 1912.[13] By replacing the line and space pairs in a simple parallax barrier with tiny cylindrical lenses, Hess avoided the light loss that dimmed images viewed by transmitted light and that made prints on paper unacceptably dark.[14] An additional benefit is that the position of the observer is less restricted, as the substitution of lenses is geometrically equivalent to narrowing the spaces in a line-and-space barrier.

Philips solved a significant problem with electronic displays in the mid-1990s by slanting the cylindrical lenses with respect to the underlying pixel grid.[15] Based on this idea, Philips produced its WOWvx line until 2009, running up to 2160p (a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels) with 46 viewing angles.[16] Lenny Lipton's company, StereoGraphics, produced displays based on the same idea, citing a much earlier patent for the slanted lenticulars. Magnetic3d and Zero Creative have also been involved.[17]

With rapid advances in optical fabrication, digital processing power, and computational models for human perception, a new generation of display technology is emerging: compressive light field displays. These architectures explore the co-design of optical elements and compressive computation while taking particular characteristics of the human visual system into account. Compressive display designs include dual[18] and multilayer[19][20][21] devices that are driven by algorithms such as computed tomography and Non-negative matrix factorization and non-negative tensor factorization.

Tools for the instant conversion of existing 3D movies to autostereoscopic were demonstrated by Dolby, Stereolabs and Viva3D.[22][23][24]

Dimension Technologies released a range of commercially available 2D/3D switchable LCDs in 2002 using a combination of parallax barriers and lenticular lenses.[25][26] SeeReal Technologies has developed a holographic display based on eye tracking.[27] CubicVue exhibited a color filter pattern autostereoscopic display at the Consumer Electronics Association's i-Stage competition in 2009.[28][29]

There are a variety of other autostereo systems as well, such as volumetric display, in which the reconstructed light field occupies a true volume of space, and integral imaging, which uses a fly's-eye lens array.

The term automultiscopic display has recently been introduced as a shorter synonym for the lengthy "multi-view autostereoscopic 3D display",[30] as well as for the earlier, more specific "parallax panoramagram". The latter term originally indicated a continuous sampling along a horizontal line of viewpoints, e.g., image capture using a very large lens or a moving camera and a shifting barrier screen, but it later came to include synthesis from a relatively large number of discrete views.

Sunny Ocean Studios, located in Singapore, has been credited with developing an automultiscopic screen that can display autostereo 3D images from 64 different reference points.[31]

A fundamentally new approach to autostereoscopy called HR3D has been developed by researchers from MIT's Media Lab. It would consume half as much power, doubling the battery life if used with devices like the Nintendo 3DS, without compromising screen brightness or resolution; other advantages include a larger viewing angle and maintaining the 3D effect when the screen is rotated.[32]