3D displays are slowly moving into mainstream, but most of the technologies used today require the viewers to wear special 3D glasses, or watch from a very defined, small optimum viewpoint. More advanced 3D displays use eye tracking, and create a stereoscopic effect by specifically sending different images to either eye.
David Fattal and colleagues from HP Laboratories in Palo Alto, California developed a new approach to glasses-free 3D displays, which comes with a number of improvements: Their prototype displays use multi-directional diffractive backlight technology, which makes them particularly well-suited for mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, or watches). They’re high-resolution, very thin (<1 mm), don’t require eye tracking, and feature a very wide view zone (up to 180 degrees) at an observation distance of up to a metre. Their work was recently published in Nature.
Apr
11
