Unlike most other 3-D display systems, which are visible to only a few viewers with special glasses, a wide-viewing-angle 3-D display system that is visible to multiple viewers at the same time without glasses has been developed by researchers at Osaka City University (Osaka, Japan) and the Hiroshima Institute of Technology (Hiroshima, Japan). A multiview camera system captures 3-D images that are delivered using a real-time autostereoscopic 3-D display system that consists of a flat holographic-optical-element (HOE) lens array and a projector.
Other proposed methods for delivering 3-D images, such as using multiple displays or a curved lens array and curved screen, are difficult to implement. Although the HOE lens array used by the researchers in their technique is flat, the axis of each elemental HOE lens in the array is eccentric and the rays from the projector are parallel, allowing the array to function as a virtual curved lens array with a wide viewing angle. Contact Hideya Takahashi at [email protected].
