3D LCD Display

Powerdog writes "After 10 years of lab work, Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses. They expect to use the displays in games at first, and expand into PCs and TVs. Production begins in a few months and products using them should be shipping in early 2003. Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago."

Comments

Sharp isn't the first to do it

[Hays]

http://www.dti3d.com/

http://www.neurokoptics.com/press/archive/giga.d e. 1.shtml

The _real_ information

[mfago]

Why cannot anyone link to the actual press release?! It contains more information than cnet or yahoo articles (not a difficult proposition).

The P.R. Gives some indication of how it works:

Principle of Operation of 3D LCDs
A 3D display requiring no special viewing glasses is generated by controlling the path of travel of light from the display so that slightly different images reach the left and right eyes; in other words, the right eye sees only the image intended for it, and the left eye only the image intended for it.
This newly developed 3D LCD employs a technique called the "parallax barrier," an older, well-known approach to generating a stereo display. The 3D LCD combines a conventional TFT LCD with a Switching LCD, a proprietary Sharp development.
This Switching LCD establishes an optical parallax barrier, and by controlling the path of travel of light, makes it possible to separate the display images so that slightly different images reach the left and right eyes.
By displaying the image intended for the left eye and the image for the right eye as a stereographic pair on a TFT LCD, each eye sees only the image intended for it and the brain combines the images and perceives them as a 3D representation.
In addition, the Switching LCD electrically controls the parallax barrier to make it transparent, eliminating its ability to separate light paths. This way, the right and left eyes can see the same image when viewing ordinary 2D content. In other words, the display can also function as a conventional standard imaging device.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Spy4MS]

Here it is at Sharp's site

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Incongruity]

Objects are perceived as the same distance away when light takes the same amount of time to traverse from each of the objects.

WRONG.

That would only work if you were able to know when the light being reflected from said objects originated. Given that light, in most cases, is a constant element (it's not frequently changing, i.e. stopping and starting, like a strobe), and given that you are not the originator of the light and you have no way of being sure which received photon (or group thereof) is (are) supposed to be synchronous in origin/reflection with which other photon, your explanation for depth perception/3D vision is not possible. 3-D vision actually relies on a number of processing tricks in the brain. You do the footwork, but the most commonly cited ones are: motion parallax, relative size, occlusion and binocular disparity.

Active sonar works the way you describe, as does radar. Human vision does not. Think of it in terms of active vs. passive processes. An active system is one that originates some signal and meters the response. A passive system makes sense of the existing signals whose origins/timings are not often known. Human vision is a passive system...

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[MarcoAtWork]

by reading a post later (which is the original press release) it is clear that there is a 50% loss of resolution in the horizontal axis.

The press release on yahoo says that this 2d/3d display has the same resolution as a 2d-only display, not that in 2d and 3d it has the same resolution (which I thought I saw when reading it the first time)

Basically this display works the same as the 'older' 3d LCDs when 3d, but the parallax blocker is not physical, it's switchable, so the screen can be flipped to 2d when needed and not forcibly left in 3d like the others.

Re:More than a mouthful

[kevinank]

It does bring a whole new meaning to 'pop up ads', doesn't it.

illusion of 3D

[lingqi]

parallax barrier will only give the illusion of 3D, but not *real* 3D where you can see from different perspectives.

i will go with a volumetric display any day of the week.

Already done

[PunchMonkey]

Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses.

I have a 3D LCD display at home that works great with or without glasses.

Now what would really be cool, is a 2D LCD display... I mean, sure they're already pretty thin.....

oh wait.... I'm supposed to read the article first, aren't I?