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Sharp Develops Triple Directional Viewing LCD
morpheus83 writes "Sharp Corporation and Sharp Laboratories of Europe, Ltd. (SLE) have developed the Triple Directional Viewing LCD, a display that controls the viewing angle so that the display can show different images from the left, right, and center simultaneously. Using proprietary parallax barrier on a standard TFT LCD, the screen splits light in three directions — left, right, and center — and displays three separate images on the same screen at the same time. So connect three computers to the LCD and from the center you see Windows, Linux from the left and MacOS from the right."
I thought everyone wanted to have a system with multiple screens supporting the same desktop, not one screen supporting multiple desktops. I don't see the advantage of this over a nice KVM.
you pretty much got my main thoughts right there. What worries me is the same problem as with the cerial box cards - there is some bleedover of the image from off angels. Would the same thing happen here? I can just see all the posters here who suggested goatse doing that, and then having the image of goatse subconciously burned into their mind because there is a very minor image bleed of it...
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This is great, but unless you want to have your computer emulate three, you're using three computers/other video sources to display the image. do you really want three people crowding around an LCD, each with their own keyboard, mouse, etc.? And what about brightness, contrast, color, etc.? Does it display different versions of that?
All in all, it's not going to be useful for interactive use.
I played with a Sharp 3D laptop last summer (http://www.sharp3d.com/), and it was cool but it caused a lot of eyestrain, not to mention halving the usable resolution. This sounds like almost the same technology, and I imagine it won't be any easier on the eyes.
That makes a certain amount of sense to me; with viewers essentially strapped in place, you can make sure everybody sees exactly the perspective they're supposed to. Also, in those circumstances, you aren't going to demand especially high resolution--as long as you can make out the information presented, you're OK. (Admittedly, the kid in the backseat playing on his PS2 might want better resolution, but that's his problem. In my day, if we wanted to play PS2, we had to actually get out of our car and walk inside.)
They also mention the possibility of using it for displaying multiple ads in public, so that the ad you see varies depending on whether you are coming ("You're just a few feet away from Joe's Cafe!") or going ("Turn around! You just missed the best restaurant in town!").
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
I would point out- you all missed the OBVIOUS application
my car has a rear dvd player, with wireless headphones for the kids
imagine if they could watch their own programs-- their angle of view/location in the back seat
is vey quantifiable (if they aren't killing each other)
and if there is a third person in the middle-- voila!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'm shocked no-one has mentioned this yet. It's useful for ads. As you walk past an LCD your angle changes, thus exposing you to three distinct moving pictures. People are drawn to moving pictures - we're psychologically hard-wired for it. I suspect we will see these in the entrance to stores, at eye-level, because as we walk past the store, we will be drawn to the changing images and moving patterns. It's 10 seconds of attention that wasn't there before.
Imagine walking past a video-game store. As you walk past an LCD advertisement you see three different video games depending on your angle. Two of which may not be interesting. But that third, may. All done with one screen, saving money.
The compactness of one video-screen emphasizes the efficiency. Instead of having to avert our eyes to see another image we focus on the single screen, thus avoiding a clutter of LCD's, which has the school-of-fish impact, where we can't focus on any of them.
And, of course, everyone if fascinated with optical effects.
Of course, it won't be long before a researcher uses this technology to create a *miniscule* parallax of a few degrees, each displaying the information your eyes would need to form a three-dimensional image.
The monitor could be calibrated for the distance you typically sit away from the monitor, and replicate what your eyes already do: glean 3D information from the difference in each eye's POV.
Think: Fully 3D FPS games.
Think: fully-immersive desktop UIs which can take advantage of that "z" dimension.
Work on the left side to throw off your boss, goat porn on the right side to throw off your co-workers, and alt.fan.star-trek.wesley-crusher.furry.erotica on the centre where nobody else will ever see it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And getting the system to render the left and right views mirror-imaged so they come out correctly in the attached mirrors is just a software problem.
Actually, I'd be surprised if they didn't already sell privacy barriers for laptops that double as screen protectors when the laptop is closed, with a bonus panel for the top to cut down on glare from overhead lighting. The closest I've found is this laptop hood (scroll down) that folds like those collapsible windshield sunscreens.
You know, if they made them in yellow, you'd look like you're about to be eaten by a Pac-Man.
(The ones for camera LCD screens will make you look like you're pointing it the wrong way.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?