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."

Comments

Re:Cereal box kids toy cards

[jimstapleton]

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...

Painful to look at?

[johndoe42]

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.

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[jacobw]

According to Sharp's PR, one possible use is as a dashboard display in your car:

So while driving you can see the GPS navigation your kid at the backseat can enjoy Ace Combat on his PS2 while your wife in the passenger seat checks out tourist sites and restaurants all in full-screen view.

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!").

as a father of two small children

[way2trivial]

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!