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

Laptops?

[bahwi]

Forget the privacy filter, Goatse on the left, Goatse on the right, and that commercial would be far more interesting!

Re:Laptops?

[icebrain]

Or conversely... I could look at porn and the people sitting to the left and right of me would see legitimate work... now just sit back and imagine the possibilities...

Re:Laptops?

[gEvil (beta)]

...giving you room to stretch out a bit.

Never, I repeat, NEVER, use that phrase whem making a reference to goatse...

Re:Laptops?

[ElephanTS]

are you saying that porn is illegitimate work? That's a bastard.

Very fancy - BUT

[grims]

This is all very fancy, but wont viewing from sides reduce the surface amount you are watching? A 1024x768 from front wont be the same at 45 degree angle - loss of resolution - and compressed faces/picture etc.? How is that solved?

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!").

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[0racle]

Magic

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[cHALiTO]

Depending on the relative price of the thing, you could also use it to have 3 monitors by placing 2 mirrors instead of actually buying 3 monitors. Assuming one of these could be cheaper than 3 normal monitors, you place it in front of you, then place an attacheable mirror at each side, and bang! 3-head fraging!! ;)

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[HTH NE1]

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.)

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[SilentOneNCW]

Is no one at all even remotely worried that this hypothetical situation includes all three people in a vehicle looking at a display instead of the road?

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...

Great for work

[theantipop]

Development apps when viewed from the left, debugging processes when viewed from the right, and Slashdot in the middle. You'd appear like the hardest working employee ever.

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.

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!

Re:Cereal box kids toy cards

[aadvancedGIR]

Cars: GPS on the left, DVD on the right and kid's console on the front.

In other news

[teslar]

Companies across the globe increase the number of workers per cubicle to three.

MacOS on the right?!

[adenied]

Oh sure, put MacOS on the right. This is a blatant attack on Mac users by Windows users to associate them with politics that many aren't familiar with. Come on everyone knows Mac users are liberal emo hippies. This is just insulting!

Ads

[debrain]

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.

Forget the flat screens

[Gruneun]

Picture this technology on a screen that's wrapped around the outside of a cylinder. You could have an information kiosk that has a different image for every person that's standing around it. If the images were that of a virtual tour guide, the guide could point things out in 360 degrees, yet it would still be tailored for each person looking at the screen.

Re:Wooden pannels on my chevy

[Red Flayer]

Outstanding technology that still needs two wooden mirrors to work (for teh lazy necks among us).

Hogwash. One could easily use metal mirrors, or even glass.

Ultra Extreme Programming

[javaxjb]

It's clearly intended for ultra extreme programming: one wide desk and three keyboards. The programmers on the left and right write the code and the person in the center works on continous merges of the best ideas. A fourth back seat drivers continuously runs from left to right giving directions and asking why they aren't just checking the UML.

First, PLEASE perfect the two-image version

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my left eye to see one image and my right eye to see another, with my brain merging the views for a true 3D effect.