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This story is from the category Display Technology
Date posted: 30/10/2009 A new thin-film technology developed by 3M could enable mobile devices such as cell phones to show 3-D images without the need for special glasses. Dubbed Vikuiti 3-D, the technology works by guiding slightly different images to the viewer's left and right eyes. Provided that the device is held relatively still, the viewer experiences an "auto-stereoscopic" effect--a sense of depth to the image, says Erik Jostes, business director of 3M's Optical Systems Division in St. Paul, MN. This optical trick has been around for some time and is essentially the same as the one behind Philips's WOWvx 3-D television displays. However, getting it to work in mobile devices presents new challenges. In Vikuiti 3-D, prism-shaped reflective structures are embedded on the back of a polymer film, and tiny microlenses are patterned on the front. Together these components steer lights through a liquid-crystal display in front of the film. Light passes through the film from two light-emitting diodes, one positioned to the left and one to the right. The light from each LED bounces off a waveguide and strikes the film at a different angle, causing the embedded optics of the film to steer the light in two different directions. Because each beam of light passes through a liquid-crystal display showing a slightly different image, providing the display is held at the correct distance, each eye receives a slightly different perspective. To trick the viewer's brain into believing it is seeing the two images at the same time, both the LEDs and the LCD panels have to be switched extremely fast--about 120 times a second, says Jostes. See the full Story via external site: www.technologyreview.com Most recent stories in this category (Display Technology): 08/02/2017: New method improves accuracy of imaging systems |
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