Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 4, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, HHI http://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de, are currently demonstrating at CeBIT what tomorrow’s 3D television might look like. The distinctive feature is that, unlike established 3D cinema presentations or 3D computer games, Fraunhofer is presenting display technologies that can be used entirely without glasses. The spatial effect therefore unfolds directly before the viewer’s naked eyes. The 3D view is largely independent of the viewer’s distance and angle relative to the television.
This requires a special 3D screen, such as one already available from Philips at http://www.wowvx.com. The principle behind these multi-view screens is that multiple copies of the image are placed next to one another. Depending on the viewing position, the right and left eyes each select one of these “views.” As in real life, the brain processes the two views into a single image, making it possible to watch stereoscopic television without 3D glasses. The films shown by Fraunhofer used nine views. This means the image can be seen spatially and sharply from a total of eight positions around the television. If the viewing position changes, both eyes may receive image information from only one view, resulting in a blurred image.
In theory, this problem can be avoided by packing 30 to 40 views into a film. Because the views must share the physically limited number of pixels on a display, however, resolution quality deteriorates as the number of views increases. As part of the European “3D4YOU” research project (http://www.3d4you.eu), the Fraunhofer Institute is developing methods to optimise the transmission chain for stereoscopic video and support such multi-view screens, also known as autostereoscopic devices. Among other aims, the project seeks a suitable production and transmission format in which the image’s depth information can be stored.
The Fraunhofer “Free2C_digital Display” project is no less interesting and is intended to become the first autostereoscopic 3D display installed in cars. Here too, the 3D effect can be experienced without special glasses. “For the spatial representation of the image, two views are rendered and blended together. Head- and eye-tracking systems adapt the displayed images to the viewing angle and ensure that the driver sees a 3D image,” explained Bernd Duckstein of the Fraunhofer Institute HHI in an interview with pressetext. In the cockpit shown, two cameras measure the position and distance of the eyes and use those values to calculate the image that must be provided to the right and left eyes.
Alongside individually configurable speedometer and tachometer displays, the planned 3D dashboard is intended to provide space for road warnings and a range of additional information that can be brought forward in three dimensions when required. The integration of 3D map material directly into the cockpit display is also conceivable. “Naturally, safety comes first. It must be ensured that the displayed information does not distract from the road. In principle, however, we assume that drivers can process stereoscopic representations better because they are closer to natural vision,” Duckstein emphasised.
