3D Without Glasses

Today's 3D movies are far more spectacular than the first ones screened more than 50 years ago, but watching them--both at the movie theater and at home--still means donning a pair of dorky, oversized glasses. Now a new type of lens developed by researchers in Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group could help make glasses-free 3D displays more practical. The new lens, which is thinner at the bottom than at the top, steers light to a viewer's eyes by switching light-emitting diodes along its bottom edge on and off. Combined with a backlight, this makes it possible to show different images to different viewers, or to create a stereoscopic (3D) effect by presenting different images to a person's left and right eye. 3D technology has seen a renaissance recently. Thanks to the success of movies like ‘Coraline’, ‘Up’, and ‘Avatar’, Hollywood is spending more money than ever to give audiences a stereoscopic experience. And electronics manufacturers are racing to replicate the 3D theatre experience in the home.

The market for 3D-capable televisions is expected to grow from 2.5 million sets shipped in 2010 to 27 million in 2013, according to the research firm DisplaySearch. However, the glasses required to watch 3D video is a turnoff for many would-be early adopters. At the Society for Information Display International Symposium in Seattle last month, companies showed off 3D displays that don't require glasses. These sets often use lenticular lenses, which are integrated into the display and project different images in two fixed directions. But a viewer needs to stand in designated zones to experience a 3-D effect; otherwise the screen becomes an out-of-focus blur. Microsoft's prototype display can deliver 3D video to two viewers at the same time (one video for each individual eye), regardless of where they are positioned. It can also shows ordinary 2D video to up to four people simultaneously (one video for each person). The 3D display uses a camera to track viewers so that it knows where to steer light toward them.

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