3 ms·

The effect is really cool -- I've seen these in person. It's like a really well-done, high-resolution take on those lenticular plastic 3D images. It does look

The effect is really cool -- I've seen these in person. It's like a really well-done, high-resolution take on those lenticular plastic 3D images. It does look truly volumetric as long as you're kind of roughly in front of it. But if you go too far off to the side the effect breaks down a bit. Inexpensive 3D displays that don't require eye-tracking a la the Nintendo 3DS would be quite a nifty development.

petermcneeley 8y ago
I did my own version of the lenticular 3D this as hobby project. You need quite a high resolution (density) display. You also need to configure the output very accurately so that it corresponds to the final desired image for each eye. Because of how an LCD displays color you this is an even more complex translation. However the advantage of eyetracked lenticular over "The looking glass" would be resolution. (there might be other FOV and effect distance advantages as well)
- darkmighty 8y ago
  With lenticular arrays you don't even need eye tracking (in theory), since you can directly synthesize a geometric light field (that is, a bundle of rays around each point with different colors for every direction), but you'd probably need quite a few pixels per lens. If the lenses are <1mm diameter, and you need say >10x10 pixels per lens, that's at least 100ppcm, or >250ppi, preferably a lot more. Latest phones do seem to reach that level. In the end the satisfaction level needs to be evaluated experimentally of course, I wonder how nice one would be with current technology (say, an iPad Pro display), did you build a prototype?
  - petermcneeley 8y ago
    Yes I built a prototype. You can order lenticular sheets online. I have an iPad Pro but the distance between the LCD to the screen surface is too great to use normal lenicular sheets. A 4k small laptop screen would likely be enough for clean binocular separation however I only had a 1080p 10inch display. While this is difficult at the hobby level this already seems to be widely commercially available http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php
    - darkmighty 8y ago
      Interesting how they're marketing it: as a glasses-free 3D display instead of a holographic (lightfield or w/e) display. That's probably due to the chosen field of view and resolution tradeoff, where you can see only a narrow field of view and angular variation is small (so there are less artifacts, better image quality/"resolution") -- it's a quasi-binocular range field. However, this seems like a poor strategy: most people already know 3D (binocular) displays and there's not much demand for it, I bet few people would be willing to pay significantly more for lower quality just to get rid of glasses (for those who even crave binocular content). Compare to the potential of having wide viewing angle holograms (even if a little fuzzy) in your living room. Unrelated: Your blog posts are awesome and you should submit more often to HN ;)

petermcneeley 8y ago

I did my own version of the lenticular 3D this as hobby project. You need quite a high resolution (density) display. You also need to configure the output very accurately so that it corresponds to the final desired image for each eye. Because of how an LCD displays color you this is an even more complex translation. However the advantage of eyetracked lenticular over "The looking glass" would be resolution. (there might be other FOV and effect distance advantages as well)

darkmighty 8y ago
With lenticular arrays you don't even need eye tracking (in theory), since you can directly synthesize a geometric light field (that is, a bundle of rays around each point with different colors for every direction), but you'd probably need quite a few pixels per lens. If the lenses are <1mm diameter, and you need say >10x10 pixels per lens, that's at least 100ppcm, or >250ppi, preferably a lot more. Latest phones do seem to reach that level. In the end the satisfaction level needs to be evaluated experimentally of course, I wonder how nice one would be with current technology (say, an iPad Pro display), did you build a prototype?
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  Yes I built a prototype. You can order lenticular sheets online. I have an iPad Pro but the distance between the LCD to the screen surface is too great to use normal lenicular sheets. A 4k small laptop screen would likely be enough for clean binocular separation however I only had a 1080p 10inch display. While this is difficult at the hobby level this already seems to be widely commercially available http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php
  - darkmighty 8y ago
    Interesting how they're marketing it: as a glasses-free 3D display instead of a holographic (lightfield or w/e) display. That's probably due to the chosen field of view and resolution tradeoff, where you can see only a narrow field of view and angular variation is small (so there are less artifacts, better image quality/"resolution") -- it's a quasi-binocular range field. However, this seems like a poor strategy: most people already know 3D (binocular) displays and there's not much demand for it, I bet few people would be willing to pay significantly more for lower quality just to get rid of glasses (for those who even crave binocular content). Compare to the potential of having wide viewing angle holograms (even if a little fuzzy) in your living room. Unrelated: Your blog posts are awesome and you should submit more often to HN ;)