Autostereoscopy - Glass less 3D Tweet

Hi folks!! Thanks for the positive response you gave for my last post about the 3D Revolution. I remember saying that the LG Cinema 3D is a better option for a 3D Home Entertainment System against a Samsung or Sony model because of LG's feather weight flicker free polaroid film glasses. If you agree that its too cool then image the coolness of watching 3D without glasses!! That would be the coolest 3D experience ever and you can safely dump the polaroids, shutter LCDs and the ancient anaglyph for this new form of Visual Wonder!!

This is what watching 3D content on your TV without the burden of 3D glasses looks like. 

It might look irresistable but this technology which is called 'Autostereoscopy' which is a method of rendering three-dimensional pictures or movies [Stereograms or Holograms] is still in its nascent stages. But half a decade from now on this technology will be the 
centrestage of 3D Entertainment.

So what is this newfangled 3D and how does it work?

There are two broad approaches currently used to accommodate motion parallax and wider viewing angles: eye-tracking, and multiple views so that the display does not need to sense where the viewers' eyes are located. Examples of auto-stereoscopic displays technology include lenticular lens, parallax barrier, volumetric display, holographic and light field displays.

Flat-panel solutions employ lenticular lenses or parallax barriers that redirect imagery to several viewing regions; however, this manipulation requires reduced image resolutions. When the viewer's head is in a certain position, a different image is seen with each eye, giving a convincing illusion of 3D. Such displays can have multiple viewing zones, thereby allowing multiple users to view the image at the same time, though they may also exhibit dead zones where only a non-stereoscopic or pseudoscopic image can be seen, if at all.

Parallax Barrier technology is currently used in Nintendo 3DS to good effect. But this is because this gaming console has a much smaller display size and very low number of pixels are need to be packed.

Autostereoscopic 3D displays are fitted with a high precision lenticular lens, displaying different images for each eye.

Unlike conventional 3D films made for the cinema or stereoscopic televisions operating with glasses, Autostereoscopic 3D displays require proprietary content combining not just 2, but 8 discrete images. Viewers may stand freely in front of the display and move sideways to enjoy the 3D scene from slightly different angles. That kind of heavy video content is not in use for conventional videos or Games at present because packing 8 images into a single video frame is a tedious job even in an IMAX or a Blu-ray Full HD format.

LG again was the first to introduce this technology in its Smartphone segment. The Result- LG Optimus 3D. This too employed the 'Parallax Barrier Technology'.

But to LG's dismay the Optimus smartphones proved to be a disappointment for 3D freaks.
One of the drawbacks of this type of parallax 3D technology is that when 3D mode is ON, the resolution of the screen drops significantly, resulting in less impressive picture quality. Otherwise, the display is 4.3” LCD with 480x800 pixels resolution, which are some pretty decent specs but when viewed in 3D mode and in landscape, the effective resolution seemed to be more like 400x480 pixels (half the actual width). 3D in low resolutions can look very murky. Try watching Side-by-side 3D videos in YouTube 3D at low resolutions and the effect can be so  gruesome that any first timer would detest 3D.

Sharp came out with its own model of Aquous SH-12C 3D smartphone in Japan and HTC rolled out its HTC EVO 3D. Motorala MT810 is another glass-free smartphone that is available some Asian countries. Samsung which came out with plans for Galaxy 3D had to rework the 3D display and is still in its developmental stage in India.

The list of glass free 3D gadgets is quite short because after noticing the continuous failure of the above smartphones in the vibrant 3D market smartphone makers decided to press the pause button on autostereoscopic 3D displays till they come out with a convincing display that is capable of rendering flawless 3D to naked eye.

As for the glass-free 3D TV segment there is still a long way to go in making Full HD displays that give out sharp ghosting-free autostereoscopic 3D content.

But I keep my fingers crossed. In the near future we can expect better glass-free 3D phones from different makers and I would put my money on LG because my intuition says that it'll again be LG that'll come out with a breathtaking solution for hassle free 3D entertainment just as it did with 'LG Cinema 3D'

What do you think people? Share your comments with me! Bharat out!