Visual Media Lab, University of Tsukuba
We present a pair of high-resolution aerial (virtual-image and real-image) 3D displays based on coarse integral imaging with small interleaved elemental lenses. The quality of the 3D image presented with our technology is equivalent to that of a hologram, while our technology enables a real-time electric motion video presentation. With face-tracking technology to generate light-ray space around the eyes to follow the motion of the viewer, high-resolution image is presented across a wide viewing angle.
Integral imaging realizes an autostereoscopic display where a micro lens array is used to reproduce a light-ray space. This method enables presentation of parallax in both horizontal and vertical directions.
Coarse integral imaging (CII), which uses a lens array composed of relatively large elemental lenses instead of a micro lens array. This method can produce real or virtual images in the air away from the screen through the elemental lenses. The elemental lens can be replaced with a lens where the elemental prisms are interleaved across the entire lens area. The feature of this lens is the gradual change of the widths of the elemental prisms. Applying a lens array composed of these elemental lenses to CII enhances continuity of the images. As the number of views increases with the use of smaller elemental lenses to realize a high-resolution image, the rendering requires heavier calculations. To realize fast multi-view rendering, we reduce the number of draw calls by drawing 16 views with a single pass rendering.