Time-Multiplexed Color Autostereoscopic Display

A practical color autostereoscopic display has been developed at Cambridge, and has been in operation since 1994. It provides six view directions at half VGA resolution (640 × 240 pixels) of 24-bit color at a luminance of 100 cd/m 2 . Each individual view direction is refreshed at standard television rates, so the display is capable of full motion animation or live 3D video. Versions with both 10 and 25 inch screen diagonal have been built. This paper describes the principles of the display, its development from an earlier monochrome version, the results of this development work, and ideas for future research. The original monochrome display, developed at Cambridge, has been in use since late 1991. It provides eight views at full VGA resolution or sixteen views at half VGA resolution. A series of views of a scene are displayed sequentially and an optical directional modulator, constructed from a liquid crystal shuttering element, is synchronised with the image repetition rate to dire..