Glasses-Free 3-D and Augmented Reality Display Advances: From Theory to Implementation

Four of the most viable glasses-free three-dimensional display methods were chosen for our research at NTU's Advanced Displays Laboratory. Our multilayer light field display enables a smaller form factor. Faster algorithms combined with horizontal parallax-only speed-up Tensor Display computation time. A spin-off from this is an augmented reality light field near-eye display with focus cues. Our head-tracked displays use a directional backlit liquid crystal display panel to produce multiple sets of exit pupil pairs that employ a head tracker to follow the users’ eyes. This enables a ‘plug and play solution’ where existing content can be used without resolution loss. We have developed three different spatio-temporally multiplexed super multiview display systems based on liquid crystal displays, organic light-emitting diodes and fast projectors. In this article, the background, status of the prototypes and their performance are explained, and the future direction of our research is described.