We conducted an experiment that examined how visual discomfort arises while viewing autostereoscopic displays in a practical viewing situation. Visual discomfort was evaluated by measuring subjective symptoms and accommodative step response before and after viewing displayed material. Subjective discomfort measurements showed that viewing autostereoscopic displays resulted in relatively less discomfort than viewing 3D television with active shutter glasses. Moreover, we calculated the correlations between subjective visual discomfort and accommodation amplitude to near and far visual targets using an infrared optometer. With an autostereoscopic display and a 2D display, there was moderate correlation, whereas 3D television showed no correlation. This suggests that the discomfort arising from viewing autostereoscopic and 2D displays could be related to accommodative response. However, the discomfort arising from viewing 3D TV probably derives from other factors in a practical viewing.

There are three main approaches creating stereoscopic S3D content: stereo filming using two cameras, stereo rendering of 3D computer graphics, and 2D to S3D conversion by adding binocular information to 2D material images. Although manual "off-line" conversion can control the amount of parallax flexibly, 2D material images are converted according to monocular information in most cases, and the flexibility of 2D to S3D conversion has not been exploited. If the depth is expressed flexibly, comprehensions and interests from converted S3D contents are anticipated to be differed from those from 2D. Therefore, in this study we created new S3D content for education by applying 2D to S3D conversion. For surgical education, we created S3D surgical operation content under a surgeon using a partial 2D to S3D conversion technique which was expected to concentrate viewers' attention on significant areas. And for art education, we converted Ukiyoe prints; traditional Japanese artworks made from a woodcut. The conversion of this content, which has little depth information, into S3D, is expected to produce different cognitive processes from those evoked by 2D content, e.g., the excitation of interest, and the understanding of spatial information. In addition, the effects of the representation of these contents were investigated.

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