Currently, there is increasing interest in the development of high performance 3D display technologies to support a variety of applications including medical imaging, scientific visualization, gaming, education, entertainment, air traffic control and remote operations in 3D environments. In this paper we will review the attributes of the various 3D display technologies including stereoscopic and holographic 3D, human factors issues of stereoscopic 3D, the challenges in realizing Holographic 3D displays and the recent progress in these technologies.Key Words: 3D displays, stereoscopic-3D displays, holographic-3D displays, 3D-display human factors, holographic video display, light-field display, computer generated hologram (CGH)
INTRODUCTIONPast decade has witnessed a phenomenal progress in the development and commercialization of a variety of display technologies for displaying 2D as well as 3D image content. Examples of these developments for displaying 2D content include very large (> 100" diagonal) AM LCDs for TV, very high resolution (> 500 ppi) AM LCDs for smart phone applications, AM OLEDs for very high resolution smart phones as well as large TV applications, low-power reflective displays and flexible displays. Examples of the development for displaying 3D content include several types of stereoscopic-3D displays that have been commercialized primarily for 3D-TV and other specialized applications including defense. While the displays for 2D content (presentation) have reached good level of maturity and market adaptation, and this technology still continues to advance, stereo 3D displays have not been as widely adapted because of objectionable image artifacts limiting their performance. While 3D cinema with well controlled image content has been successful, 3D TV has had only limited success to date. When the objectionable image artifacts and performance limitations in current 3D displays are eliminated, they are expected to be widely adopted in current applications (such as for 3D TV) as well as enable a variety of new applications in defense as well as civilian uses. In this paper our focus will be on 3D displays. Acquisition of 3D visual information of a real-life scene and creating an exact scaled optical duplicate of it at a remote site instantaneously, or at a later time, are ultimate goals in visual communications. In addition to defense applications, civilian applications of 3D displays include medical imaging, computer aided design, scientific visualization, education, gaming, and entertainment including 3D TV, air traffic control and remote operations in 3D environments. For realism, a 3D display should provide high spatial resolution and depth perception with full depth cues including binocular disparity, motion parallax, ocular accommodation, occlusion etc. The 3D display systems are usually based on stereoscopic and auto-stereoscopic displays. Stereoscopic displays exploit the ability of the human brain to combine different perspectives of the object as an integrated 3D visual scene. The 3D disp...