A 3D display is multiscopic if it projects more than two images out into the world, unlike conventional 3D
stereoscopy
Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the depth perception, illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any ster ...
, which simulates a 3D scene by displaying only two different views of it, each visible to only one of the viewer's eyes. Multiscopic displays can represent the subject as viewed from a series of locations, and allow each image to be visible only from a range of eye locations narrower than the average human interocular distance of 63 mm. As a result, not only does each eye see a different image, but different pairs of images are seen from different viewing locations.
This allows the observer to view the 3D subject from different angles as they move their head, simulating the real-world depth cue of
motion parallax. It also reduces or eliminates the complication of
pseudoscopic viewing zones typical of "no glasses" 3D displays that use only two images, making it possible for several randomly located observers to all see the subject in correct 3D at the same time.
Photographic images of this type were named parallax panoramagrams by inventor
Herbert E. Ives
Herbert Eugene Ives (July 31, 1882 – November 13, 1953) was a scientist and engineer who headed the development of facsimile and television systems at AT&T in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for the 1938 Ives–Stilw ...
circa 1930, but that term is strongly associated with a continuous sampling of horizontal viewpoints, captured by a camera with a very wide lens or a lens that travels horizontally during the exposure. The more recently coined term has increasingly been adopted as more accurately descriptive when referring to electronic systems that capture and display only a finite number of discrete views.
Examples
Examples of multiscopic (as opposed to
stereoscopic
Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...
) 3D technologies include:
*
Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different sightline, lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to perspective (graphica ...
-based technologies
**
parallax barriers
**
lenticular 3D (using an array of very narrow
cylindrical lens
A cylindrical lens is a lens (optics), lens which Focus (optics), focuses light into a line instead of a point as a Lens (optics), spherical lens would. The curved face or faces of a cylindrical lens are sections of a Cylinder (geometry), cylinde ...
es)
**
integral imaging
Integral imaging is a three-dimensional imaging technique that captures and reproduces a light field by using a two-dimensional array of microlenses (or lenslets), sometimes called a fly's-eye lens, normally without the aid of a larger overall Obje ...
(using an X–Y or "fly's-eye" array of spherical
lenslets)
*
Volumetric technologies:
**sweeping a projection across subsurfaces
**transparent substrates (such as "intersecting laser beams, fog layers")
*
Holography
Holography is a technique that allows a wavefront to be recorded and later reconstructed. It is best known as a method of generating three-dimensional images, and has a wide range of other uses, including data storage, microscopy, and interfe ...
(including
real-time holography)
References
Display technology
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