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 illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image i ...

, 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 shifting

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby object ...

. 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–Stilwel ...

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. An example of a popular commercial multiscopic display is th
Looking Glass Portrait
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Looking Glass Factory

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 lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby object ...

-based technologies ** parallax barriers ** lenticular 3D (using an array of very narrow

cylindrical lens A cylindrical lens is a lens which focuses light into a line instead of a point, as a spherical lens would. The curved face or faces of a cylindrical lens are sections of a cylinder, and focus the image passing through it into a line parallel to ...

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

lenslet A lenslet is literally a small lens. The fact that distinguishes it from a small lens is that it is part of a lenslet array. A lenslet array consists of a set of lenslets in the same plane. Each lenslet normally has the same focal length. Lenslet ...

s) * Volumetric technologies: **sweeping a projection across subsurfaces **transparent substrates (such as "intersecting laser beams, fog layers") *

Holography Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, i ...

(including real-time holography)

References

Display technology {{hardware-stub