Seiko Epson Develops an Amazing
High Resolution 3D Display for Mobile Phones

Seiko Epson Corp developed an extremely high quality 3D display that is targeted at mobile devices and can show extremely high-resolution 3D images visible to the naked eye with no special glasses.

Although it is pretty small display with diagonal of just 2.57 inch, Seiko Epson’s 3D screen features truly amazing pixel count of 1024 × 768 (XGA).

The small screen size combined with XGA resolution gives incredible pixel density and allowing it to be used to create one of the world's highest resolutions direct-view-type displays.

"The resolution of the display is about 500ppi," said Goro Hamagishi, general manager of the Display Development Center, Corporate Research & Development Div, Seiko Epson Corp. He added that Seiko Epson plans to commercialize the display in two years, the company said.

To display 3D images, a special lens called "lenticular lens" is placed on pixels so that different images can be seen from different angles. A lenticular lens is composed of an array of many hog-backed convex lenses, each of which is as large as a few pixels.

Several cameras are used to shoot images from slightly different angles. Then, the images are resolved into pixels and arrayed on the pixels of the display based on a certain calculation (rendering).

Because right and left eyes see the display from different angles, the images look three-dimensional. This method was established in the 19th century.

*click to enlarge

There are three main features in the 3D display. (1) 3D images are created by using up to eight cameras, and their resolution is as high as 384 × 256 pixels, equivalent to QVGA. (2) The design of the lenticular lens was reviewed to improve 3D images by adjusting the balance between the vertical and horizontal resolutions. (3) Seiko Epson considerably improved the problem that the images were distorted when a user at a certain distance watches the display while moving.

In general, the resolution of the 2D images shown by 3D displays deteriorates when the amount of information for 3D images is increased by, for example, using many cameras. It is because more pixels are used for 3D-related information. To solve this problem, Seiko Epson adopted the following measures.

As for (1), the original pixel count was drastically increased. And concerning (2), the company utilized the pixels in the direction in which human eyes are not very sensitive to resolution (vertical direction).

In regard to (3), Seiko Epson reduced by half the cycle in which images change depending on angles (viewing image width).