Reconfigurable 2-D/3-D Displays

摘要

Customers do not have to decide between a nifty 3-D product or a higher-resolution 2-D product if they can switch their displays from one to the other as whim or application dictates. Ever Since our forebears painted the striking pictures in the cave of Lascaux 20,000 years ago, we have tried to improve our visualization of the world. Much of the effort of the last 100 years has focused on electronic displays. But, despite their great advantages, these displays still suffered from the constraints of using a 2-D display to represent a 3-D world. Three-dimensional stereoscopic electronic displays that provide separate images to each eye have become established as a niche product despite requiring the viewer to use special glasses that provide different images to each eye in turn. Manufacturers such as Stereo-Graphics Corp. report more than 100,000 professional users. More recently, autostereo-scopic 3-D displays, which do not require glasses, have become available to address professional markets, such as engineering CAD systems, where the cost of dedicated 3-D displays is justified by the visualization needs of the industry.