HP Develops Glasses-Free 3D Display Tech for Smartphones and Tablets

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have come up with a glass free 3D display for mobile devices with a wide viewing angle. The display uses nano-patterned grooves to that project light in 64 different directions, to produce high-resolution, full-parallax 3D images, which can be viewed from wide angles up to 45 degrees, at an observation distance of up to a meter

David Fattal, the project's team leaders says The display will be able to project imagery, similar to the Hologram of Princess Leia in Star Wars. However, the image wont pop out as far out from the screen, like in the movie, he said.

Full HD images can be projected as far as one centimeter from the display. "For example, if you were to display a 3D image of planet Earth with the North Pole facing out from the screen, by turning your head around the display, you would actually be able to have a view of any country on the globe, you would be able to see all the way around," says Fattal.

There are quite a few Glass-free 3D devices out there and perhaps Nintendo's 3DS is the most noted of them all. The handheld device from nintendo allows users to play games in 3D but will require them to look straight into the screen.

The technology will not be used in any movie theater any time soon. While moving images can be created using computer generated graphics, any live video capture would require an array of 64 cameras pointed at an object said Fattal.

ExtremeTech have put up a video showcasing the new technology

Sources ExtremeTech