Student Researchers:
Oliver Cossairt (MIT)
Christian Moller (CUED)

Project Supervisors:
Dr. Steven A. Benton (MIT)
Dr. Adrian Travis (CUED)

The MIT-Cambridge View-Sequential 3D Display is a collaboration between Cambridge University Electrical Engineering Department (CUED) and MIT Media Lab's Spatial Imaging Group.

CUED is involved in several areas of research into 3D displays. Several view-sequential displays have been built at CUED in the past with CRTs and custom built FLCD techology.

View-sequential 3D displays allow a different image to be observed depending on viewing position. Unlike lenticular and parallax barrier displays, view-sequential displays utilize a time-multiplexing principle and do not sacrifice resolution (Space-Bandwidth Product) to achieve a 3D effect. View-sequential display optics require long optical paths, so it is difficult to build compact systems with this technique.

A new View-Sequential Display was recently built at MIT that used Texas Instrument DMD™s for the projection engine. The display is capable of producing 16 views at 15bit color with a refresh rate of 50Hz. The display has a viewing zone of 15degrees. The Cambridge-MIT project has succesfully demonstrated that view-sequential displays can easily be adapted to integrate new advances in SLM technology.

• Read Oliver Cossairt's Master's thesis on view sequential displays. (PDF - 3.7MB)
  

• View an image of the new display.
  

• View optics for view-sequential displays.
  

• View images produced by the display.
  

• View movies of images produced by the display.
  

• View a screenshot of software built for the new display.
  

The projection engine was donated by LightSpace Tech (formerly Vizta3D). The projection engine was adapted from LightSpace's Depth Cube™ technology.

This research will continue at Cambridge University, where the display will be moved in September. Further work will be done to improve the viewing angle and number of views.

• Visit the CUED site (outside link).

• Visit the LightSpace Technologies site (outside link).

• Visit the Texas Instruments DMD™ site (outside link).