Apple's solution works for >1 people at the same time and doesn't require any external tracking (though it's already doing the external tracking regardless), at the cost of lower resolution and only being correct in one dimension vs two.
Apple's solution works for >1 people at the same time and doesn't require any external tracking (though it's already doing the external tracking regardless), at the cost of lower resolution and only being correct in one dimension vs two.
https://research.facebook.com/blog/2021/08/display-systems-r...
> There are several established ways to display 3D images. For this research, we used a microlens-array light field display because it’s thin, simple to construct, and based on existing consumer LCD technology. These displays use a tiny grid of lenses that send light from different LCD pixels out in different directions, with the effect that an observer sees a different image when looking at the display from different directions. The perspective of the images shift naturally so that any number of people in the room can look at the light field display and see the correct perspective for their location.
> As with any early stage research prototype, this hardware still carries significant limitations: First, the viewing angle can’t be too severe, and second, the prototype can only show objects in sharp focus that are within a few centimeters of the physical screen surface. Conversations take place face-to-face, which naturally limits reverse passthrough viewing angles. And the wearer’s face is only a few centimeters from the physical screen surface, so the technology works well for this case — and will work even better if VR headsets continue to shrink in size, using methods such as holographic optics.
I'm guessing (?) Apple's approach is similar.
The Wikipedia article might explain it better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_lens
It could work in both dimensions but you're sacrificing even more resolution by doing it that way. For example imagine you have a 1000x1000 pixel display (I just made this resolution up) and you stick a 1D lenticular screen on top with a pitch of 10 pixels. You've effectively split the display into 10 separate 100x1000 displays that are each view from a different angle. You could instead use a 2D lenticular screen and split it up into 100 100x100 displays viewable from a different angle in a 10x10 grid at virtually no extra $ cost. However, you're displaying at 1/10th the resolution just to be able to support perspective-correct views from above or below, which are way less common than from the side.