3-D Liquid Crystal Displays and Their Applications

Three-dimensional (3-D) data is regularly used to create 3-D images that are rendered onto a plane and shown on a two-dimensional (2-D) display. Stereoscopic displays are becoming more widespread and are currently available at consumer level prices. With these displays it is possible to see images with a high-quality perception of depth and with a greater sense of realism. It is an exciting time in the 3-D displays market as the current generation of 3-D display technologies continues to develop. A number of technologies for 3-D displays have existed for some time, many of which are based on liquid crystal displays (LCDs). LCDs combined with the parallax barrier method have a number of advantages in terms of cost, ease of manufacture, size, weight,and most importantly the ability to switch from 2-D to 3-D mode. Several consumer products are available based on this type of display. Applications such as entertainment, scientific visualization, advertising, and education benefit greatly from the improved realism offered by stereoscopic displays. There are many challenges to creating suitable images for 3-D displays; some have been solved and others are receiving attention. In order to build the 3-D display market, industry will need to tackle all of them in order to support the content creators and provide the features and ease of use that end users require. The aim of this paper is to describe and compare the core 3-D display technologies, bring together a number of important considerations for content creation and discuss some of the applications that have a strong benefit from using 3-D images on a 3-D display.