- Samsung has jointly developed a nanomaterial to create a 3D/2D changing light field display
- Glasses-free 3D with wide viewing angles and very high resolution
- Likely to appear first on phones, tablets and commercial displays
Are 3D TVs Coming Back? Not soon, but a new form of 3D display technology is still pretty exciting, and Samsung has teamed up with Korean private research university POSTECH to create a breakthrough. It has developed a way to switch between 2D in very high resolution and realistic, glasses-free 3D.
We’ve seen glasses-free 3D from both TCL and Visual Semiconductor recently, and they both use plenoptic displays, also called light-field displays. Samsung’s version of a light field display uses what is described as a “metasurface lenticular lens” layer of “nanoscale structures” to “transition seamlessly between flat (2D) and stereoscopic (3D) images”.
This is an important development because, as trade site The Elec explains, conventional light-field displays tend to use bulky lenses, deliver narrow viewing angles, have relatively low resolution and can require real-time eye tracking to deliver 3D. Samsung’s design solves these problems.
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What is so special about Samsung’s 3D display technology?
Like other light-field displays, Samsung’s system transmits light from multiple directions simultaneously to mimic the way light reaches the eye from real objects, making it possible to trick the brain into delivering glasses-free 3D. This means there is no limited ‘sweet spot’ you need to be in to see the 3D effect. But without decent viewing angles for general use, most displays will still be of limited use. Enter Samsung and its metasurfaces.
Samsung’s apparent metasurfaces deliver complex optical functions without the bulk of existing lenses, and Samsung’s lens can change its focal properties to deliver either 2D or 3D through a simple voltage change. According to The Elec, the lens currently delivers viewing angles of up to 100 degrees while being only 1.2mm thick.
That is the good news. The bad news is that you shouldn’t expect to have this technology in your home anytime soon. Samsung’s lens was 25 centimeters square, which is only about a quarter the size of a smartphone screen with a TV.
The first commercial uses of the technology are likely to be either small, but it could be fun. Imagine if your iPhone could render your photos in 3D, thanks to the depth maps it already captures in photos? Or what if the Nintendo Switch 3 actually turns out to be the Switch 3DS, with a return to glasses-free 3D gaming?
It is quite possible that the first applications will actually be for large users, such as retail and other trade shows.
Will the technology make it to TVs? I’m not sure, and I speak as someone who both owned and loved a 3D TV. It seems that every generation has to go through ‘3D is the future! / actually no it isn’t!’ cycle: the 3D cinema boom in the 1950s, the second 3D cinema boom in the early 80s, Avatar-led the 2010s 3D cinema and 3D TV boom…
So if that schedule repeats, we’re in for the next 3D boom in the 2040s. Which gives Samsung plenty of time to perfect its technology.
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