P-68: High-visibility 2D/3D LCD with HDDP Arrangement and its Evaluation Results using Fourier Optics Instrument

Abstract We have developed a high-visibility 2D/3D LCD with widened space for 3D viewing. The evaluation results using a Fourier optics instrument confirm high visibility, which corresponds to the subjective evaluation. We discuss two kinds of definition of optimum viewing distance, and the appropriateness is described. 1. Introduction With the improvement in the performance of displays, such as LCDs and PDPs, a variety of 3D displays not requiring special glasses have recently been developed for entertainment, medical, design, and other applications. Although they seem to hold promise for use as next-generation displays, for making exciting growth objective evaluation methods, such as measurement methods, should be established. For that purpose, recently, many organizations for standardization, such as ISO, IEC, ICDM and so on, have started developing standards for 3D displays. We consider that the standards should be based on the essence of 3D displays correctly, and measurement methods should be required to measure the performance of 3D displays appropriately, otherwise the performance would not be shown correctly, thus misleading the development of 3D displays, such as improvement of undesirable performance or meaningless competition in specifications. In particular for 3D displays not requiring special glasses, that are often known as autostereoscopic displays, it is difficult to say that a common understanding has already been developed in the world, therefore careful discussion is needed. We consider that the certification of space for 3D viewing is essential to autostereoscopic displays. This space is called QSVS (Qualified Stereoscopic Viewing Space) or OVR (Optimum Viewing Region), which means that 3D images can be viewed in this space without VFSD (Visual Fatigue caused by Stereoscopic Displays) [1]. The ergonomic factors of VFSD peculiar to autostereoscopic display are suggested to be crosstalk, luminance, color (chromaticity) and contrast. Among these factors, the crosstalk, which is often called 3D crosstalk in autostereoscopic displays, is considered to be a particularly important characteristic, because 3D crosstalk concerns the characteristics of how different images are shown into each eye in order to obtain binocular fusion. Therefore, the QSVS based on 3D crosstalk is important as the first step of measurement, and the QSVS had better be larger with higher quality. In order to obtain the QSVS based on 3D crosstalk, measurement of luminance angular distribution is needed, because 3D crosstalk is calculated as the ratio of luminance. A Fourier optics instrument is extremely well adapted for the measurement of the QSVS, because the full angular profile of luminance is rapidly and easily measured [2]. For the success of autostereoscopic displays, not only the QSVS, but also the quality of 3D images is important. The image quality of autostereoscopic displays is expected to be higher than that of the ordinary 2D displays currently used around us, even if it is seen by only one eye, because sacrificing quality of image will not be accepted by users. This means that the characteristics related to monocular vision are also important for viewing 3D images. In order to improve the 3D image quality, it is effective to use a fully custom-made LCD for autostereoscopic display, because any problems caused by a combination of an LCD and optics, such as lenticular, can be solved. In response to this point, we have developed a 2D and 3D LCD with a novel pixel arrangement, called HDDP (Horizontally Double-Density Pixels) [3]. Both horizontal and vertical resolutions are equal, which results in high 3D image quality. We have also developed a high-quality reflective type [4] and a transflective type of 2D and 3D display [5]. In this paper, we describe the development of a high-visibility 2D/3D LCD with HDDP arrangement, and its evaluation results of QSVS using Fourier optics instrument. We also discuss two kinds of definition of the OVD (Optimum Viewing Distance), which is especially important for establishment of the appropriate standards.