The Holy Grail Of Holograms: High Resolution, Wide Viewing Angle

Researchers have developed a holographic 3D display technology has six times the normal viewing angle.

AsianScientist (Oct. 24, 2016) – Using a hologram printer, researchers in Japan have developed a projection-type see-through holographic 3D display technology. Part of this work was published in Nature Communications.

The demand for a dynamic 3D display technology is increasing with the advancement of 3D printing/scanning technologies. However, general holographic 3D displays suffer a trade-off between the display size and the visual angle to view the entire display area. Moreover, the general system design of holographic 3D displays requires a large optical setup behind the display window.

In the present study, a team at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) combined the optical screen of a digitally-designed holographic optical element and a digital holographic projection technique. The light of the enlarged holographic 3D image was then concentrated to a target observation area by a reflection function to increase the visual angle.

This technology can have a high degree of freedom of both the display size and the visual angle independently, and also a high usability of the see-through display system. As such, it is expected will accelerate the adoption of holographic 3D displays in industrial applications, such as digital signage, smart glasses and head-mounted displays.

In future, the researchers at NICT will optimize the full-color display system by upgrading the hologram printer. They will also focus on developing multiple holographic projections from different incident directions to extend the observation area.


The article can be found at: Wakunami et al. (2016) Projection-type See-through Holographic Three-dimensional Display.

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Source: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.
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