3D Displays – CVision 3D (Shenzhen, Taipei, and Los Angeles) has launched a kickstarter campaign to raise $20K to further the development of 3D displays for use in smartphones and tablets. As of November 11, they had raised just $1K of the goal with 15 days to go.
The approach features a thin film parallax barrier with thin film being the key word. CEO Milton Fang says this thin approach eliminates performance, weight and cost issues with previous approaches using parallax barriers.
The website states that, “Our technology is simple, without any modifications to existing hardware, and does not expend additional battery power from mobile devices”. The use of the word simple seems acceptable, no modifications must mean it is a film attached to existing displays, but that means specific films for specific displays are most likely. The lack of additional battery power would only be true if you accept the lower brightness with the film attached. To maintain the brightness prior to the attachment of the film would require more battery power.
Playback of content is not too difficult as C Vision has partnered with DDD to include the TriDef player. Over 100 games are now available in stereoscopic 3D and 10 are bundled with the devices. The company also supports real time 2D to 3D conversion of any picture or video with adjustable intensity and focal distance settings.
CVision has developed a number of prototypes which the company wants to get into the hands of developers, which it hopes will attract the interest of mainstream display and product makers. These include:
- 5″ 1920×1080 FHD glasses-free 3D smartphone
- 7″ 1280×800 glasses-free 3D Tablet
- 7.9″ 2048×1560 retina display glasses-free 3D tablet/phablet.
What is unclear is how the barrier film will impact the display of text and graphics in 2D mode. Obscuring part of the display with a barrier pattern can produce very hard to read text, especially as the pitch of modern mobile displays increases. The website says, “All three devices will be based on current generation hardware specifications, and will function as normal Android tablets and smartphones in 2D mode. Our 3D is fully passive, meaning if the software player app is not used, it will essentially “turn off” and can be used as normal 2D devices”.
As with most display technology, you have to see it to make an assessment. – Chris Chinnock
