Image Formation in 3-D Displays
The basic idea behind 3-D displays is that they are able to show slightly different content for each eye. The sensation of depth arises from this difference, which is also called horizontal disparity. Some technologies, such as the ones used in the 3-D movie theaters, require the wearing of special glasses, but autostereoscopic displays can produce the sensation of depth without any viewing aids. Most common autostereoscopic displays utilize either parallax barriers or a lenticular lens as the structure that divides the display pixels into two (or more) views and directs the different pixel information to the left and to the right eyes of the user. Figure 1 introduces the basic working principle of these two stereo techniques.