NEC Also Develops 3D Display Visible with the Naked Eye

It would seem that 3D displays that allow viewers to enjoy three-dimensional images without using any glasses are pretty much the latest hype nowadays, several of the world's most important display solution manufacturers getting involved in this particular field and announcing a (more or less working) prototype of such a product. You've been able to read earlier about Philips' 3D TV set, Panasonic's 3D plasma – goggles combo, NICT and JVC's joint effort, and now it's about time for yet another Japanese company to take the stage.

Hence, NEC has just unveiled a prototype 3D display visible with the naked eye which employs the company's HDDP (Horizontally Double-Density Pixels) technology. The basis of HDDP is that the pixels are arranged in the form of a horizontal stripe and that the right and left eyes receive the information "separately," at very small time intervals between them. In this way, the eyes (and the brain) are "tricked" into believing that they're actually seeing images in 3 dimensions.

The 3D display itself is not exactly as impressive as some of the other solutions mentioned earlier, since we're just talking about a 12.1-inch (31 cm) diagonal and a SVGA (800x600 pixels) resolution, far from the 56-inch, HD-grade solution provided by Philips, for example. Nevertheless, it's a step in the right direction, and the company claims that it intends to dedicate a lot more resources to this particular field in the future.

As expected, the range of uses for this 3D display is quite a wide one, whether we're talking about digital signage, medical viewing systems, CAD/CAM area, or simply the home entertainment area. Of course, it remains to be seen just how soon the first working models are going to arrive, but we certainly hope that we won't have to wait too long.


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