TomoReal: Tomographic Displays

Abstract: Since the history of display technologies began, people have dreamed an ultimate 3D display system. In order to get close to the dream, 3D displays should provide both of psychological and physiological cues for recognition of depth information. However, it is challenging to satisfy the essential features without sacrifice in conventional technical values including resolution, frame rate, and eye-box. Here, we present a new type of 3D displays: tomographic displays. We claim that tomographic displays may support extremely wide depth of field, quasi-continuous accommodation, omni-directional motion parallax, preserved resolution, full frame, and moderate field of view within enough eye-box. Tomographic displays consist of focus-tunable optics, 2D display panel, and fast spatially adjustable backlight. The synchronization of the focus-tunable optics and the backlight enables the 2D display panel to express the depth information. Tomographic displays have various applications including tabletop 3D displays, head-up displays, and near-eye stereoscopes. In this study, we implement a near-eye display named TomoReal, which is one of the most promising application of tomographic displays. We conclude with the detailed analysis and thorough discussion for tomographic displays, which would open a new research field.