Long viewing distance autostereoscopic display

Most of the reported studies have focused on improving the viewing resolution of integral photography (IP) image, widening the viewing angle. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no report about producing an IP image with a depth of several meters for viewing with the naked eye. We developed a technique of three-dimensional (3-D) display for distant viewing of a 3-D image without the need for special glasses. The photo-based integral photography (IP) method enables precise 3-D images to be displayed at long viewing distances without any influence from deviated or distorted lenses in a lens array. We calculate the elemental images from a referential viewing area for each lens and project the corresponding result images through each lens. We succeeded in creating an image display that appears to have three-dimensionality even when viewed from a distance, with an image depth of 5.7 m or more in front of the display, and 3.5m or more behind the display. To the best of our knowledge, the long-distance IP display presented in this paper is technically unique as it is first report of generating an image with such a long viewing distance.