In this article, we review the study trends of three-dimensional (3D) displays that can display stereoscopic images from the perspective of a display device. 3D display technology can be divided into light field, holographic, and volume displays. Ligh...
In this article, we review the study trends of three-dimensional (3D) displays that can display stereoscopic images from the perspective of a display device. 3D display technology can be divided into light field, holographic, and volume displays. Light field display is a display that can reproduce the intensity and direction of light or 'ray' in each pixel. It can display stereoscopic images with less information than a holographic display and does not require coherence of the light source. Therefore, it is expected that it will be commercialized before the holographic display. Meanwhile, the holographic display creates a stereoscopic image by completely reproducing the wavefront of an image using diffraction in terms of wave characteristics of light. This technology is considered to be able to obtain the most complete stereoscopic image, and the digital holographic display using a spatial light modulator (SLM) is expected to be the ultimate stereoscopic display. However, the digital holographic display still experiences the problem of a narrow viewing angle due to the finite pixel pitch of the SLM. Therefore, various attempts have been made at solving this problem. Volumetric display is a technology that directly creates a stereoscopic image by forming a spatial pixel, which is known as a volumetric pixel, in a physical space, and has a significant advantage in that it can easily solve the problem of the viewing angle. This technology has already been tested for commercial purposes by several leading companies. In this paper, we will examine recent research trends regarding these 3D displays and near-eye display that is emerging as a significant application field of these technologies.