3D in Your Hands, Without Glasses

By Jennifer Colegrove – Director, Display Technologies, DisplaySearch

While much of the buzz around 3D this year has been focused on TVs requiring shutter glasses, there is tremendous growth potential for small/medium 3D displays in applications such as mobile phones, cameras and picture frames. DisplaySearch forecasts these and other applications could grow from less than $10 million in 2009 to over $1 billion in 2018.

A good example of the potential for small 3D displays is Nintendo’s announcement of the 3DS (likely a temporary name), a 3D upgrade of their DS. It will be demonstrated at the E3 video game trade show in June, and will be available by early 2011.

The Nintendo 3DS will use an auto-stereoscopic display, which means no glasses are needed to see the 3D effect. There are several ways to implement 3D in an auto-stereoscopic display, including parallax barrier, lenticular, backlight directional (Fujifilm is using this in their 3D digital camera), and stacking two TFT displays (such as from PureDepth). While Nintendo has not disclosed what type of 3D display technology it is using, it is likely to be parallax barrier, since its display suppliers, Hitachi and Sharp, use this approach. Hitachi released a 3D mobile phone in 2009, and Sharp has used parallax barrier 3D displays on notebook PCs since 2003.

Figure 1: Still from Video Demonstrating 3DS

screenshot127

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c5sTXfo_c0

Nintendo’s DS series have been the leading portable game devices since their initial release in 2004, selling about 30 million units every year. However, Nintendo has competition from other devices such as Sony’s PlayStation Portable, as well as Apple’s iPhone. Implementing 3D is one way Nintendo can differentiate itself from this competition.

Bardamu

Jennifer,
the video you linked in the post ( and the relative still ) is all about an head-tracking game for DSiWare ( the DS’s DD platform ) available only in Japan for now.
It’s a simple DSi and it has nothing to do with the soon to be revealed Nintendo 3DS.

That’s a great new for 3D, in the few coming years there could be at least 100 million machine 3D-enabled seeing how the current DS line is over 125 million units at this point.
However I don’t think that 3D will be the main feature of the system, akin to the DS announcement in January 2004 where it was revealed the two screen existence but was keep secret how you interact with the games ( and the same happened with the Wii too ).
http://www.displaysearch.com Jennifer Colegrove

Dear Bardamu,
You are right. That figure of Youtube is not 3DS demo. I should clarify/correct that figure title: it’s a Nintendo DSiWare to show three dimentional game with head tracking technique. It gaves an idea of what the 3DS will look like when it release. Thanks.
Best, Jennifer.
http://www.sampr.net rochelle winters

Dear Jennifer,

I just wanted to let you know that the Hitachi Wooo to which you refer above was enabled by an autostereoscopic display from MasterImage 3D. Master Image developed a unique cell matrix/parallax barrier approach to glasses-free imagery.