Sharp Develops Triple Directional Viewing LCD

morpheus83 writes "Sharp Corporation and Sharp Laboratories of Europe, Ltd. (SLE) have developed the Triple Directional Viewing LCD, a display that controls the viewing angle so that the display can show different images from the left, right, and center simultaneously. Using proprietary parallax barrier on a standard TFT LCD, the screen splits light in three directions — left, right, and center — and displays three separate images on the same screen at the same time. So connect three computers to the LCD and from the center you see Windows, Linux from the left and MacOS from the right."

Laptops?

[bahwi (43111)]

Forget the privacy filter, Goatse on the left, Goatse on the right, and that commercial would be far more interesting!

Re:Laptops?

[icebrain (944107)]

Or conversely... I could look at porn and the people sitting to the left and right of me would see legitimate work... now just sit back and imagine the possibilities...

First, PLEASE perfect the two-image version

[by Anonymous Coward]

I want my left eye to see one image and my right eye to see another, with my brain merging the views for a true 3D effect.

Re:

[Janek Kozicki (722688)]

I want my left eye to see one image and my right eye to see another, with my brain merging the views for a true 3D effect.

good idea, you shouldn't post this as AC.

Re:Laptops?

[ElephanTS (624421)]

are you saying that porn is illegitimate work? That's a bastard.

Re:Laptops?

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

...giving you room to stretch out a bit.

Never, I repeat, NEVER, use that phrase whem making a reference to goatse...

Very fancy - BUT

[grims (602269)]

This is all very fancy, but wont viewing from sides reduce the surface amount you are watching? A 1024x768 from front wont be the same at 45 degree angle - loss of resolution - and compressed faces/picture etc.? How is that solved?

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[jacobw (975909)]

According to Sharp's PR [newlaunches.com], one possible use is as a dashboard display in your car:

So while driving you can see the GPS navigation your kid at the backseat can enjoy Ace Combat on his PS2 while your wife in the passenger seat checks out tourist sites and restaurants all in full-screen view.

That makes a certain amount of sense to me; with viewers essentially strapped in place, you can make sure everybody sees exactly the perspective they're supposed to. Also, in those circumstances, you aren't going to demand especially high resolution--as long as you can make out the information presented, you're OK. (Admittedly, the kid in the backseat playing on his PS2 might want better resolution, but that's his problem. In my day, if we wanted to play PS2, we had to actually get out of our car and walk inside.)

They also mention the possibility of using it for displaying multiple ads in public, so that the ad you see varies depending on whether you are coming ("You're just a few feet away from Joe's Cafe!") or going ("Turn around! You just missed the best restaurant in town!").

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[cHALiTO (101461)]

Depending on the relative price of the thing, you could also use it to have 3 monitors by placing 2 mirrors instead of actually buying 3 monitors. Assuming one of these could be cheaper than 3 normal monitors, you place it in front of you, then place an attacheable mirror at each side, and bang! 3-head fraging!! ;)

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[HTH NE1 (675604)]

And getting the system to render the left and right views mirror-imaged so they come out correctly in the attached mirrors is just a software problem.

Actually, I'd be surprised if they didn't already sell privacy barriers for laptops that double as screen protectors when the laptop is closed, with a bonus panel for the top to cut down on glare from overhead lighting. The closest I've found is this laptop hood [dpreview.com] (scroll down) that folds like those collapsible windshield sunscreens.

You know, if they made them in yellow, you'd look like you're about to be eaten by a Pac-Man.

(The ones for camera LCD screens will make you look like you're pointing it the wrong way.)

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[SilentOneNCW (943611)]

Is no one at all even remotely worried that this hypothetical situation includes all three people in a vehicle looking at a display instead of the road?

Re:Very fancy - BUT

[0racle (667029)]

Magic

Re:

[dk-software-engineer (980441)]

This is all very fancy, but wont viewing from sides reduce the surface amount you are watching?

You can easily have 5 people watching the same screen without worrying about perspective. I'm more worried about the amount of pixels. To make 3 pictures, only 1/3 of the pixels will be used in each picture. You'll need a killer resolution to make 3 nice pictures this way.

multi what?

[tacocat (527354)]

I thought everyone wanted to have a system with multiple screens supporting the same desktop, not one screen supporting multiple desktops. I don't see the advantage of this over a nice KVM.

Re:

[prefect42 (141309)]

Their previous two angle system was good for auto-stereo applications, since there's no need for glasses. A three angle screen makes for a good switchable privacy screen.

The application was in TFA

[C10H14N2 (640033)]

"So while driving you can see the GPS navigation your kid at the backseat can enjoy Ace Combat on his PS2 while your wife in the passenger seat checks out tourist sites and restaurants all in full-screen view."

In that specific circumstance, it makes a great deal of sense as you have limited space, predictable viewing locations and a fairly small number of reasonable applications, few of which require full UXGA resolution and practically none of which require the full refresh available. When gfx hardware rou

Now all we need....

[andphi (899406)]

Is a user with three sets of eyes.

Great for work

[theantipop (803016)]

Development apps when viewed from the left, debugging processes when viewed from the right, and Slashdot in the middle. You'd appear like the hardest working employee ever.

Great, but...

[SheeEttin (899897)]

This is great, but unless you want to have your computer emulate three, you're using three computers/other video sources to display the image. do you really want three people crowding around an LCD, each with their own keyboard, mouse, etc.? And what about brightness, contrast, color, etc.? Does it display different versions of that?

All in all, it's not going to be useful for interactive use.

Re:

[Zenaku (821866)]

I think everyone is missing the point assuming that the LCD would be used as a computer monitor, displaying computer tasks. More likely it would be used as a television, where Dad watches football from the recliner while Little Timmy watches the latest Pixar flick from the couch. (Wireless headphones required, of course.

I personally can't imagine that there is a huge need for this, but for those people who want that sort of thing, it would beat the hell out of Picture in Picture. . .

The Hexible

[SomeoneGotMyNick (200685)]

do you really want three people crowding around an LCD, each with their own keyboard, mouse, etc.?

As if cubicles aren't small enough, now PHB's can gather six workers on a hex shaped table (three to a side) where each user shares the screen with two others. The only perceivable wall dividing anything now would be the one splitting the two halves of the hexagon.

What's next, pizza slice shaped post-it notes to fit comfortably within the confines of the hexlet table?

Painful to look at?

[johndoe42 (179131)]

I played with a Sharp 3D laptop last summer (http://www.sharp3d.com/ [sharp3d.com]), and it was cool but it caused a lot of eyestrain, not to mention halving the usable resolution. This sounds like almost the same technology, and I imagine it won't be any easier on the eyes.

missing the point?

[MrTester (860336)]

Having different computers for each image was the submitters idea. It does not have to be the whole point of it.

I can think of several uses:
1) If you use only 2 of the images and change the angles, each eye could be getting a different image. Instant 3D. Nice.
2) This could be a first step if in later generations you can get more images. Imagine actually being able to look around things on your screen without having to manipulate the object with a mouse and keyboard.

Re:

[Dun Malg (230075)]

1) If you use only 2 of the images and change the angles, each eye could be getting a different image. Instant 3D. Nice.

Ugh. Not really nice. For 3D to work you need two images. There is a dividing line in space between the two images. In order for each eye to see a different image, that dividing line must fall between your eyes. You now have only an inch or so of allowable lateral head movement. I challenge you so sit at your desk without moving your head more than an inch left or right for any significan

as a father of two small children

[way2trivial (601132)]

I would point out- you all missed the OBVIOUS application
my car has a rear dvd player, with wireless headphones for the kids

imagine if they could watch their own programs-- their angle of view/location in the back seat
is vey quantifiable (if they aren't killing each other)
and if there is a third person in the middle-- voila!

Re:

[6Yankee (597075)]

And in the front, the passenger could get a DVD while the driver gets boring stuff like fuel consumption, speed, etc.

Re:

[elgatozorbas (783538)]

An even more obvious application: individual gameplay on a single screen.

Better use

[VincenzoRomano (881055)]

As I only have two hands and two eyes, I prefere to be able to see the Microsoft BSOD [wikipedia.org] from three different perspectives.

In other news

[teslar (706653)]

Companies across the globe increase the number of workers per cubicle to three.

Re:

[ronanbear (924575)]

Funny!?

I thought that was insightful although I had been thinking that internet cafes might have been better customers for really squeezing people in.

MacOS on the right?!

[adenied (120700)]

Oh sure, put MacOS on the right. This is a blatant attack on Mac users by Windows users to associate them with politics that many aren't familiar with. Come on everyone knows Mac users are liberal emo hippies. This is just insulting!

Ads

[debrain (29228)]

I'm shocked no-one has mentioned this yet. It's useful for ads. As you walk past an LCD your angle changes, thus exposing you to three distinct moving pictures. People are drawn to moving pictures - we're psychologically hard-wired for it. I suspect we will see these in the entrance to stores, at eye-level, because as we walk past the store, we will be drawn to the changing images and moving patterns. It's 10 seconds of attention that wasn't there before.

Imagine walking past a video-game store. As you walk past an LCD advertisement you see three different video games depending on your angle. Two of which may not be interesting. But that third, may. All done with one screen, saving money.

The compactness of one video-screen emphasizes the efficiency. Instead of having to avert our eyes to see another image we focus on the single screen, thus avoiding a clutter of LCD's, which has the school-of-fish impact, where we can't focus on any of them.

And, of course, everyone if fascinated with optical effects.

Re:

[mgblst (80109)]

Yeah, we were all kinda keeping it quiet deliberately. Now you have gone and blown it, and some dick will come along and probably implement this - thanks mate, thanks a lot!

Just what this world needs, more adds.

I think the monitor has uses, insted or virtual desktops, you only need to change you position to see another desktop.

Forget the flat screens

[Gruneun (261463)]

Picture this technology on a screen that's wrapped around the outside of a cylinder. You could have an information kiosk that has a different image for every person that's standing around it. If the images were that of a virtual tour guide, the guide could point things out in 360 degrees, yet it would still be tailored for each person looking at the screen.

Layout is all wrong

[OzPeter (195038)]

Hang on .. the lay out is all wrong. I thought that Linux was ultra left wing (bunch of no good commies trying to subvert the place), OS-X was just plain ol' left wing (long haired weirdos, but at least they *sell* their software) and Windows was Right Wing (Where do you want your goverment to go to today?)

So how do you get at least a four view version of the screen?

Replicate Three Dimensions

[airherbe (638417)]

Of course, it won't be long before a researcher uses this technology to create a *miniscule* parallax of a few degrees, each displaying the information your eyes would need to form a three-dimensional image.
The monitor could be calibrated for the distance you typically sit away from the monitor, and replicate what your eyes already do: glean 3D information from the difference in each eye's POV.

Think: Fully 3D FPS games.
Think: fully-immersive desktop UIs which can take advantage of that "z" dimension.

Auto-stereo displays

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

This already exists; the predecessor to this technology in TFA was a display that showed two images, one to each eye. I've never used it but according to some other comments from people who have, it was rather low resolution and caused a lot of eyestrain.

Makes sense, seeing as how with that kind of parallax, you'd need to keep your nose basically right along the midline axis of the screen; if you got even a few degrees off, you'd be seeing just the image designed for one eye (and at half the normal resoluti

Multi-angle dvd's

[falser (11170)]

This will certainly breathe new life into multi-angle porn DVD's.

Ultra Extreme Programming

[javaxjb (931766)]

It's clearly intended for ultra extreme programming: one wide desk and three keyboards. The programmers on the left and right write the code and the person in the center works on continous merges of the best ideas. A fourth back seat drivers continuously runs from left to right giving directions and asking why they aren't just checking the UML.

Just what cubicle warriors have been waiting for

[Rogerborg (306625)]

Work on the left side to throw off your boss, goat porn on the right side to throw off your co-workers, and alt.fan.star-trek.wesley-crusher.furry.erotica on the centre where nobody else will ever see it.

Re:Just what cubicle warriors have been waiting fo

[Stradenko (160417)]

You're mean. I couldn't find that on google groups.

Use your display at an angle?!

[Yvan256 (722131)]

So connect three computers to the LCD and from the center you see Windows, Linux from the left and MacOS from the right.

Yeah, because we'd all like to use our computers like if we were watching the screen of the computer next to us.

Besides, I think everyone would prefer to have huge display [digitaltigers.com] for a single computer rather than three computer with a single display. And with an intel Mac, you already can run OS X, Linux and Windows on the same computer.

I can imagine that some people might be able to come up with

see also...

[jjeffries (17675)]

this [slashdot.org]

Re:Cereal box kids toy cards

[jimstapleton (999106)]

you pretty much got my main thoughts right there. What worries me is the same problem as with the cerial box cards - there is some bleedover of the image from off angels. Would the same thing happen here? I can just see all the posters here who suggested goatse doing that, and then having the image of goatse subconciously burned into their mind because there is a very minor image bleed of it...

Re:

[aadvancedGIR (959466)]

Cars: GPS on the left, DVD on the right and kid's console on the front.

Re:

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist (906833)]

omg the "article" is only about 3 sentences long and still none of you even bothered.

>please tell me what this technology does for me?

no, go RTfuckingA you lazy bastard (that goes for the rest of you too).

Re:

[Hijacked Public (999535)]

While it would require more than 3 angles I can see this technology having an application in product modeling displays.

There are a number of ways to build a 360 view of a product out of still photos, but they are all intended to be viewed by one person sitting in front of a screen. With more viewing angles (and monitors) a similar display could be made that in intended for multiple viewers who are simply walking around.

I'm not sure what the application for that might be, but I'm just the photographer.

Re:

[Ant P. (974313)]

Or maybe it has more than one VGA input? What a shocking idea!

Re:Wooden pannels on my chevy

[Red Flayer (890720)]

Outstanding technology that still needs two wooden mirrors to work (for teh lazy necks among us).

Hogwash. One could easily use metal mirrors, or even glass.

Re:

[ronanbear (924575)]

3 screens would take up more space. Now if you had people sitting beside each other and they each had one of those screens then everyone could have 3 desktops. I look at the screen on my left and I see one of my desktops. The person on my left looks at my screen and sees one of their desktops.

Might take a bit of getting used to and the kind of firms that would want everyone using 3 screens probably also want very high quality. It would save a lot of space.