Optics: image projectors – Relief illusion
Patent
1994-04-11
1996-09-17
Dowling, William C.
Optics: image projectors
Relief illusion
359478, G03B 3500
Patent
active
055561845
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to pictures in general. The more specific field is pictures in three and four dimensions i.e. the variations of the three dimensional pictures in time both for still & moving objects.
BACKGROUND ART
Ever since man opened eyes he had the desire to reproduce reality in the form of drawings and pictures. The invention of photography created a new form of life. There is no home or office, road or a subway that is not filled with pictures. All based on the concepts of a photograph. Everybody has accepted that pictures are projection of reality onto a screen. However all such pictures are based on a single viewpoint. Naturally for a being who looks at the reality with two eyes such pictures cannot reflect the reality as he sees it. Re-creation of reality i.e. the three dimensional pictures has been a continuing subject for inventors in the past hundred and fifty years. The original stereoscopes handled this by providing two different images in front of each eye thereby giving the viewer the feel of seeing different images with each eye and hence the illusion of three dimensionality of the picture. The requirement of having to produce a right eye and a left eye picture and the desirability to have only one screen has given rise to many ingenious methods and instruments. These days the most popular technique is projecting two pictures onto a screen in two different colours and then requiring the viewer to wear glasses with complimentary coloured lenses on each eye. The effect is that each eye would see only one of the pictures, hence giving the viewer the required illusion. This technique is developed to provide means of seeing in colour (for examples see The British Journal of photography 17th Jan. 1991, page 18 or U.S. Pat. No 3,712,199 of 1973 or U.S. Pat. No 4,480,893 of 1984). A similar version of this technique is to use polarised lenses and polarised pictures instead of using complimentary colours. Another old idea which keeps getting reborn is lenticular screens (see for example European patent no EP 0384768 A3 of 1990). The clear advantage of such method is that the viewer does not need to wear special tools for viewing. The desirability of not wearing special tools has in itself created other lines of inventiveness. One such method is to place the right and left eye views side by side, however on the reverse side. The viewer by looking at the two pictures in cross eyed fashion can match the two pictures in a different distance than the screen and gets the three dimensionality illusion. The disadvantage of such method is that it puts too much strain on the eye muscles and the useful part of the view becomes considerably smaller than the screen. Some effort has been put on trying to mix such left and right views (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,135,502 of 1992). In this method repeated parallel patterns are created so that the right eye view shares some of the items of the left eye view. When the viewer makes himself cross eyed, distinct patterns are matched as if they were the same item and the viewer sees the pattern in a different position than the screen. This method is of limited use as it can only be used for artificial repeated patterns.
By far the most interesting technique for producing a three dimensional image which does not require special viewing instrument has been the idea of holograms. A hologram by creating wave-fronts produces the illusion of the object itself. With more complicated holograms e.g. a composite hologram, you may even walk around the hologram and view the object from all sides. Holograms however have an inherent problem when it comes to colours. The complication of producing such images and the technical requirements are so demanding that despite much research, all attempts to put movement and stability to the pictures are not properly achieved and there is not yet an acceptable commercial production available.
The basis of all these developments is creation of two different images one for each eye essentially the same as the origin
REFERENCES:
patent: 4815819 (1989-03-01), Mayhew et al.
patent: 4911530 (1990-03-01), Lo
patent: 5270751 (1993-12-01), Christian
patent: 5365370 (1994-11-01), Hodgins
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