Holography, light-field technology combo could deliver practical 3-D displays

While most interaction with digital content is still constrained to keyboards and 2-D touch panels, augmented and virtually reality (AR/VR) technologies promise ever more freedom from these limitations.

AR/VR devices can have their own drawbacks, such as a tendency to induce visual motion sickness or other visual disturbances withprolongedusage due to their stereoscopy or auto-stereoscopy based designs. One promising solution is to adapt holography or light field technology into the devices instead. This, however, requires additional optics that would increase the size, weight, and cost of these devices—challenges that have so far prevented these devices from achieving commercial success.

Now, a group of researchers in Japan and Belgium has begun to explore a combination of holography and light field technologies as a way to reduce the size and cost of more people-friendly AR/VR devices. They will present their work during The Optical Society's (OSA) Frontiers in Optics meeting, 16-20 September, in Washington, D.C. One of the themes of the meeting is virtual reality and augmented vision, with both a visionary speaker and a series of invited talks on those subjects.