The Graphics Lab at the University of Southern California has designed an easily reproducible, low-cost 3D display system with a form factor that offers a number of advantages for displaying 3D objects in 3D. The display is:

• autostereoscopic - requires no special viewing glasses
• omnidirectional - generates simultaneous views accomodating large numbers of viewers
• interactive - can update content at 200Hz

The system works by projecting high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning mirror. As the mirror turns, it reflects a different and accurate image to each potential viewer. Our rendering algorithm can recreate both virtual and real scenes with correct occlusion, horizontal and vertical perspective, and shading.

While flat electronic displays represent a majority of user experiences, it is important to realize that flat surfaces represent only a small portion of our physical world. Our real world is made of objects, in all their three-dimensional glory. The next generation of displays will begin to represent the physical world around us, but this progression will not succeed unless it is completely invisible to the user: no special glasses, no fuzzy pictures, and no small viewing zones.

pCubee is an interesting hardware prototype from the University of British Columbia's Human Communications Technology Lab. It uses some clever hacks to use current generation technology to present you with a sort of 3D "tank" that you can look into.

We have designed a personal cubic display that offers novel interaction techniques for static and dynamic 3D content. We arrange five small LCD panels into a box shape that is light and compact enough to be handheld. The display uses head-coupled perspective rendering and a real-time physics simulation engine to establish an interaction metaphor of having real objects inside a physical box that a user can hold and manipulate. We have demonstrated four types of interaction techniques with pCubee: viewing a static scene, navigating through a large landscape, playing with colliding objects inside a box, and stylus-based manipulation of objects.

(pCubee 3D 3D display box)