For comfortable viewing of a 3-D scene at various viewing angles, a display having a large tracking range for a variable viewer distance is required. A controllable light-influencing element deflects light in coarse steps in a viewer range. Within said steps, the light is deflected by a further controllable light-influencing element continuously or with fine gradation. The light modulation device is suitable in holographic or autostereoscopic displays for guiding the visibility ranges of the image information to be displayed so as to follow the eyes of the viewers.

A method of computing a hologram by determining the wavefronts at the approximate observer eye position that would be generated by a real version of an object to be reconstructed. In normal computer generated holograms, one determines the wavefronts needed to reconstruct an object; this is not done directly in the present invention. Instead, one determines the wavefronts at an observer window that would be generated by a real object located at the same position of the reconstructed object. One can then back-transforms these wavefronts to the hologram to determine how the hologram needs to be encoded to generate these wavefronts. A suitably encoded hologram can then generate a reconstruction of the three-dimensional scene that can be observed by placing one's eyes at the plane of the observer window and looking through the observer window.

An apparatus and method for processing a holographic image are disclosed. The apparatus calculates a first calculation result with respect to an image for the left eye and a first calculation result with respect to an image for the right eye and stores the results at different memory addresses of a storage. Thereafter, the apparatus calculates values of a waveform of light to be modulated by a spatial light modulator by performing a second calculation that uses all of the first calculation results stored in the storage. An image window of the image for the left eye and an image window of the image for the right eye are spatially separated from each other by the apparatus in a viewing window of a hologram image reproduced via the spatial light modulator.

A floating image display device includes a floating-image-formation optical system that forms an image at an opening part as a floating image from an image displayed on an image display unit, an authentication unit that judges whether or not a subject passing through the opening part is an authorized subject, and an image control unit that makes the image display unit switch contents of the image when the subject is judged as the authorized subject. The floating-image-formation optical system can include a beam splitter and a retroreflective sheet. Another floating image display device includes an image display unit that displays a first image, a floating-image-formation optical system that forms an image at an opening part as a floating image from the first image, and an image projection unit that projects a second image onto a subject moving through the floating image when the subject passes through the opening part.

A floating image display device includes an image display unit that displays a display image based on a first image signal, a floating-image-formation optical system that forms an image in air as a floating image from the display image, a guide image display unit that displays a guide image based on a second image signal nearby the floating image to be visually recognized on the same plane as the floating image as viewed from a viewer, and an image control unit that supplies the first image signal and the second image signal respectively to the image display unit and the guide image display unit. The image control unit supplies an image signal as the second image signal to the guide image display unit after the image signal undergoes at least one of a process of adding blurring, a process of lowering luminance and a process of lowering contrast.

A hologram image display apparatus includes an illumination optical system that emits an illumination light beam wavefront and a spatial light modulator having a light modulation area that converts the illumination light beam wavefront by diffraction to a display light beam wavefront and displays a virtual image. The spatial light modulator forms the display light beam wavefront by modulating the illumination light beam wavefront so that at least a portion of a regular light ray group configuring the display light beam wavefront is a light ray group with a diffraction angle having an absolute value greater than the ±first-order diffraction angle by the spatial light modulator, and another portion of the regular light ray group is a light ray group with a diffraction angle having an absolute value of the ±first-order diffraction angle or less by the spatial light modulator.

Provided is a holographic display apparatus including a light source configured to emit light, a spatial light modulator configured to form a hologram pattern to modulate the light incident thereon and reproduce a hologram image, the spatial light modulator including a plurality of display pixels that are arranged two-dimensionally, and an optical element provided opposite a light incidence surface of the spatial light modulator or a light exit surface of the spatial light modulator, the optical element including an array of a plurality of light transmission patterns that are arranged irregularly.

A light filed (LF) display system for displaying holographic content to viewers in an amusement park (e.g., as part of an amusement park ride). The LF display system in an amusement park includes LF display modules tiled together to form an array of LF modules. In some embodiments, the LF display system includes a tracking system and/or a viewer profiling module. The tracking system and viewer profiling module can monitor and store characteristics of viewers on the amusement park ride, a viewer profile describing a viewer, and/or responses of viewers to the holographic content during the amusement park ride. The holographic content created for display on an amusement park ride can be based on any of the monitored or stored information.

There is provided a method of projection using an optical element (502,602) having spatially variant optical power. The method comprises combining Fourier domain data representative of a 2D image with Fourier domain data having a first lensing effect (604a) to produce first holographic data. Light is spatially modulated (504,603a) with the first holographic data to form a first spatially modulated light beam. The first spatially modulated light beam is redirected using the optical element (502,602) by illuminating a first region (607) of the optical element (602) with the first spatially modulated beam. The first lensing effect (604a) compensates for the optical power of the optical element in the first region (607). Advantageous embodiments relate to a head-up display for a vehicle using the vehicle windscreen (502,602) as an optical element to redirect light to the viewer (505,609).

Embodiments that relate to displaying holographic keyboard and hand images in a holographic environment are provided. In one embodiment depth information of an actual position of a user's hand is received. Using the depth information, a holographic hand image representing the user's hand is displayed in a virtual hand plane in the holographic environment. In response to receiving a keyboard activation input from the user and using the depth information, the holographic keyboard image is adaptively displayed in a virtual keyboard plane in the holographic environment at a virtual distance under the holographic hand image representing the user's hand.