A method for generating video holograms in real time for a holographic playback device comprising at least one light modulator means, into which a scene divided into object points is encoded as an entire hologram and can be seen as a reconstruction from a visibility region, which is located within a periodicity interval of the reconstruction of the video hologram, the visibility region defining a subhologram together with each object point of the scene to be reconstructed, and the entire hologram being generated from a superposition of contributions of subholograms, is characterized in that for each object point the contributions of the subholograms in the entire reconstruction of the scene can be determined from at least one look-up table.

A holographic display and a method, performed by the holographic display, of forming a holographic image are disclosed. The holographic display includes an electrically addressable spatial light modulator (EASLM); a diffractive optical element (DOE) mask array arranged on the EASLM; and a controller configured to operate the holographic display to form a hologram image, wherein the controller is further configured to address the EASLM to backlight the DOE mask array required to form a set of hologram image voxels by turning on a corresponding EASLM pixel.

A phase modulation structure includes a recording surface including phase angle recording regions in a plurality of calculated element regions corresponding to reconstruction points of an image on a one-to-one basis, each phase angle recording region being formed of a plurality of unit blocks in each of which a phase angle is recorded, the phase angle being calculated based on a phase that is a sum of a plurality of phases of light from the corresponding reconstruction points; and a representative area that is one of divisions of the calculated element region, the representative area being obtained by radially dividing the calculated element region centered on a point on the calculated element region, the point being obtained by extending a normal line from the corresponding reconstruction point to the calculated element region on the recording surface.

An apparatus and a method for optimized calculation of 2D sub-holograms for object points of a three-dimensional scene and a pipeline for real-time calculation of holograms are provided. The invention shortens the calculation time of a hologram for representing a three-dimensional scene and/or to reduce the calculation complexity of such a hologram. This is achieved by a 2D sub-hologram of an object point, which has image elements of the spatial light modulator, comprises a half 1D sub-hologram, where the radius of each image element is determined and each image element of the 2D sub-hologram is fixedly assigned to at least one image element of the half 1D sub-hologram with identical or similar radius by way of an electronic circuit, by a method for encoding a hologram, and by a pipeline on the basis of FPGA and/or ASIC.

Systems and method disclosed herein include, among other features, receiving an image for display within a display area of a display system, determining a first image component of the image, calculating a hologram of the image, displaying the hologram on a display device and spatially modulating light in accordance with the displayed hologram, and propagating the spatially modulated light through a pupil expander arranged to provide a plurality of different light propagation paths for the spatially modulated light from the display device to the viewing area, wherein each light propagation path corresponds to a respective continuous region of the image owing to the angular distribution of light from the hologram.

A hologram that includes a formation layer and a reflection layer that are laminated. The formation layer has an optical phase modulation structure on a first interface in contact with the reflection layer. When reference light emitted from a point light source enters through a second interface different from the first interface of the formation layer, the entirety or part of an image to be reconstructed by the optical phase modulation structure is reconstructed as spatial information on the point light source side relative to the second interface.

Methods, apparatus, devices, and systems for three-dimensional (3D) displaying objects are provided. In one aspect, a method includes obtaining data including respective primitive data for primitives corresponding to an object, determining an electromagnetic (EM) field contribution to each element of a display for each of the primitives by calculating an EM field propagation from the primitive to the element, generating a sum of the EM field contributions from the primitives for each of the elements, transmitting to each of the elements a respective control signal for modulating at least one property of the element based on the sum of the EM field contributions, and transmitting a timing control signal to an illuminator to activate the illuminator to illuminate light on the display, such that the light is caused by the modulated elements of the display to form a volumetric light field corresponding to the object.

A holographic system comprises an image processor, a hologram calculator and a display driver. The image processor is arranged to determine first and second secondary images by sampling the pixel values of a primary image at a regular array of sampling positions. The hologram calculator is arranged to determine a hologram of each secondary image. The display driver is arranged to display each hologram in rapid succession on a display device, first and second times, so as to reconstruct each secondary image from the respective hologram such that respective first and second arrays of image pixels corresponding to the primary image are perceivable. Image pixels of the reconstruction of the second secondary image are interposed between image pixels of the reconstruction of the first secondary image in the first direction.

A method of generating a hologram includes receiving an input image representing a 3D object, defining a first phase value for a first pixel data such that spatio-temporally identical pixels with respect to the input image have the same phase, defining a second phase value for a second pixel data such that spatio-temporally identical pixels with respect to the input image have the same phase, and generating a multi-view hologram using the first phase value and the second phase value.

An optical system and a method of calculating a hologram of a virtual image for the optical system is described. The optical system comprises a display device arranged to display the hologram and a waveguide arranged to replicate the hologram. The method comprises determining a sub-hologram of a virtual image point within an area defined by straight line paths from the virtual image point to the perimeter of an entrance pupil of a viewer. The area comprises at least part of a virtual replica of the display device formed by the waveguide.