3D Movie Without the Glasses

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Today's 3-D movies are far more spectacular than the first ones screened more than 50 years ago, but watching them--both at the movie theater and at home--still means donning a pair of dorky, oversized glasses. Now a new type of lens developed by researchers in Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group could help make glasses-free 3-D displays more practical.

The new lens, which is thinner at the bottom than at the top, steers light to a viewer's eyes by switching light-emitting diodes along its bottom edge on and off. Combined with a backlight, this makes it possible to show different images to different viewers, or to create a stereoscopic (3-D) effect by presenting different images to a person's left and right eye. "What's so special about this lens is that it allows us to control where the light goes," says Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group.

Further Reading:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25524/?a=f