A diffuser with large horizontal and vertical diffusion angle is a key component for the screen of a projection display. On the other hand, an autostereoscopic projection display needs a small horizontally diffused and large vertically diffused diffuser. A commercial LSD composed of cylindrical-based grains can be used to meet this requirement. Nevertheless, as the diffused intensity profile of a LSD is Gaussian-like, a LSD in many cases can cause either ghost imaging or black stripes while applied to the screen of autostereoscopic displays. Lenticular plates can produce a near flat-top diffusing profile when the divergence angle is small. For example, a lenticular plate with a 5 degrees divergence can be shown in theory to have only a 2.1 percent non-uniformity. However, as the curvature of the lenticular is very small, it becomes very difficult to fabricate such a lenticular plate. This paper reports a novel approach to modify a lenticular plate that was originally with a large divergence angle to a plate with a desired smaller divergence angle, without destroying the surface quality and maintaining good uniformity. The lenticular plate fabricated by using this approach was used as a screen diffuser of a projection-based autostereoscopic display, and the luminance of the screen viewed from different angles was measured.

Date Published: 3 May 2000
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 3957, Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems VII, (3 May 2000); doi: 10.1117/12.384437

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3957:
Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems VII
John O. Merritt; Mark T. Bolas; Stephen A. Benton; Andrew J. Woods; Mark T. Bolas, Editor(s)