MIT Media Lab researchers propose a new design for glasses-free multiperspective 3D video-- a display they hope will provide a lower-cost alternative to holographic video.
"Multiperspective" 3D is different from the stereoscopic 3D we know and love, since it displays different perspectives on objects as the viewer moves around, hologram-style.
The MIT design currently exists as a prototype built using off-the-shelf components. It consists of two liquid-crystal modulators (basically tiny LCDs) set between a light source and lens. The first modulator acts as a bank of light emitters, since it has patterns of light and dark allowing it to pass light to the second modulator only at particular angles. The pattern combination the two modulators display ensures viewers see slightly different images from different angles.