Making a

DIY 3D monitor

Why ? Because I Can!

(Last Update 13th September 2019)

Background

I was randomly watching videos on Youtube and came across a video of the Looking Glass which really interested me. This is a display the shows a live 3D image. I was wowed by this tech and really want to have a play with it but didn't want to fork out the £600 for the basic model so decided to see if I could work out how it was done. After a little research I discovered the illusion of 3D was made using a Lenticular lense and an acrylic block in front of the screen. The clever bit is all done in the software so I decided to try and make my own version of this.

Project Diary

So you understand what I am trying to make here's a video demonstrating the Looking glass.

If you don't now what a lenticular lense is it is sheet of plastic with curved lenses which when when looking at it from one direction would will see a image and then when you look from another direction you will see a different image. You will have probably seen post cards or greeting cards using this type of illusion

Project Diary

First thing I needed to do was get hold of a lenticular lense. I only could find 1 supplier of lenses in the UK which was on Ebay

Once I received the lense my first task was to check is it would work on my monitor so I found some software someone had already created to test this and had a go of it. It wasn't perfect but it worked so I thought I will carry on

I knew how I was going to do it, but as I was relatively new to Unity would have to learn a lot of new skills.

With in a week I had learnt how to create custom shaders which I found is a new programming language in itself, and how to create a user interface.

I was really happy with the initial results even though there was a bit of ghosting which was due to me just holding the lenticular lense to the monitor

I managed to get hold of some 5mm acrylic so put this on top of the lenticular lense and the results were much better

13th September 2019

I am now using a 2nd extend monitor I salvaged which make life much easier. I managed to add 10 camera views via the shader. Each colour represents a different camera. When i adjust the setting on the UI I created the lenticular image is processed .

Issue: The lenticular image is quite blurred when I put the lense over the screen. I had a similar issue when I only used only 2 camera view and over this by adds a spacer black gap between each camera view. I am hoping this will solve the issue with the 10 camera view.

I hope to have the project finished within the next few weeks but I am pretty busy so may be delayed slightly

TASKS STILL TO DO

I still have plenty to do on this project but am away in Edinburgh for a week so when I get back will be continuing with the following:

Either get a 50mm thick acrylic block or use an number of thinner acrylic sheets to create a 50mm block.
Create user friendly interface and some demos
Create an Unity package

FUTURE IDEAS

Use the structure sensor so I create 3D videos and display on the monitor in 3D
Strip down a Monitor and turn it into a cylindrical display so I can make a holographic monitor

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