Out-of-screen 3D display with large depth of field and extended screen range

An out-of-screen 3D display with large depth of field (DOF) and extended screen range is proposed. The proposed 3D display consists of a 2D display panel, a scene barrier, a parallax barrier, and a semi-reflective semi-transparent mirror (SRSTM). The 2D display panel simultaneously provides both on-screen and out-of-screen scenes. The scene barrier directs the images of on-screen and out-of-screen scenes in different directions. The on-screen scene can be viewed directly, while the out-of-screen scene is reflected by the SRSTM, allowing it to appear beyond the physical screen and seamlessly integrate with the on-screen scene. The parallax barrier projects the parallax images of both on-screen and out-of-screen scenes to their corresponding views, thereby achieving 3D display. The on-screen and out-of-screen images form a T-shaped DOF distribution within the 3D display system, effectively extending both the depth range and screen range beyond that of conventional stereoscopic displays. This characteristic makes the proposed 3D display particularly suitable for applications requiring a large DOF, such as ground-level visualization. A prototype was developed to verify the principle, and a clear DOF of 293 mm in the front-to-back direction and 161 mm in the up-down direction was achieved. The experimental results show that the proposed 3D display effectively extends the depth range and screen range.