High spatial-angular resolution light-field display enabled by subpixel-demultiplexing viewpoint-interleaving encoding and full-field dual-plane lens optimization

Abstract High-clarity and high-fidelity three-dimensional (3D) displays are widely regarded as the ultimate pursuit of display technology. For light-field displays (LFDs), these two visual metrics are respectively governed by the system's spatial and angular resolutions, which are fundamentally constrained by the intrinsic space-bandwidth product of two-dimensional (2D) display panels. The inherent trade-off between these two resolutions dictates that an improvement in angular resolution typically comes at the expense of spatial resolution, posing a long-standing challenge to the realization of high-performance 3D displays. To address this challenge, we propose a subpixel-demultiplexing viewpoint-interleaving encoding (SVE) method and a full-field dual-plane lens optimization (FDLO) approach to jointly realize a high spatial-angular resolution LFD. On the software algorithm end, the SVE method pre-encodes the input light-field images through two dedicated assignment strategies. This enables the multiplexed panel to yield an aliasing-free subpixel array of 4320(H) × 3840(V), along with an effective information density of 1612 subpixels per inch (SPI) horizontally and 806 SPI vertically. Furthermore, this method incorporates an odd–even viewpoint interleaving design in the vertical direction to enhance the parallax smoothness, thereby potentially improving visual comfort across the full field of view (FOV). On the optical hardware end, the FDLO approach simultaneously minimizes the spot sizes throughout the entire FOV at both the central depth plane and the viewing plane. This effectively suppresses voxel expansion and viewpoint spreading, achieving high spatial and angular resolutions. To verify the reliability of the proposed methods, a 5.5-inch LFD prototype was developed. Experimental results demonstrate that the prototype delivers high-clarity and high-fidelity 3D imaging with smooth motion parallax, achieving high spatial resolutions of 2.67 lp/mm (horizontal) and 2.99 lp/mm (vertical), alongside a high angular resolution of 1.45 viewpoint images per degree (VIPD).