5.3 Integral Videography

Integral videography (IV) is an extension of integral imaging allowing video and interactive content to be viewed by several observers. It can work with just a flat panel screen with a lenticular in front, or with one or several projectors. It is true 3D or, in other words, a full parallax system. Integral videography may have its first applications in education, medical surgery, video conferencing, technical design, and entertainment long before full motion parallax TV broadcasting becomes feasible.

We start with the system in Figure 5.17 [21] which requires as basic components an LCD with a lenticular containing the full 3D information in the form of elemental images. The backlight of the LCD creates rays emanating from each lens, which reconstructs the light field in which the object is visible. This represents the virtual 3D object. Each lens emits five rays pertaining to the five images in Figure 5.18; this means the upper and lower, the left and right, as well as the center views. For this full parallax view the lenticular has to possess arrays of lenses in the horizontal and vertical directions as shown in Figure 3.16, corresponding to the elemental images arranged in these two directions. That way, 3D objects are perceived even if the display tilts or the viewer's head or position moves. Therefore the IV set is fit for hand-held use.