With the upcoming announcement of the 4th generation iPhone scheduled for release sometime in June or July of this year, a recent patent filing has revealed Apple is looking into ways to provide more richer, 3D interactive experiences with its future displays.
The patent entitled “Three-Dimensional Display System” which was originally filed by Apple on January 14, 2010 showed up at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week, and was today discovered by Apple-focused news blog @AppleInsider. The patent below shows how the system Apple is proposing might work.
Apple notes in the 18 page filing that it has recognised how popular 3D experiences can be with the general public, but note that currently the technology is flawed due to the silly eye-wear required to view these 3-Dimensional images.
“While these approaches have been generally successful,” the application says, “they have not met with widespread acceptance because observers generally do not like to wear equipment over their eyes. In addition, such approaches are impractical, and essentially unworkable, for projecting a 3D image to one or more casual passerby, to a group of collaborators, or to an entire audience such as when individual projects are desired.
Even when identical projections are presented, such situations have required different and relatively undeveloped technologies, such as conventional autostereoscopic displays. The positions of one or more observers are also tracked in real time so that the images that are being projected to the observers can be continually customized to each observer individually. The real time positional tracking of the observer(s) also enables 3D images having a realistic vertical as well as horizontal parallax.”
The patent also describes that the invention would use a traditional stereoscopic 3D display combined with what is interestingly described at a “realistic holographic 3D display experience.”
With so many of Apple’s mobile devices being touchscreen based, and little else in the way of tangible buttons, there’s really nothing stopping Apple, if it wanted to, bringing this screen technology to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the future, or even an existing line of Macintosh computer.
That said, as we’ve said before, the filing of these patents doesn’t necessarily mean we will see the technology or its implementation seen here, anytime soon.
[via @AppleInsider]
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