facebook rss twitter

Sony announces the Spatial Reality Display (SR Display)

by Mark Tyson on 16 October 2020, 10:11

Tags: Sony (NYSE:SNE)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaeozz

Add to My Vault: x

Sony has announced that it has started to ship its Spatial Reality Display (SR Display). This "goundbreaking" display is claimed to bring displayed objects to life, offering "an entirely new medium and experience for designers and creators everywhere". These displays make use of Sony's award-winning Eye-Sensing Light Field Display (ELFD) technology to present a 3D optical experience that is viewable to the naked eye. In other words it is a 3D display that doesn't require the viewer to don special spectacles or an HMD.

Video packed with awe-struck professional content creator sound bites

Watching the video above doesn't give one a great idea of the SR Display's appeal as one can't see it working as a third person on a common or garden computer monitor via a YouTube video. The film-makers, graphic artists, engineers and product designers featured in the video do their best to explain the SR Display's appeal but you will probably gain a better understanding, or imagining, of the viewing experience by digesting the description of the underlying technology.

Three main technologies come into play to create the SR Display as follows:

  • High-speed Vision Sensor - The SR Display is based an innovative high-speed vision sensor which follows exact eye position in space, on vertical, horizontal and depth axes simultaneously. The display monitors eye movement down to the millisecond, while rendering the image instantaneously, based on the location and position of the viewer's eyes. This allows creators to interact with their designs in a highly-realistic virtual, 3D environment, from any angle without glasses.3
  • Real-time Rendering Algorithm - Additionally, the SR Display leverages an original processing algorithm to display content in real-time. This allows the stereoscopic image to appear as smooth as real life, even if the viewer moves around.
  • Micro Optical Lens - The micro optical lens is positioned precisely over the stunning 15.6 inches (diag.) LCD display. This lens divides the image into the left and right eyes allowing for stereoscopic viewing with just the naked eye.

Sony shared a couple of testimonials in a press release about the debut of the SR Display. It appears that auto-makers and film studios have been making use of this first 15.6-inch SR Display product from Sony and value it for its "highly practical visual experience, where detailed colours, textures, contrasts and brightness fuse, to form a new medium for image". It is particularly useful in remote collaborations and helps bring designs to life. You can check through the full specs of the Sony SR Display here.

For those looking to bring the SR Display into their workflow, Sony has readied an SDK which is compatible with Unity and Unreal Engine.

The SR Display has a suggested retail price of US$4,999.99 and will be available to buy from next month. There are no pre-orders available as yet; at the time of writing the Sony direct order page includes a 'Notify Me' email alert button.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
One step closer….
Get this on a curved screen and seated cockpit games will be awesome!

I wonder if it's much better than a Nintendo 3DS type screen…..
Ttaskmaster
I wonder if it's much better than a Nintendo 3DS type screen…..

Thats my initial thought - I assume it will be, as the main issues with all parallax screens i've seen are viewing angles & brightness. I assume based on the press release here that the SR Display tech effectively addresses these issues so they may work better in a professional environment.

Looking forward to this making its way into the consumer worlds in a few years :)
I would like to see this myself, but as of now i am not clapping my hands and jumping of joy.
If I'm being honest, and I'm arguably the target market for this, it isn't all that impressive imo because it's still fundamentally a 2D image on a screen, it's not like you can walk around to the other side and see the back of the model.

It's basically a normal lcd display showing a 3D rendered image in ‘real time’ with an automatic ‘rotation’ of said image based on head/eye tracking, in the most simplistic way it's essentially a big screen version of a vr headset.

I've been able to do essentially the same thing they're ‘offering’ in most of my 3D packages, albeit without the eye tracking for years…. all you need is a dark room, a not overly bright lcd display (so it blends) and a dark 3D environment so the object looks like it's floating, then you can use something like a 3D connexion device to rotate around etc. You do need some beefy hardware to do photo realisism in real time though.

EDIT: Had a thought about Leap Motion tracking etc and got this idea in my head that this might already be possible using that and a normal display, at least in unity/unreal (basically same software Sony is saying to use)