Autostereoscopic Dynamic Simulation System Using Integral Photography on a Tablet PC

In this paper, we propose a novel autostereoscopic dynamic simulation system in which a tablet PC and a fly’s eye lens are used. Dynamic simulation, which helps inexperienced physics students to understand the motion of objects intuitively, is one of the applications suitable for smartphones and tablet PCs. The reason is that an object displayed on the LCD can be moved toward a lower position by simply tilting the tablet as if real gravity were applied. We introduced integral photography (IP) to enhance the sense of reality. Unlike many other autostereoscopic systems, IP can produce not only horizontal but also vertical parallax. Therefore, a stereoscopic view is possible from any direction when users look down on an almost flat LCD from above. Although the high development costs of tailor-made fly’s eye lens were reduced with the emergence of the extended fractional view (EFV) method, using the EFV method involves certain problems. Because the relative position of the object and the fly’s eye lens changes depending on the position of the object, the IP image of the object cannot remain the same over an entire screen. We solved this problem by choosing the optimal IP image among numerous IP images created in advance. Experimental results showed that the ball looked as though it were moving smoothly.