[pmbailey]

I did some research on the applications of micro optics and found that arrays of micro lenses can enable glasses-free 3D displays [0]. I haven't been able to find any recent articles about this effort, though. Anyone heard any news related to this or any other tech that micro optics enable?

[0] http://www.phonearena.com/news/Hitachi-unveils-4.5-inch-3D-d...

[gene-h]

It's glasses free as long as your head is in the right place. The nintendo 3Ds uses this tech.

Microlenses also enable stuff like light field cameras and light field displays. Particularly cool in this area is NVIDIA's near eye light field display[0].

However, for a applications like this you don't really need 3d printing, one can make microlenses for these systems with molding.

However, there is one application that might benefit from 3d printing micro optics. Augmented reality contact lenses[1]. You can't just put a bunch of LEDs on your eyeball and expect to see anything, you need optics to focus them. One could make microlenses as before, but now we can print an array of them that has a bunch of holes in it so your eye can breath. Alternatively, we can make a complicated weave like structure of light pipes with lenses on their ends that lead to LEDs on the periphery of the contact so that we don't have to worry about making transparent LEDs and wires.

[0] https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications... [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-realit...

[yurymik]

Isn't it how Nintendo 3DS autostereoscopic display works? The biggest downside is that view position is fixed and limited to single person, so it's not really viable for TVs or monitors.

[saturdaysaint]

Although Nintendo's "New" 3DS fixes this for a single user by tracking the viewer's viewing position/angle with a camera and adjusting the 3D accordingly.