Glasses-free 3D technologies have certainly developed forward in the past few years, with the Nintendo 3DS being one of the more famous champions of such technology, but those can be painful on some eyes after a few hours of usage. University of California researchers have managed to come up with a prototype device that enables folks who have vision problems to forget about wearing their prescription eyeglasses and contact lenses whenever working on standard 2D computer displays, as the displays are “smart” enough to compensate for the viewer’s visual impairment.
Just how does this vision-correcting matrix work? Currently in a prototype stage, it will be made up of a screen that has been printed with a matrix of pinholes, measuring all of just 75 microns in diameter while being separated by gaps that are 390 microns wide. The printed pinhole screen will be inserted between a couple of layers of clear acrylic, before it is attached to an iPod display. An algorithm will consider a person’s eyeglasses prescription, letting the screen perform the relevant compensation through intensity adjustment as well as direction of the light emitted from individual screen pixels. [Press Release]