Fragment from the patent showing different points of view of the object needed for the 3D effect
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Expanding the experience and multimedia capabilities designed for the Apple Vision Pro headset, Apple is developing technology that allows your MacBook Pro or desktop monitor to display a 3D environment without special glasses.
Perhaps it's spatial calculations, or maybe it just looks that way. For the future MacBook Pro Studio Display — or even, incredibly, an Apple Watch — may come with a flat screen that displays 3D images.
Perhaps this is exactly what we have now with the 3D functions of Apple Vision Pro. However, in this case, the 3D depth effect is created by sending slightly different images to the displays in front of people's left and right eyes.
In a recently published patent application, Apple wants to do the same without a headset. This way, you can open the lid of your MacBook Pro or turn on the Pro Display XDR and they will display true 3D images.
The new patent application, “Displays with Selective Pixel Brightness Adjustment,” goes out of its way to say that “there are many ways to implement a stereoscopic [3D] display.” However, the main focus is on the use of a biconvex display.
A lenticular display shows and hides different parts of the image depending on the user's viewing angle. The effect is that when the user moves their head or changes their gaze, they see parallax-like changes and therefore the image appears three-dimensional.
“For example, the viewer's left eye may receive a first two-dimensional image, and the viewer's right eye may receive a second, different two-dimensional image,” the patent states. “The viewer perceives these two different two-dimensional images as one three-dimensional image.”
Excerpt from a patent application showing one system of directing light at the user's eyes to create a three-dimensional effect
This is not necessarily the case when what is shown displays that have already been created in 3D. Instead, multiple lenticular lenses may be arranged on a conventional flat panel display.
“A lenticular lens can cover many pixels of the same color,” says Apple, “can cover many pixels, each of which has a different color, or can cover many pixels, with some pixels being the same.” color and some pixels have different colors, etc.”
So the patent application covers a wide range of proposals, but essentially the idea is to provide 3D imaging for those displays we all use on our desks or MacBook screens. This would give us as individual users an extra dimension.
As always, a patent application is about how something can be achieved, not why or what the technology will actually do. But it's easy to see how Apple Maps, for example, would be improved with more realistic 3D images than it currently has.
Most of the patent applications are focused on the idea of transforming our displays for ourselves, that is, for each user. But Apple is hinting that we often have to show other people what we're working on.
“A stereoscopic display… may have one optimal viewing position (eg, one viewing position in which the display images are perceived as three-dimensional),” the patent application states. “[However, it] may have two or more optimal viewing positions (e.g., two or more viewing positions at which the display images are perceived as three-dimensional).”
If it works as described, and if this is one of the patent applications that will eventually lead to a product, then this is how every display will eventually work. Even for users who are not interested in creating 3D images and do not use them to create 3D images, documents and folders may actually end up on top of each other.
This will mean that Apple's spatial computing idea can come to us all and bring real benefits even without the Apple Vision Pro headset.
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