Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has unveiled that its cube-shaped 3D display, “gCubik,” now comes with displays across all half dozen of its faces instead of half that amount as with its its predecessor. Just how huge of a development step this is? Well, the announcement was made at Interaction 2009, an symposium organized by the Information Processing Society of Japan, so you can figure out exactly how weighty this is. While the boffins at NICT have not bumped up the resolution to a high level, the whole point of this is to demonstrate the initial concept of “observing an 3D image from all sides, holding it in hand”.

The gCubik is actually a cubic display that is based on Integral Photography (IP), a special kind of technology that allows viewing of 3D images with nothing but the naked eye. This new model measures roughly 10cm across each side. Just to get an idea of how different this is from other 3D displays that makes the 3D image look as though it was outside the display, the gCubik is able to generate a 3D image that looks as if it is inside the cube. Not only that, whenever the gCubik is turned when one wants to view the image from different sides, even the sides or the bottom of the image can be viewed as well, all referencing to the point from where the image is viewed.

The original gCubik came with only three displays on an equal number of sides when it was launched last August, and this time round the display was reduced, where 3.5″ VGA (640 x 480 pixels) LCD panels were mounted on all six sides. Each 3D image on individual panels are able to change every 6.7 degrees, letting one view a grand total of 18 x 18 images in order for it to be smooth when viewed from various angles.

Source: Tech-On!