3d display apparatus

A display apparatus for enabling a user to experience a 3D perception in a plurality of directional viewing regions when visual information is presented by the display apparatus, the display apparatus comprising:

• an image forming unit that includes a two-dimensional array of image subpixels arranged to emit light for presenting associated visual information, and
• an optical system that includes an array of diffractive optical elements associated with respective ones of the array of image subpixels,
• each diffractive optical element being arranged to diffract light from the associated image subpixel into a diffraction pattern including a plurality of diffraction orders to provide the visual information from the associated image subpixel to a plurality of directional viewing regions associated with the plurality of diffraction orders, so as to effectively duplicate the visual information presented by the associated subpixel to each of the plurality of directional viewing regions,
• the array of diffractive optical elements including a plurality of subsets of diffractive optical elements,
• the diffractive optical elements of each subset of diffractive optical elements being arranged to provide the diffraction patterns from the diffractive optical elements of the subset with an associated predetermined subset direction,
• the predetermined subset directions of different subsets of diffractive optical elements being different so as to enable separation of visual information to be presented to the left eye of the user from visual information to be presented to the right eye of the user to enable the user to view with 3D perception,
• the array of diffractive optical elements thus being arranged to provide the visual information from the image subpixels associated with the diffractive optical elements of the different subsets to each of the directional viewing regions at the associated predetermined different subset directions within each of the plurality of directional viewing regions so as to enable the user to view with 3D perception in each of the plurality of directional viewing regions.