Patent ID: 8189037

Claim:
A system for creating a 3D panoramic projected image, comprising: a plurality of projectors along a line where the projector at a starting end of said line is a starting projector and the projector at the opposite end of said line is an ending projector, said plurality of projectors defining a projection baseline, each projector in said plurality of projectors provides a shifted view of a common subject from a different view angle; a screen having a width wider than the field-of-view any individual projector in said plurality of projectors; wherein: the projectors are arranged so that each projector that lies between the starting projector and the ending projector provides a first image that is fully covered on said screen with partial image overlaps from other projected images from more than one of said plurality of projectors; the projected images from each adjacent projector along said projection baseline are shifted along a common direction on said screen; said first image forms a stereo-pair-of-images with any of the other projected images that has an overlapping region with it to create a local 3D projected image; said screen is a retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen having a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension, a retro-reflective layer for reflecting light rays at substantially their incident angle; and a vertical light diffusion screen for receiving each reflected image from the retro-reflective layer and providing high image diffusion along said vertical dimension and minimal diffusion along said horizontal dimension so as to produce a distinct viewing window elongated along said vertical dimension for each reflected image; said plurality of projectors are generally arranged along the horizontal dimension and positioned to project onto said retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen; the width of the vertical slit of each viewing window corresponding to a given projector is a function of the horizontal diffusion angle of the retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen, the distance from the retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen to the given projector, and the aperture size of the given projector's projection lens, said function defining the following relation for the width of the vertical slit: W = D a + 2 · Z p · tan ⁡ ( ϖ 2 ) , where W is the width of the vertical slit; D a is the aperture size of the given projector's projection lens; Z p is the distance from the projector to the retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen; and ω is the horizontal diffusion angle of the retro-reflective vertical light diffusion screen.