Pop-up digital tabletop: seamless integration of 2D and 3D visualizations in a tabletop environment

We propose a pop-up digital tabletop system that seamlessly integrates two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) representations of contents in a digital tabletop environment. By combining a digital tabletop display of 2D contents with a light-field display, we can visualize a part of the 2D contents in 3D. Users of our system can overview the contents in their 2D representation, then observe a detail of the contents in the 3D visualization. The feasibility of our system is demonstrated on two applications, one for browsing cityscapes, the other for viewing insect specimens.