A directional backlight is disclosed. The directional backlight has a directional backplane that has a plurality of directional pixels to scatter a plurality of input planar lightbeams into a plurality of directional lightbeams. Each directional lightbeam has a direction and angular spread controlled by characteristics of a directional pixel in the plurality of directional pixels. A modulation layer having a plurality of modulators modulates the plurality of directional lightbeams. The directional backlight can be used to generate a 3D image with multiple views by specifying the characteristics of the directional pixels in the directional backplane.
