This research aims to develop an auto-stereoscopic display, which satisfies the conditions required for practical use, such as, high resolution and large image size comparable to ordinary display devices for television, arbitrary viewing position, multiple viewer availability, suppression of nonuniform luminance distribution, and compact system configuration. In the proposed system, an image display unit is illuminated with a direction-controlled illumination unit, which consists of a spatially modulated parallel light source and a steering optical system. The steering optical system is constructed with a slanted cylindrical array and vertical diffusers. The direction-controlled illumination unit can control output position and horizontal angle of vertically diffused light. The light from the image display unit is controlled to form narrow exit pupil. A viewer can watch the image only when an eye is located at the exit pupil. Auto-stereoscopic view can be achieved by alternately switching the position of an exit pupil at viewer's both eyes, and alternately displaying parallax images. An experimental system was constructed to verify the proposed method. The experimental system consists of a LCD projector and Fresnel lenses for the direction-controlled illumination unit, and a 32 inch full-HD LCD for image display. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.