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How To See In 3D On Your iPhone
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Dec 20, 2008 10:27 PM
from the old-tech-made-new dept.
from the old-tech-made-new dept.
waderoush writes "Some of the coolest media technologies predate the Web and the PC — in fact, they predate the 20th century. My column in Xconomy explores the world of 19th-century stereoscopes and stereo views, which are the all-but-forgotten forerunners to anaglyphic 3D, VR goggles, and other modern stereo vision systems. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to 'free-view' vintage stereo images on an iPhone or other small screen, getting the full 3-D effect without any other viewing aids. The article has instructions for accessing a collection of old stereo images using the new Seadragon Mobile iPhone app from Microsoft Live Labs." The stereoscope, that killer technology of the last century but one, was invented in 1859 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who gave it away and never made a dime off it. If you don't have an iPhone and want to get the feel of free viewing on a computer monitor, start here at Roush's Flickr photostream.
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1st post! (Score:1, Funny)
2nd post! (Score:4, Funny)
Show me some 3D titties!
Parent
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Here you go! [eroticaphotographica.com]
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Focusing on them for a few minutes at a time [just... a... few... more... seconds...!!!] really can't be good for your eyes...
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Apparently things haven't changed much in the last 100 years.
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And my guess is that survival rates would plummet.
You say that like it's a bad thing... :P
What I'd love is some alcohol additive that neutralizes the hormonal response, so that the peg-legged hunchback at the end of the bar is just as ugly at 3 am as she was at 8 pm. That right there would probably solve a fair chunk of the overpopulation problem... at least in the southern parts!
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I'd love a slashdot additive that neutralizes trolls so they stop making unfounded accusations of sexism, racism or *-ism when those attacks are a projection of their own insecurities.
Not to worry (Score:3, Funny)
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Something lost in todays youth, the first time you got to peer into the tiny little box and see the most amazing things.
Too bad some of us had bad eyesight and didn't realize what was there until later in life ( ever seen a 20 year old buying up view-master disks like candy ) . I still remember as a kid after getting one ' this is stupid '.
The roadrunner stuff was the best. :)
GNAAAR!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The poster shows a bunch of stereo cards, that can obstensibly be shown in 3d on the Iphone.. a pretty cool idea
He adds a tutorial, also a nice touch..
But the Tutorial is for cross eyed viewing, probably the easiest way to view pair images..
However he has the images as straight view images, not crosseyed.. so the 3d effect is inverted.. which is ugly. he could swap the sides, and it will work.. and on an Iphone the images are still small enough to pull a wall-eyed stereo view.. but it takes more skill to master, and image center to center has to be less than the distance between your eyes... otherwise you have to super-paralax.. or get your eyes to spread... it isnt something easy, I've tried.
Anyway the instructions are bad for the images he's showing..
Storm
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I can play Quake1 in 3D parallel view. Pretty cool.
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yea, i was wondering about that. the CG image on the tutorial looks amazing (far more impressive than any of the photos, frankly). but almost all of the images in his gallery looked inverted and lacked depth. i did copy one of the images into MS Paint and flip it horizontally, but it still lacked depth.
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doh!
yea, i just tried what you said on one of the WWI images and now it looks much better.
Make your own! (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah... this is stuff every nerd kid did... a lot. Maybe that's why we all wear glasses. Remember when the 3d random dot patterns were all the rage? Those were a bit more tricky to "see."
A neat think you can do with a digital camera is make your own steroscopic pictures. I did it myself just a couple months ago -- a good technique is to put your digicam with its back against a ruler, and fix the ruler in place. Take one picture of the scene, and with the ruler still fixed, move your camera several in
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What do you mean?
I had no problems at all getting the 3d effect off the images and it did not seem to be "inverted" to me. As long as you view the slides in nothing bigger than "medium" on the site you should have no problems getting the effect to work for you.
For the people that are having problems... well this is the same sort of skills that it takes to master those Magic Eye posters you used to see all over the place in the 90's. It drove some people insane trying to do it w
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Begger. (Score:2)
"The stereoscope, that killer technology of the last century but one, was invented in 1859 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who gave it away and never made a dime off it."
And it would have expired by 1923 so what would your point be? What if he did make money off it? It would be irrelevant to us.
Re:Begger. (Score:4)
It's called "background information". The fact that it was invented in 1859, or that it was Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. who invented it, are equally irrelevant to us.
However, all of the above facts are interesting, including the fact that he gave it away. Good for him.
Parent
It's pirate-proof. (Score:5, Funny)
... because everyone knows pirates have only one eye, you ignorant clod!
You're turning my iPhone into a (Score:2)
$200 Viewmaster?!
-click-
-click-
Oooh, Mount Rushmore...
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He's basically pointed out that stereographs can be viewed without equipment by "looking through" them, and stereographs are images, and images can be digitised, and digitized images can be displayed on most modern electronics, and the iPhone is one of these. Whoot.
Oh look! (Score:1)
They've got nekkid people too.
http://starosta.com/3dshowcase/inude.html [starosta.com]
Too much eye-crossing for me, though.
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ughh... that photographer really knows how to pick his models.
this [starosta.com] is the only half-way decent looking girl in that gallery.
Bill Nye the Crosseyed Guy! (Score:1)
I HAVE NO DEPTH PERCEPTION!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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I also have no binocular vision, but I still have depth perception. I just have to use other cues - mainly texture, parallax and perspective. Doesn't work so well for things like catching balls.
Re:I HAVE NO DEPTH PERCEPTION!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people (about 10%) lack *stereopsis*, the ability to fuse to slightly different images from the two eyes so that the brain perceives depth.
But stereopsis is really just the icing on the cake of depth perception, and just as you say, people use all kinds of other visual cues to perceive depth, with the brain doing the processing subconsciously to a great extent.
Lack of stereopsis is so little a handicap that most people lacking it are unaware of the fact; orthoptists (the paramedical professionals who measure squints and treat amblyopia) have special tests to pick it up.
My favourite is the Wirt Fly:
http://www.sussexvision.co.uk/wirtfly.htm [sussexvision.co.uk]
I've known perfectly capable eye surgeons who lacked stereopsis.
Parent
Idle (Score:1, Insightful)
FFS! shouldn't this shit be in the idle section of slashdot?
What has the iPhone got to do with this? (Score:5, Insightful)
What an extremely crappy article. The title makes you expect a nifty program for the iPhone to watch 3D images, and it turns out you can view these images in a not-too-good way on any screen and even on paper! You need an iPhone because of its high resolution screen?! Apple fanboi I say.
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It's because to Apple fanbois, there is no "Phone". There is only the iPhone. There is also no mp3 player. Only the iPod.
Same as there is no porn. Only the iGod Steve Jobs to jack off to.
A much better viewing experience... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a much more comfortable viewing experience for a little bit of money, I recommend the Pokescope viewer [pokescope.com]. It's a marvelous little invention that not only has an ingenious folding design, but uses prisms instead of lenses so there's infinite focus.
I find free-viewing either parallel or cross-eye to be horrible and headache inducing. It's the same technique that's used to view those stereo scramble posters that were unfortunately popular for a while. It took a long time before I got the technique down, and I always hated it.
I spent years messing around with LCD shutter glasses and high end CRTs, but find for casual viewing the Pokescope is great.
Now that LCD panels are creeping back into the 120hz refresh range and with shorter persistence, LCD shutterglasses will once again become easier to use, but they remain expensive as they are not passive.
The best digital stereo display I ever saw was a prototype from Kodak at Siggraph maybe 5 years ago. They set up a pair of screens inside a box with a lensing and mirroring system as such that your eyes were relaxed and focused on infinity when viewing. It was a very expensive, high end device, but if you delt with stereo photography for a living, it would be a nice thing to have. I don't know that they ever made a product out of it.
Some folks in SF also came up with a method for printing polarized 3D images on an inkjet, was called stereojet. You could view the prints or backlit transparencies with passive polarized 3D glasses. I envisioned doing an art gallery show with all stereo prints, but the costs and time involved were too great for me at the time. I don't know if they are still offering stereojet printing services.
Marilyn Monroe in 3D (Score:3)
There are two problems with stereo images though.
1. There are no digital stereo cameras available. (you can make one of course but that's enough to put most people off)
2. There is no nice way of viewing them digitally. (not everyone can do freeviewing, and even when you can its a bit awkward)
If only some company would make a cheap digital 3D Camera and some kind of digital viewmaster to view the results.
Re:Marilyn Monroe in 3D (Score:5, Informative)
Someone FINALLY decided to do a proper, twin lens stereo camera. Fuji announced a prototype at Photokina this year:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092209fujifilm3D.asp [dpreview.com]
I find it bizarre that no one did it before, because it is such an easy thing to do, to combine multiple inexpensive CCDs and a processor that manages the capture and recording of both, synced with a timing circuit.
I built my own digital stereo rig out of two old Sony U30s and used it for about a year until one of the cameras died.
It needs to be combined with a service where you send your pics in and get back stereo cards with a cardboard viewer. Those make great gifts and actually work very well. I would buy it in three seconds if it were on the market today. Lets hope this product gets made and sold.
--Mike
Parent
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Here's the official page for it: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/topics/2008/0922_02.html [fujifilm.com]
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This works for taking stereo pictures of non-moving scenes:
1) take a picture.
2) move your camera a couple inches to the right.
3) take another picture.
4) use photo manipulation software to join the two pictures together.
5) resize as appropriate.
Owww (Score:3, Funny)
Trying to get my poor eyes to split-focus on those makes my eyes feel like they haven't felt since my first goatse click.
And Please, God, let there NOT be a 3D goatse in cyberland somewhere.
Note on the invention of stereoscopy... (Score:2, Informative)
This is incorrect.
While Holmes popularized stereoscopy in America by creating libraries of stereoscope slides and his own hand-held viewer, Sir William Brewster invented the lenticular stereoscope (a simple viewer) in 1850, and known stereoscopes date back to the early 1840s. Notably, this is only shortly after Daguerreâ(TM)s first daguerreotype in 1937 (The first
News? (Score:2)
was invented in 1859 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Score:2)
WRONG!
Sir Charles Wheatstone (as in Wheatstone Bridge) invented the Wheatstone Stereoscope [wikipedia.org] before Sir. David Brewster developed the lens system attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Of course as with the computer, GUI, MP3 player, and cell phone, the stereoscope was actually invented by Steve Jobs.
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Yup. In 1934, Wheatstone demonstrated stereo using hand drawn figures. He then got onto his friend Fox Talbot, and they made stereo pictures. Perhaps there was only six months between the arrival of practical photography in Britain and experiments with 3D. It was sxhibited in 1838,
In Europe, Duboscq developed viewers that showed transparency stereo pairs. These became popular ince Queen Victoria had been presented with a model at the Crystal Palace exhibition.
The Holmes stereoscope was a simpler instru
forgotten? are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anybody who is serious about working with 3D data learns to view 3D images by crossing their eyes. And, no, you don't need an iPhone to do it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr (Score:2)
It should be noted he was a famous physician and author; penning not only a number of important medical articles but poems as well (including "Old Ironsides.") His son Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr was a famous American jurist.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr appears to be another of those New Englanders whose interests spanned a variety of topics and who had the money to follow their interests. Thoreau springs to mind as another.
Yes, these images are for parallel viewing (Score:2)
"but one" what? (Score:2)
WTF is the "but one" supposed to mean?
And isn't looking cross-eyed at things hoping to see "3d" kind of silly?
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Was Monet using something related? (Score:2)
His Springtime Through the Branches and one of his larger water lily paintings "popped" for me this way: after looking for a while, I suddenly felt I was looking into the paintings.
And the way it happened sounds similar: I had heard that de-focusing on his paintings would make them different but equally beautiful.
The water lily painting (huge, done in dark colors, in a traveling impressionist exhibition that included works from private collections, at the LACMA in the 1980's, I can't recall anything mor
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