18-Inch 3D LCD Screens 97
Rob Polyn sent in a story about a new 18" LCD screen using DTI to simulate 3D. An excerpt describes the technique:
"The second approach to true 3D animation is known as autostereoscopy (which DTI monitors utilize). In this method, two solid and unyielding images are produced for the user to view. These images are merged together, and if viewed by one eye, will appear to be two overlapping images, which don?t quite merge together correctly. However, when viewed with two eyes, autostereoscopy can produce vivid lifelike 3D images."
w00t third post (Score:1)
I don't get it. (Score:1)
Can someone tell me how the heck this thing works? The concept doesn't make any sense to me.<P>
Thanks.
RE: Magic Eye screen (Score:1)
a whole new dimension... (Score:2)
Imagine a beowolf cluster of these...
Why on earth would you want to do that? (Score:1)
Re:a whole new dimension... (Score:1)
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Other 3d Technologies? (Score:3)
Does any one know of any other 3d visualization system being developed, any links would be most appreciated.
So what's it good for? (Score:1)
If they get cheap and popular, what are we gonna do with them?
The no-brainer applications are gaming and 3d modelling, and someone will certainly come up with a new form of Pr0n.
What would you use a flat stereo screen for?
Medical Difficulties Have Resulted ... (Score:4)
Unfortunately, this concept has proven to create problems for individuals prone to epilepsy or similar medical conditions. The chance of exciting or aggravating a condition such as this increases if the images are of an autostereoscopy, but are also flashing. Another area of concern is that it seems to cause headaches in many individuals, also.
The goal would be creating a system capable of delivering images to multiple viewers at their respective locations. Current technologies allow a single viewer with a 30-degree viewzone. This may or may not be practical with the current design. Also, another hurdle is producing full color 3-D and proper occlusion (depth cue allowing an object in the foreground to block the ones behind it).
Thanks.
Domenic R. Merenda
Director of Strategic Business Development
BeOpen.com
Great! (Score:1)
Spendy (Score:3)
LCD is gonna be cool. My dream is for a hardware standard puts 12" LCD displays in the stores for cheap, like $100 or less. Each of these LCD displays could function as an independant monitor, but the coolness would be that you could take the plastic edges off and expose the LCD going all the way to the edge, and there would be an androgynous connector running down each side that could plug into another identical LCD. Take four of these and plug them together in a square, and you have a 24"x24" monitor. You could go out and buy a couple panels every paycheck until eventually you were satisfied with the size or had a monitor-wall to run Quake on.
This would work for TVs as well, and could really make it easier to get big TVs without needing to spend so much money at once.
Just an idea...
Hmmmm... (Score:4)
thank you.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
-Earthman
This is old news.. (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
Re:Other 3d Technologies? (Score:1)
The cool point here is "without glasses". As long as you need to hang something on your head, appeal will be limited.
The drawback to autostereoscopy is you have to sit still in front of the screen. I don't know about you, but I spend about 60 hours a week doing that.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:2)
thank you.
Fairly Limited (Score:1)
Isn't this a still-born idea? (Score:1)
I'd think (though I may be wrong) that the only sure way to ensure perfect 3D vision would be to use separate screen for each eye, but there doesn't seem to happen much in that area. Are the glasses just too heavy? Or is it damaging the eyes?
Oh well, maybe we'll have to wait for the day when we can just connect our brain directly to the video card.
Related links (Score:2)
You can find a list of similar products here [stereo3d.com]. Another interesting link is the Spatial Imaging Group [mit.edu] at the MIT Media Lab [mit.edu].
Re:Medical Difficulties Have Resulted ... (Score:2)
First off, the screen flashes less, theoreticaly helping w/ both headaches and epileptics, not that I recomend this for anyone w/ a history of Epilepsy or migrains. Unfortunatly the veiwing area is damned near impossable to fix, even more so in an LCD. Add to it that this one seems to dim in 3D mode, and you kinda lose that point all together.
-Earthman
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
The 3d process here sounds similar to the effect presented by 3d movies. I have "Lazy eye" and can only experience 3d movies a certain times of the day when I am not fatigued (I guess when my eyes are rested enough to properly focus at this time of day). I wonder if this system would pose similar difficulties for me.
Test a 3D screen with no 3D ? (Score:1)
As for the screen itself, the dimness of the image shows that either the technology is not mature, or the test pattern was unappropriate... Or else, the technology simply doesn't work : "psychosomatic 3d"...
Re: Magic Eye screen (Score:1)
Something doesn't add up.... (Score:3)
That's just not an explanation. But, I figure, it's just a review by some graphics fans. So I checked the company's website [dti3d.com]. (Which barely works. A peek at the image directory got me this [dti3d.com]. I guess we know they're hosting on a Mac, huh?) Their FAQ [dti3d.com], in response to "Q: I am wondering how your display works?" links to http://www.dti3d.com/dev/ [dti3d.com], which is not especially useful. I downloaded the developer's package. The readme says:
dti_vw libray diretory has source files for our driver.
dti_vw app directory has sample file for how to use our libray in a application program.
Our library is so simple and easy to use.
There for this sample is good enough to know how our library works.
Our library make a application can communicate between a computer and our unit.
If we change our the communication method and way, we will update immediately.
I gotta be honest: This all looks pretty sketchy. Has anybody seen/used one of these? I'm not convinced that this thing is legit. I don't have the skills to be able to read the code to figure out how all of this works. But "view with two eyes" just ain't gonna cut it for this crowd.
-Waldo
How it works (Score:2)
You can actually try this effect on your own monitors. Just open 2 copies of any picture, and put them next to each other. Now, look at the pictures thru the monitor, as if they were far away. Eventually, you will be able to merge the 2 pictures together, while everything else goes a bit blurry. When that happens, you are looking at one picture thru each eye. You should be able to get a slightly 3d effect depending on what kind of picture you chose.
You can get 3d cameras that take a picture from 2 angles, and use a special viewer that forces each eye to look at its corresponding picture to view them. The innovation with this monitor is just allowing you to view it without using any special viewers. Of course, the review said that there were some problems with dimness and vertical lines in 3d mode, but these should be easy to fix.
---
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Holographic displays (Score:2)
One of the links I mentioned refers to the Richmond Holographic Studios [www.cuni.cz]. One very nice feature of this technology is that a wider viewing angle is supported allowing multiple people to see the same image. This might not be so important for games, but for architectural rendering or other 'real work' (that is unless you work for a gaming company ;-), this may be vital.
I suspect that there are some strong negatives and would love to read comments from anyone who knows more.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Obligitory Porn Post (Score:2)
.- CitizenC (User Info [slashdot.org])
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
Re:Test a 3D screen with no 3D ? (Score:2)
There's some conflict on this. The author says:
Switching from 2D to 3D mode is a breeze--simply press the "3D" button on the front control panel on the monitor, and one has virtually automatically switched modes.
I simply don't believe that. There was never even a mention of installing drivers in the installation [3daccelerated.com] portion of the article. Can you imagine the processing power that would go into turning a 2D image into 3D? It must be quite remarkable. I'd think at least a software upgrade would be in order.
The author goes on:
However, when comparing Doom, a game which has stereoscopy, with Quake 3, a game which doesn't, the differences were negligible. This could potentially be because of Quake 3's increased detail, but could also be because our eyes simply couldn't tell the minute difference. Quake 3 basically uses the exact same image being displayed twice, while Doom uses two images which slightly differ in viewing angle. Perhaps Doom produced a slightly more 3D "feel" to it, but Quake 3 also had a similar effect.
"A game which has stereoscopy"? I don't understand -- could somebody explain? Doom was made to be viewed in 3D monitors?
Then the author says:
Though full stereoscopy is not widely supported by many recent games, DTI's 3D mode is still useable in games such as Quake 3, and produces results very similar to games that fully support stereoscopy.
So....it *is* 3D? I don't get it. I thought Quake 3 didn't look 3D?
This is all pretty sketchy.
-Waldo
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3)
It works with backlighting. There is a striped mask over the lamp, and the lamp is positioned a little distance behind the liquid crystals. If you draw a lines in 3D space from a light stripe to each eye, each line will pass through different pixel elements on the way.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Re:How it works (Score:1)
Okay I tried that but it didn't seem to work as you described.
I just got dizzy and started hearing a weird sound.
It was almost like the picture was trying to talk to me.
Strange eh?
I felt like I was in one of OSM's fantasies.
I think I'm going to be sick now.
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:2)
it appears that the system actually projects different images into each eye. This one appears to force you to keep your head still, while the MIT one tracks you via IR. Anyway, knowing where your head is, it uses special magic (erm... polarising filter/beamsplitter) to direct the proper image into each eye.
I think they're taking advantage of the narrow viewing angle of the lcd, and tu(r)ning every other row of pixels to each eye.
Does that make sense?
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:1)
*blush* Gosh, that's sweet of you. And you, dear AC, are a delightful and rapartious rapscallion.
Feel the love!
a better explanation of how it works (Score:5)
after a little more research i came up with this Philips research paper [philips.com]. (be sure to look at the nice diagrams in the slides).
the gist of it is this: much like 3d postcards, they use a grid of cylindrical lens over the LCD panel. each lens covers a specified number of real LCD pixels, 4 being a common number. since the lens is constructed to have the LCD pixel be at the focal point, when you look at the screen through the lens your eye will be directed towards one of the 4 pixels and not the others. thus the lens has turned 4 real pixels into one 3d pixel. (and dropped your resolution to 1/4th!) if you shift your viewing angle then you will look at a different one. if, like many people, you have two eyeballs which are separated by a few inches, then each eye will see a different image.
another way of thinking about it is to imagine that four zones of images are being projected out from each pixel to your eyes. as long as your eyes are in separate zones then you are okay. this is the case if you are sitting at normal reading distance. but if you get too far away (or have a head the size of a mouse) then your eyes will end up in the same zone and you lose the 3d effect.
philips has also done some innovative work to even out the resolution loss and improve the viewing angle.
- joshy
after reading how it works i now understand why it's so dim. if there is a 4:1 ratio of real pixels to 3d pixels, then each eye is only getting 1/4 the light it used to. guess they are going to have to beef up that backlight. then you can switch back to 2d and have a blinding image reflect of your face, just like in the movies. :)
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:1)
Yes, it does. Tell me if I've got this right. You know the little cards that come in Cracker Jacks [crackerjacks.com] or in cereal boxes that have moving images on them? You tilt them from side to side and the little Ken Griffey Jr. swings his baseball bat, or the woman lifts her skirt, or whatever? (Well, they don't *only* come in Cracker Jacks...
Do you suppose that it's like that? Each row of pixels is tilted to the right or to the left? So you have a screen that would make a little zippy noise if you ran your fingernail across it.
That's pretty cool. I hope it works like that -- I'll get one and make little zippy noises all day.
-Waldo
I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:3)
Ha Ha!!! (Score:1)
Re:Ha Ha!!! (Score:1)
Does anyone ever read past slashdot stories? (Score:2)
Best explanation so far.. (Score:1)
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:1)
given that SOO many of us have notebooks with fairly standard dot-pitch LCDs, wouldn't it be cool if a game manufacturer shipped a fresnel lens cover for your LCD with their 1-st person shoot-em-up?
Every other row or better yet column of pixels would be focussed the in the proper direction, towards each eye. Basically do optically what the MIT people do with fancy schmancy beam splitters.
Ok, so you'd have to keep your head still while playing, and the quality might not be up there, but it would be cool and cheap.
Some problems with the idea might be that getting the lens to line up properly with the pixels would be a hassle. But here's the cool part. LCDs have subpixels, baby! yeah! just shift the image left or right 1 subpixel at a time until the display comes out right.
You might have to sacrifice every other column of pixels too (LxRxLxR
This'd suck processor like you wouldn't believe, but I will bet you anything thing that true 3D at low framerate (and since you have an LCD, you're kinda limited in that regard anyway) over 2D at 100fps. and if you cut resolution, you have less to do anyway.
ok, so I thought that was pretty cool, but I'm biased. I think these ideas are so cool that I'm gonna have to claim copyright to them right now.
Johan
Even worse (Score:1)
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:2)
Johan
nice, but probably not good for gaming (Score:2)
Trouble is: when looking at realistic scenes, motion parallax (i.e., what happens to the image when you move your head slightly), not stereo, is probably the primary motion cue. Stereo cues in the kinds of scenes you get from 3D games are likely more confusing than immersive, since they often simply reinforce the impression of looking at a tiny, toy-like scene. If you want that kind of appearance, you can already get simple LCD shutter glasses for relatively little money, but they probably haven't caught on for a reason.
The best solution for immersive 3D games is head mounted displays, which give you excellent head tracking and motion parallax. The next most important cue is likely peripheral vision, which is a bigger engineering challenge. Once you have a head-mounted display, adding stereo is technically easy (but increases the cost somewhat since you need two displays).
Re:How it works (Score:1)
do what Kanasta said, but flip one image left-right. now affix a mirror inbetween the two, perpendicular to the screen. press your nose agains the mirror, and voila, fusing the images becomes a snap.
The one drawback is that all images appear to be offcenter (behind the reflective side of the mirror, as it were).
But it's cheap.
and it works.
Call me skeptical... (Score:2)
Though full stereoscopy is not widely supported by many recent games, DTI's 3D mode is still useable in games such as Quake 3, and produces results very similar to games that fully support stereoscopy.
Okay, how can this possibly work? How can the driver or anything else possibly guess the distances at which we're supposed to perceive different objects?
I could see how they could produce some uniform 3D effect, such as making the top of the screen appear farther away than the bottom, but how can they do anything which relates to the contents of the image?
However, when comparing Doom, a game which has stereoscopy, with Quake 3, a game which doesn't, the differences were negligible.
Right. This really makes me think any benefits are largely imagined.
Re:Test a 3D screen with no 3D ? (Score:1)
Yes. Or more specificaly 3d glasses. Also Quake1, duke3d(very buggy), Decent1&2, and quite a few others.
Also there exist 3daccelerator cards that support 3d glasses as well. Wicked3d is a very cool example.
Popularity? (Score:1)
Considering the other current applications of 3D images - mostly in movies at iMax or theme parks, for its novelty value - I don't think it's likely to take off.
3D movies at the cinema were incredibly popular at one point during the 1940s/50s, and then everyone realised the triviality of being able to see in 3D. Now all we have are the cliched "oh no look out, the dinosaur's coming towards me!" type we see at theme parks. Is this also the future for 3D monitors?
Put on top of this the prohibitive cost, and it sounds like you've just got another side-show for the Epcott centre.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Re:This is old news.. (Score:1)
Not TOO limited. (Score:3)
It's not all THAT bad. (If this is what I think it is) there are a SET of narrow angles from the screen where the stereo effect works correctly.
They're bisected by another set of angles where the depth is reversed, and the space between the clean images (normal or reversed depth) has regions where the two images wash into each other.
So a person can sit closely beside you (distance from your right eye to his left is one, three, five, etc. times the distance between your eyes) and simultaneously see the same image.
The main problems are...
- You have to be at distance from the screen equal to a constant times the spacing between your eyes (plus or minus maybe 20%) to get the effect. At the wrong distance the images for each eye also bleed into the other eye, giving you a triple image - the one you want, plus two single-eye ghosts.
- Images TOO far ahead of or behind the screen will give you eyestrain - because your eyes have to focus at the distance to the screen, but the paralax depth cue says the object is far from the screen. So your eye muscles hunt and get tired.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
thank you.
Re:a better explanation of how it works (Score:1)
TV lifestyle, but i've always dreamed of playing down in the dirt with a bunch of code monkeys. no wait. maybe it was the other way around.
- joshy
Herpes (Score:1)
And that would not be that...
The medical community could easily implement this into various aspects of training and detection of diseases in patients.
Re:Call me skeptical... (Score:1)
It's easy for a driver to figure out how far away each pixel is, you just take the actual 3d scene that a modern game such as Quake 3 sends to the video card driver and use that. Unlike games such as Doom modern games don't have to render the 3d scenes themselves, they send them to the video card and let the video card do the work.
I have no idea what the reference to Doom is about... I've seen the source myself (I once did some AI development on one of the derivations made after id released the source) and it sure as hell doesn't support anything other then simple VGA graphics.
Re:Even worse (Score:1)
Re:Call me skeptical... (Score:1)
3D accelerator cards do hidden-surface removal with a depth buffer, so depth information has to be available to the driver and the card. Quake 3 passes the depth of every vertex to the OpenGL driver along with the X and Y coordinates.
This information is sufficient to reconstruct the scene from two different eye positions. The drivers for some kinds of shutter glasses work in this way.
I don't know anything about this particular display.
The Ultimate Solutions Will Be... (Score:2)
...a monitor screen covered with tiny projectors (projexels?) instead of pixels. What do I mean? Each projexel projects a complete image. If you darkened the room, turned off all the projexels except one and held a piece of white paper up to the screen, you would see a complete image of the scene projected on the white paper.
In other words, active holography. Now, this would require a lot of bandwidth if you did it the stupid way. OTOH, it seems you could exploit coherency in the image to a great deal in order to avoid having to retransmit data that doesn't change too often from projexel to projexel. Possibly, something as simple as run-length encoding could do this.
I'm glossing over a lot of details here. This is an idea I've had for quite a while. Also, if anybody tries to patent active holography, they can bugger off. You saw it here first.
BTW, Theirs is $11,000. I'll make you one of mine for $11,000,000.
Depth cueing by brightness? (Score:2)
image range.. (Score:1)
wow, I must say your post was very interesting.. I sure didn't know all of that stuff, etc, etc.
But what I'm wondering is, what do you mean by images too far ahead of or behind the screen?
I'm sorry, I'm just a bit slow at this.. do you mean images that are being attempted in 3-D that are too far in a depth beyond the physical location of the screen? (well, I guess so.) That's interesting.. so, that would mean the image effectively "hits" the screen and can't go any farther back, so wouldn't that kill some of the depth of the image and put things on the same plane that aren't mean to be?
Re:w00t third post (Score:1)
Re:Isn't this a still-born idea? (Score:1)
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:2)
(in Real Life, 3D is not a problem; for objects more than about three feet away, you don't use binocular vision to judge depth: the difference in image between your eyes is too minute, so your brain relies on size, 'layering' and parallax... presumably, my brain has become exceptionally good at processing this info closer in than 3ft, 'cause I don't seem to be handicapped by being half-blind...)
(and in Real Life, we're not subjected to that annoying blurry image-over-image effect!)
--
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
You use binocular difference with close objects, within a few feet distance. Beyond that, binocular doesn't enter into it.
--
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:1)
Not all of the displays work that way, and it seems that they are more expensive, but I know I'd spring for it to avoid losing stereoscopy and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Combined with people who need the transparency, there should be enough market to get them out there.
---
Re:Does anyone ever read past slashdot stories? (Score:1)
Actually, if you would read, you would see that that is exactly what it is.
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:2)
Please, get a grip. Maybe instead of pissing on "the perfects" you should do something for yourself. There are many people who work to make computing tools accessable to the disabled (of which, missing only one eye sucks but isn't too bad). We work so that technology like the WWW is fully available to people with no sight, no motor skills, etc.
More to the point, most 3D technology will work fine in your case, you just won't get the 3D effect. In this case the image when viewed by one eye is blurred but CRT, LCD and other technologies aren't going away anytime soon. Please do not be alarmed and fearful.
Just like the 3D Cameras (Score:1)
Think of the LCD screen as being divided into lots of tiny vertical stripes one pixel wide. Now you send the even stripes to your left eye and the odd stripes to your right eye (or the other way around). Naturally the image sent to the screen would not be a normal image but one where the left eye view is sent to the aforementioned even stripes and the right eye view to the odd stripes (this is done through the 3D API like DX7 or a special version of Open GL --though it might have to be a special version).
Of course, like normal photographic paper, normal computer displays (LCD or otherwise) do not usually do this. So now you have to modify them so they will. Both in the cases of 3D photographs and LCD screens this is done by fitting the surface with a v ertical lens [philips.com] over each right-left pair of image stripes which directs the appropriate stripe into the appropriate eye. This (plus the quirks of LCD technology) is why the display has to be viewed from a very narrow angle since from other angles the lenses would not work quite right
At least this is the way it's done sometimes (with the 3D photographs and the Phillips display) and I'm pretty sure this is the way this particular display must work as well.
Re:Just like the 3D Cameras (Score:1)
3D isn't that cool by itself (Score:1)
From the excellent book "The Visionary Position":
By experimenting with the display -- moving, by degrees, from a 20-degree field of view to a 30-degree field of view and so on up to 120 degrees, the team discovered that at the "60- to 80-degree point, it was like a switch went off in your head. Instead of looking at a picture, all of a sudden you thought you were in a place. You had a different way of interacting with the display. You brought in a different set of innate capabilities. ... And we realized more and more that we were onto something really big. We found that you couldn't forget it, because it was like this world was a place. And we found that people learned really quickly when they were inside of it, that there was a remarkable acceleration of the ability to learn these things, to interact with them..."
Currently the best field of view is around 30% with VR goggles. I am excited about 3D, but it seems funny that no one seems to be working on increasing field of view.
Re: Magic Eye screen (Score:1)
Flawed images? (Score:1)
Since the monitor's refresh rate is, as they said, 60 Hz, shouldn't this be attributed to the tearing effects that can happen when vertical sync is disabled? That doesn't sound like the monitor's fault...sounds more like they let the vid card get out of sync with it.
monocular vision (Score:1)
I have a bit more than just a "lazy eye", I'm flat out "wall eyed". Each of my eyes looks seperately in it's own direction, whichever one I'm not 'using' at any given point in time tends to wander off in a different direction (loads of trouble with members of the opposite gender) although there is some corelation to the movement (i've watched many hours of tape of my own eyes). Anyway I was born this way, so my eyes have never both focused on any given point - and as a result my brain simply doesn't grok the concept of putting the two signals together into a "3D" world. This was painfully proven when I participated in a reasearch project where they used head mounted displays that were independently positioned for each eye, so that in a non-moving "rest" state each looked directly into the display. The result was a lot of major headaches to say the least.
The bottom line is that "magic-eye" posters, red/blue 3d glasses, vr gogles, and this technology are bloody useless to me and anyone else with monocular vision; but then who cares? I don't. Go for it folks, if you can make this level of technology then just imagine what else you'll be able to do with what you learned trying to make it work.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
i almost never have stereovision. or i dont ever knowst, a change. hmmm can you discrible what sterovision is like?
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
Re:I don't get it. (Score:1)
Hold your hand in front of your monitor, fingers spread. How many fingers does it have? Now move it rapidly up and down. How many fingers does it appear to have?
The trick is to trick the eyes.
Re:monocular vision (Score:1)
One of the ways to treat binocular vision problems is with vision training. Basically this involves strengthening the muscles of the eye and training the person to gain better control. The reason I bring it up is that my wife (an OD) has a computer with a set of 3D glasses which are used for certain exercises. So this (& similar) technology may be useful to you after all.
Re:Other 3d Technologies? (Score:1)
Yeh, that's my understanding too. Basically this display is a regular display covered with a lenticular lens, which directs different imagery to each eye, rather like those cheesy "3D" posters you sometimes see in airports.
Does any one know of any other 3d visualization system being developed, any links would be most appreciated.
I'm working at a company right now that's making a true volumetric autostereoscopic display that works on a different principle. Details are at the Actuality Systems website [actuality-systems.com].
What's DTI? (Score:1)
Re:a better explanation of how it works (Score:1)
Hey, I have an idea - display that displays one things to me and other things to somebody looking over my shoulder!
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1)
Re:3D isn't that cool by itself - Field of View (Score:1)
I agree that field of view is very important for many applications, such as pharmaceutical design.
But rest assured, people are working on it...
This is a biased response -- our firm has developed (and is finishing up the next generation model) volumetric 3-D display with a 360-degree field of view: Actuality Systems [actuality-systems.com]
That is, the imagery takes up a real volume, and multiple people can walk around the display to see it from anywhere in the room. We even have a demo set up that lets you pick up a joystick and fly a helicopter over a moving terrain.
Anyhow, if you are interested in background information on 3-D displays in general, let me suggest: SIGGRAPH overview [mit.edu]
and (by a team of students in Germany): Survey Article [vdivde-it.de]
-Gregg Favalora
3D Porn, You got it... (Score:1)
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:2)
I'm monocular too, Oz. (Not that it cramps my style much when it comes to girl-watching.) I figure all they'd have to do is provide a software setting to toggle the 3-D effect on-off. Even normally sighted users might want the option, especially when the effect is worsening their hangovers...=)
Re: Magic Eye screen (Score:1)
Generally, people have problems with them due to the unnatural eye position needed to view them, you have to be very cross-eyed. This sort of display doesn't require the unnatural eye position.
What is potentially problematic with this sort of display, however, is how precisely you need to have your head position. To view 3-D for long periods, it needs to be *perfect* -- no times when the frames aren't quite in sync (left and and right eye not seeing a frame rendered with the same geometry), that sort of thing. An alternative technology is LCD shutter glasses, although the problem with them is that you effectively halve your screen refresh rate, and you have exactly the same potential problem with out of sync images.
Re:Other 3d Technologies? (Score:1)
Hmm, a lot of us already view a computer with glasses. The key is they need to be as light as possible, wireless, shouldn't affect your view of the real world for the most part, and you shouldn't need to take them off when you get up from the computer.
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:a better explanation of how it works (Score:1)
Invisible to others, but crisp for me!
Re:monocular vision (Score:1)
Re:image range.. (Score:2)
Actually the images can appear to be anywhere from the end of your nose to infinity (and beyond! B-) ). It's just that if they're far from the screen in either direction your eyes will try to focus on the apparent location, and end up DEfocussing the image (which is actually on the screen, not at the apparent depth). This can lead to eyestrain.
A hack to avoid it is to compensate with glasses. If the images of interest are mainly far behind the screen, for instance, wear reading glasses. That will focus an image that is actually at reading distance when your eyes try to focus far away.
Re:Something doesn't add up.... (Score:1)
Re:I dread the coming psuedo 3d wave .. (Score:2)
The disparity in images for anything three feet or more away (? perhaps it's 3 meters; doesn't much matter for my point) is so slight that the eye can not distinguish it: in geek terms, it's beyond the resolution of the eye.
Kind of like depicting a circle on a display that's only 1 pixel per centimeter: the one at coordinates (10.25,10.25) looks exactly like the one at (10.45, 10.45) -- similar to the 'coordinates' of the things you see in your left eye versus your right.
For some interesting examples of visual cues that do/don't involve binocular/monocular vision, see http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/art/index.html -- there are a half-dozen or more cues!
http://aris.ss.uci.edu/cogsci/courses/psych9b/l
http://schorlab.berkeley.edu/Lab/220read.html provides proof that if a graduate student blows enough smoke up the thesis committee's arse, he'll graduate with honours. Can technical writing become any worse than this? My gods.
http://www.iversonsoftware.com/reference/psycho
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