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DTI Stereoscopic LCD Virtual Window Review
Octavian Busuioc wrote to us regarding a
review of the DTI Stereoscopic LCD Virtual Window. Now there's a mouthful - but it's also a very nice LCD screen with that has full stereoscopic effect without shutter glasses. Good background information as well.
Take a look at this link. It's about a remote surgery being performed by doctor using a robot and a camera. I know if I was going under the knife, I'd really want my doctor to have one of these. Think of the alternatives- No 3d, or glasses that give you a migraine after wearing them for a couple of hours.
"due to the fact that no game out there is actually tweaked to work properly with stereoscopic images, ghosting is still predominant in many cases. Most of these cases happen when light and dark graphics are combined. ... Outdoor levels looked really good and worked fantastically on the display, while dark indoor levels produced major levels of ghosting. But yet again, this can, and will be fixed as soon as developers start adapting games for stereoscopic viewing."
I'm not sure that this is as self obvious as the reviewer thinks. From my experience with LCD shutter glasses (Revelator on Elsa - the ones mentioned in the article) it has little to do with the game but everything to do with the hardware. From my perception ghosting was caused by the closed shutter not being dark enough and the bright sections of the screen showing through. How it is still present when the shutter is a lens and not an opaque lcd crystal I'm not sure. An explanation of how it is manifested on the unit I'm curious to know. And how software developers are supposed to influence would also be an interesting explanation. Currently the system draws the scenes based on Direct3d or OpenGL scene data (even in windowed mode so you can see 3d images on web pages - .jps - jpeg stereo). The only influence I can see is for games to not have high contrast graphics. By example though Need for Speed 3 suffers. The white line down the center of the road ghosts even on the light coloured roads.
.oO0Oo.
The only solution I can see is one of improved hardware. The results are impressive even with LCD shutter glasses. This monitor is one I am now lusting over. If I had the $ in the bank I'd go and buy one today. If you are lucky enough to be rich enough to be an early adopter please do because I want to be in the second wave.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It sounds like you may have suffered from "VR sickness". It can also come from the delay betwen moving your head, and the having the image change. It's rather like sea-sickness. Your inner ear/kinesthetic system says you've moved thisesy, your eyes say you've moved that way and your stomach splits the difference, using your lunch as ballast.
I know of one person who did some masters research on the issue many years ago.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
yeah, i cant wait to be playing q3 and have a fly buzz up and land on the screen, "damn, i cant hit that stupid thing with a rocket for the life of me, maybe i should try my rail gunn"
Dunno, with proper movement ratios (so that the robotics move at a fraction of the surgeon's distance & speed), a surgeon COULD be a helluva lot more precise through a remote interface than any human could possibly be.
Of course, this is given that the robotics are moving as smoothly as the surgeon's movements (and not those damn jerking movements that seem to be the given in cheap robots on the market...)
I don't think they're exactly dead, but they're not exactly being heavily marketed. They've certainly gone down in price - I got some cheap LCD shutter-type glasses for about $50 (ELSA Revelator), and the common video cards can now drive the monitors fast enough to avoid flicker severe enough to cause headaches.
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The most important development I've seen is that the latest drivers for the shutter glasses allow any game using the Direct3D interface in Windows to generate the proper stereoscopic perspectives. Since most popular, recent Windows 3D games are doing this, that means there's suddenly a large number of 3D images to look at (can you say Lara Croft in true color 3D - I knew you could...
Unfortunately, and as usual, there hasn't been the same development for alternative OSes (after all, where's the money?
The main problems I saw with the LCD shutter glasses were two:
1. ghosting
Mainly because the LCDs don't completely block out the images for one eye from the other, so you can get a little double vision. It's not too bad though.
2. nausea
I get this in first person shooters & racing games, because the viewpoint is changing quickly & violently w/o my head moving. When I get "into" the image enough, my stomach starts heaving
The best way I've found to use the shutter glasses are for 3D demos where the viewpoint doesn't change, but the displayed objects move around. Feels like your monitor is a window and you're looking into some other universe (esp. if you've got some cool music to go along with the entertainment).
2 1024x768 Projection displays.
Add polarizers to both of them and behold a wallsized stereooptic display.
Behold the benifits of a nonshuttered 3d display which alows a good range of head motion (just no tilting)
If I was going under the knife, the last thing I would want is REMOTE surgery!!!
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
Nice idea, but it's freaking $11,000!
That's for the 18" version. The 15" is a mere $8,600. They did tell the reviewer that mass production will bring the price down to affordable ranges (although one person's 'affordable' might be another's Oh my God!'). Quite a glowing review. I'll be interested to see what some of the more mainstream publications like PC Magazine or Maximum PC think of it.
When you've paid $180K for the workstation/compute engine, $11K for a 3-D display that you can actually use for a long period of time is a decent investment.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
IANAD, but I wouldn't be so quick to blame those effects on stereoscopic imagery in general. I work for a research group at the University of Illinois that does some work with the Cave at the NCSA. The Cave is a virtual reality system that uses stereoscopic imaging on four projection screens that surround the user to create a VR effect. I've never heard of this problem from anyone that's used the system (although some people do get slightly nauseous or feel other side effects after prolonged usage).
I would imagine the side effects you mentioned are HIGHLY dependent on the specific hardware and on the person (just like pretty much anything VR-related).
kugano
No... This technology is widely used for 3D movies and slide shows.
The Science Museum of MN has a 3D show that combines Slides and laser light. They just have two slide projectors covered with polarizers. The lasers a naturally polarized. The effect is very cool if somewhat cheezy.
Note:
If you were going to do this with video projectors, You would need to use either DLP projectors, or LCD projectors with natural polarization seperated by 90 degrees. (LCDs are polarized by their very design.
Let me warn you right now: stereoscopic vision is not the future.
Uh, oh. I guess I'd better pluck one of my eyes out then! We (most of us, anyhow) do have two eyes, and used in conjunction, that is stereoscopic vision.
As for making it work well, any raver can tell you that, done correctly, stereophonic sound can actually disorient and make you dizzy, and we only get 10% of our sensory information from our ears. Naturally, goggles simply have to be made better.
There's a huge difference between stereo goggles and a stereoscopic display. The goggles have to make sure that the horizon and field of vision changes in realtime with the movement of your head. A 3D monitor or movie takes care of that automatically: You tilt your head, the image tilts. Not so with goggles, where you 'take the image with you.'
So while with current technology goggles may be disorienting, it's only a matter of time before the precision is there to 'fool' the senses into playing along. As for non-immersive displays, well, there's no problem.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
You are confused. The virtual boy failed because it wasn't as fun to use as the game boy. That, and it can make one feel sick (in a variety of ways!).
IIRC, Pokemon was not released for the virtual boy, but recently there was a TV show which caused siezures in a significant number of children in Japan.
Lastly, only percentage of the population will get sick using goggles. Don't think that because you had a very bad experience that everyone else will too.
-Adam
Posted using last night's Mozilla build! Go Mozilla!
What kind of goggles were they? This is important. It's not the stereoscopy itself that caused you to black out. If this were true you wouldn't be able to walk down the street with both eyes open.
Were they shutter glasses? (Sometimes called flicker glasses.) Shutter glasses are known to cause problems in some people.
http://new.3dhardware.net/reviews/dti18/
Nice idea, but it's freaking $11,000! For that money, I'd buy myself a pair of Apple Cinema displays and a pair of good ol' shutter glasses for 3d.
Why two cinema displays?
Easy, one for my office, and one to sleep with, silly.
FYI, you can get the same effect as this 3d LCD display for a lot less. Simply purchase some crack-cocaine and take that while playing Quake. It'll also make the carnage much... meatier, I imagine.
The correct URL is . For some reason it requires the / at the end.
Mark Duell
I had the misfortunate of trying on stereoscopic goggles once during a tour of a university computer lab I took back while I was in high school. As soon as I put them on, I became dizzy and nauseous, and my heart rate and blood pressure increased. The tour guide assured me it was just a passing sensation. What I think he really meant was a "passing out" sensation; I blacked out briefly and had to go to the hospital. Let me tell you, I'm never trying on stereoscopic goggles again.
Later, I looked into the causes of this, and the technicians told me it was due to the 3-D image not being "enveloping" enough; that is, the brain realizes that the vision isn't "real", but can't pick out the "real" part. So unless we're capable of creating completely realistic 3-D images -- and we aren't (yet) -- stereoscopic goggles can be dangerous to large sections of the population. Remember Nintendo's ill-fated Virtual Boy system? A lot of people went into seizures while playing a Pokémon game on it in Japan.
Let me warn you right now: stereoscopic vision is not the future. Stay far away from those damn goggles.
Is it jsut me, or are 3D/steroscopic glasses a dead concept?
I remember back in the mid-90s that on every PCGamer there was an Ad for these things, but I never recall very much software that supported them and they were always overpriced. I don't know anyone who has them and I've never really seen them in stores.
And now with an $11,000 price tag, I doubt they're going to make very many sales. It's really sad when a company makes a great product that can't sell based on the price...