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3D w/o Goggles
jamner writes "A Yahoo Daily News article mentions that computer users may soon be able to work on screens with displays that give the appearance of being three dimensional. The company is Deep Visual Imaging at www.actualdepth.com and their products page." They accomplish it by layering LCDs, so while its not going to fake a true 3d workspace, the depth would still add substantially to many applications (well, it would make quake cooler, and I'm sure desktop apps could benefit, but I suspect the medical industry has more important uses).
These are:
In other words, the logical technology+market progression would be to expand HMD to encompass 2D and 3D needs in a lower-cost & commercially viable manner, rather than push excessively specialized hardware. The perfect package for me would include a set of relatively high-resolution (1280x1024) 2D goggles with a motion sensor configured for 3+ desktops, and a Datahand keyboard pair. Those interested in a 3D configuration would need only make a software reconfiguration to adjust the motion sensor input to provide perspective based on user motion, rather than physically emulating single-position stereoscopic vision. For me, it'd be far nicer than the multiple-monitor setup I have now, and would fit in a locked drawer when I wasn't using it.
A layered 3D desktop monitor would be kinda nifty, but a minor usability advance compared to a much more flexible HMD. But I suppose I'll have to be happy with the castoffs from the gamers...
J
I think not...(*poof*)
They just use layers of LCDs? I currently use a set of wireless Elsa Revelator glasses . They are cheap, (~100-150 dollars), work with any DirectX or OpenGL game, and most nvidia cards.
With the light off and the SBLive on high, it's the only way to game :)
grubTrolling is a art,
Those 3D Pipes can mess you up. Folks'll probably got whiplash trying to dodge 'em.
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Cute idea. But here's a much more interesting autostereoscopic display from 4D-Vision. Available in either 15" LCD or 50" plasma. What you get is 8 different viewpoints displayed through a special grille that reveals only one view to each eye. The result is a stereo image, wihout glasses, and you're free to walk around the room. The thing actually works. They were on display at NAB in Las Vegas, they look not perfect but definitely promising...
I first heard reports of imminent 3D without goggles when I was in secondary school. Since then I've been to university (twice) and been working for three years since then.
So excuse my scepticism if I say that I'll believe it when I see it.
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More precisely, without "glasses".
Back in the mid-late 80's (perhaps earlier?) I remember watching an episode of "That's Incredible", about these two guys (may have been professors?) at a university or college (in California, I believe) who created a form of 3D that didn't require glasses.
In fact, it didn't require both eyes! That's right, you could close one eye while viewing it, and it would still look 3D!
They broadcasted a few video clips of the effect on the episode of "That's Incredible", and it really was amazing. The two dudes who came up with the system said they did it with some kind of "black box" device they had created, that could be inserted between a video source and the display, and it would "make" the image 3D. You could tape the clips, and it woud still look fine if you played them back.
At the time, I was stunned - still am - that such an effect could be produced. I remember that the images were kind of shakey (the inventors of the process admitted this on the broadcast), but not annoyingly so. I remember taping the episode, but I have since lost the tape. I remember trying to play it back, closing one eye - and yes, it all worked! There was depth to the image (this was the one "problem" with it - the depth went "into" the screen, not out of it - so it looked like you were looking through a window - but it was still nice).
Has anybody heard of these men, the episode, what the technique was, what happened to them, how it works, etc? I have seen many strange ways to get 3D - but this one has always taken the cake as the strangest, since it relies on a fundamental brain process to trick the brain into seeing 3D (even with one eye!!!)...
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Umm, I think you're referring to a tactile system. There already are braille readers that can do web pages, if the pages are useable with lynx. As for 3-d, if it is necessary to see stereo up close, I probably couldn't use it. You see, when I was 11 I caught a 2X4 in my left eye (playground disagreement)and have no central vision in that eye, so I can't see stereo very well.
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I've had 3D images on my website for years without the need for funny spectacles or wacky layered LCD screens....
x .htm
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~surturz/threed/3dinde
-SurturZ
ah, you mock.
That is indeed the most promising option open for real 3d. The idea is stunningly simple: if you decrease the angel of dispersion of the lenses, you can engineer it so that one eye sees one frame of the "animation" while the other eye sees the next.
Not great if they are two successive frames in time, but if instead each frame shows a picture from a slightly different viewpoint, you get 3d. Instead of a fixed picture, you put that cracker jack lens (a fresnel lens, in effect) infront of a display with the resolution set to show two pixels per ridge -- one per eye.
The only problem is that it will be pretty sensitive to keeping your head in the "sweet spot". And the positioning of the lens wrt the pixels on the screen is tricky, but that is all ok, because this sucker is cheap. the only hardware you need is a massproduced piece of plastic. The rest is software, interleaving the stripes from each eye's view.
Not as nice as a hologram, true, but in terms of bag for buck, really hard to beat.
The several people argument is based on the fact that instead of having only two images interleaved and redirected by the lens as I described above, they have several. So if you display four pixels per lenticular stripe, you get three sweet spots -> three people (or one person who can move his head).
However, each additional pixel you allocate per lens implies a corresponding decrease in horizontal resolution. One workaround is to keep it monochrome: this effectively multiplies the horizontal resolution of [formerly color] LCD panel by three. Otherwise, the lenses become so wide that you'll end up noticing the horisontal banding. Another workaround would be to stagger the lenticular lenses (more of a hassle to manufacture, tho), so that the pixels no longer get alligned in one vertical line.
Imagine 10 layers (not very many at all) and 1024x768x24 at 60Hz. This means you need a graphics card capable of handling over 12Gb/s of data. In comparison, my 1600x1200 monitor only needs 46Mb/s of bandwidth
Since the LCD is 24 bpp at 60 hz, don't you think you should figure the same for your monitor?
1600x1200 = 1,920,000 pixels
1,920,000 pixels * 24 bits/pixel = 46,080,000 bits
46,080,000 bits * 60 Hz = 2.76 Gb/s (where Gb = 1,000,000,000 bits)
I don't know where you got your 46Mb/s from, but it's quite a bit off. Rudimentary logic tells us that 10 layers of a lower resolution is going to take less than 10 times the bandwidth, not the 200+ times the bandwidth you claim.
This may be "3D w/o Goggles", but I guarentee that these screens + pr0n will guarentee lots of "3D w/ Oggles".
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Theres a company who's owned by the same investors that own GT Interactive (Doom and others), who have something in the works. I wish I remembered their name off hand. Using something that resembles sort of a voting booth, they're able to project an extremely high quality 3d image using mirrors, and something reminiscent of one of the old screen televisions, rgb colored lights from 4 angles that get color and depth values from computer generated output run on I think it was an SGI =( fuck I wish I could remember the name of the company offhand.
Anyways the original intent for these gizmos were for use in trade shows, and things of that nature. On the way out from consulting at the company my friend and I were speaking to some of the game developers at GTI, who stated that they were supposedly slated to do something with the company in the future. (this is rumored so don't quote me)
When I saw the gizmo's though I was impressed as all hell by the images though, and unfortunately the techies responsible for its creation were pricks who didn't care to shred any kind of info on how exactly its run... Anyways I'm hoping someone would have seen something similar at a Linuxworld expo or some other conference, I'm sure its been seen, maybe not payed attention to though.
Oh well as for this company their PDF's tell nothing, but they look colorful, they do say they run an PII @ 800mhz but no words on OS or anything else. And they're huge files for such little information. Will this be another one of those "smell the internet" schemes?
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I think I remember seeing these on display at Siggraph 2000. They are pretty disappointing. Basically it's just two LCD layers about an inch apart. So, you do get "depth" but it's hardly realistic,but really just a cheap hack. It's not a true z-depth display.
How am I supposed to watch the animation if it comes only on quicktime??? And more important, why is Slashdot linking to a site that does not support a linux friendly page? uhg!
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You speak of going to 64 layers as if the difficuty of this is the same order of magnitude as going from one layer to two.
This two-layer screen is probably a two-layer hack. They haven't designed a system that can be layered, or they would be advertising that.
-Erik
I know some people that can acomplish the same effect using LSD....
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Screw games and desktop apps! This will take the Porn Industry to new levels! The possiblities are endless!
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
here are several other relevant past /. articles for the interested, including a couple on the exact same technology from different companies. all are cmdrtaco posts too!
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four
I don't recall if it was from ActualDepth or one of the other "goggleless 3D" monitor makers. The display was a ~15" LCD covered with 1-inch deep slats. A very weird and expensive beast. My boss at the time (about 8 months ago) was extremely excited about the demo unit and called all of us over to look at some rotating cube demos.
"Does it look like real 3D?!?!"
My exact response was "ummm, uhhh, I guess so?"
The image was somewhat dim and only had the slightest bit of depth to it, not quite what I was expecting. Still, it was better than looking at a flat psuedo 3D image on a CRT or plain single-layer LCD display.
It'd say it's a good monitor if you have deep pockets and a good imagination. *shrug*
This sounds suspiciously like the technology that made those cheezy "holograms" that came in Cracker Jack boxes.
You know. the one with the plastic ridges which would "animate" when you looked at it at different angles, n' stuff...
=P
E.
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Actually, the unit is essentially two seperate LCD screens combined into one and (i believe) will work with an off-the-shelf dual-monitor video card. The connections are simply 2 x HD15 RGB Analogue (2 standard monitor connectors). So, you could actually use it on any OS without any drivers or anything. With drivers, the thing will really be able to shine... adding things like foreground and background buttons in OSes, popup windows in applications that actually popup, simulated 3d effects within games, medical apps, imaging stuff, geographical stuff, etc, etc. There are many possible applications. Actual Depth did have to do some work to get it to work nicely, since we need a truely clear LCD in the foreground (which is 6bit) so it doesn't disrupt the background (or main) LCD which is 24bit. Initially, the company plans on using it for marketting kiosks and the like (since it'll definitely catch people's eyes), but I anticipate a quick move into arcade game units, commercial applications and, eventually, home applications. My friend who has seen one says it is quite cool looking.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Having taken part in virtual reality testing, I'd hate to see what this would do to the workplace.
We had enough people barfing just trying to find thier way around a room. Could you imagine how bad it will be when these things actually hit the market affordably?
-Si
So excuse my scepticism if I say that I'll believe it when I see it.
Then come to NHK Studio Park in Shibuya, Tokyo; they've got a 3D-without-goggles system on permanent display, and though it only works well when you stand at a certain distance directly in front of the screen, it works excellently within those limitations.
And that's not even state-of-the-art anymore. At a digital-TV fair they had earlier this month, they had what was essentially a hologram on display. Yes, really. Not quite the same because you can't look at it from the side, but within the viewing angle (about 60 degrees IIRC) it's a 3D image standing in midair. You could even stick your hand (or your face) in it like they used to do in all those sci-fi shows. Frankly, it knocked my socks off.
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3d goatse.cx links! aaaargh!
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I've been digging through my collection of old games that run unplayably on anything over 33mhz recently and came across Magic Carpet from Bullfrog. Granted it used sterograms (cross your eyes and lie to your friends that you can see a ship) but they were successfully producing 3D, without goggles or even a monitor upgrade, in a commercial game, ten years ago. It kind of makes you wonder what they could do with a modern PC and a little help from NVidia if they re-explored the concepts.
In this situation, I can definitely see the advantage. I'd walk up to and play with a kiosk that had such a display at least once.
The only certainty is entropy.
I didn't see a clear description--is this limited to only foreground and background planes, or do they use a technique for tricking the eye to see intermediate depths? I can't imaging that a simple foreground/background display would be flashy enough to justify the cost for the majority of users.
The only certainty is entropy.
...yet in so many aspects we think 2d. The implications of working with a 3 dimensional interface are far beyond the obvious benefits of viewing a physical entity in it's true dimensional sense.
But what about entities that are created in our mind and given a physical reality for our purposes such as a spreadsheet or database model? Imagine the capability of designing schema relationships in 3 dimensions. Or creating a financial report utilizing layers of cells. How will this affect UML tools? What potential does this have on development applications?
I'm impressed that a company called DVI could be so high-tex.
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Cannon have developed a monitor with Criterion (The RenderWare people) that does this using just 2 "layers" at lasts years ECTS.
From what I could tell (I have a vision problem, so I was starting at this monitor for a few minutes wondering what was so special about it) it works the same way as the hologram on Coke machines in pubs (the ones where the image moves with your head).
There where infact 2 images projected onto cones. When at the right distance, each eye will see a different image (a-la 3D goggles) giving a true 3D image.
Of course, this technology assumes people have the same distance between the eyes, and have no eye dominance problem (I'm *very* left eye dominant, I only see 2dimensions, which is why I didn't see why the monitor was good at first.
I havn't been able to find any info about it at the cannon website though....
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
Has anyone come out with a decent way to point in 3D space? Mouses/mice/whatever that you can use to manipulate 3D images in CAD would be handy, for example.
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One thing you can't really do with hardware layering and mixdown is provide a feeling of space - with this screen you can move your head ever so slightly and get a concept of depth, even if its only minor.
This could have exciting implications for future GUI design, and if they perfect the manufacturing process to the point where more than 2 planes can be sandwiched (say, 32 or 64?) then we start seeing some really interesting opportunities for GUI design, not to mention the artistic value, which is often inappropriately overlooked in technology.
Imagine a GUI that gives you a degree of depth inherently without requiring large resources - buttons could have 3d edges that were handled at the hardware level, rather than software - thus making for better resource management, and therefore leading to more efficient GUI performance. This may seem minor, and perhaps it is, but I can see how this would have potential.
Once we get up to the 64-pixel Z-plane level of production, I can see widgets being designed that use the Z-plane to provide ancilliary info feedback to the user without requiring any more interaction on the users part than to just move their head and look closer.
I was thinking about this similar "liveliness" aspect of GUI design the other day when playing with http://www.praystation.com/ (excellent web page) - it'd be nice if there were some way to produce a screen that could figure out what you were looking at, perhaps by bouncing something off your retina and doing geometry to get a point of what you're looking at. In the 80's, marketing devices that used lasers to see what you were looking at were used to do market research of TV commercials - it'd be nice to see something like this built into LCD screens, so we could do away with the mouse altogether.
But the thought I had was that, with something like this, the longer you look at the control the more information it could provide you - bringing a "liveliness" aspect to the control that we don't currently have with the static 2d shapes we call user interfaces right now.
Having a 3D screen with a 64-layer Z-plane would be another way to add 'liveliness' to an interface... you could for example build a mixing console that provides you with channel insert information, with amplituded represented in depth.
I'd say 64-layer Z-planes would be the next major step for this company. Get things to that point, and the GUI design world starts to get *really* interesting...
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