Review of a 3D LCD

MBCook writes "I just saw on Tom's Hardware a review of a 3D LCD screen: The DTI 2015XLS. Apparently it does work and doesn't need special glasses or other such anoyances. And remember: when you build your next awesome gameing PC, leave $1699 in your budget for one of these babies!"

Comments

Re:Usability nill

[Joe Rumsey]

Reading the article, it appears as though they can present completely independent images to each eye. The depth of the physical device doesn't matter at all if you can do that. They should be able to get every bit as much depth as a pair of goggles, just not the peripheral vision. The other drawback is that you have to keep your head fairly still, moving out of the correct viewing position will ruin the 3D effect.

3-D displays can be a problem

[DrScott]

One aspect of 3-D displays that people tend to overlook is the increased demand for accurate binocular alignment and accommodative-convergence interplay (that is, the relationship between binocular eye alignment and the focusing of the eyes). Nearpoint tasks such as reading can cause considerable eyestrain if a reader has problems with binocular alignment or focusing, and 3-D displays will only add to the possibility of having such problems. So while some people will be able to use 3-D displays easily, others will do so only with considerable effort or discomfort, while yet others will be unable to do so at all.

Handicap distress...

[Deus Ex Machina]

I realize that my concern may be unnecessary (I haven't tried these out, of course) but I do find it rather distressing to think that this sort of 3D display might be the wave of the future. My concern about this comes from the fact that I am blind in one eye, and do not perceive 3D the way that other people do - things like the red and blue glasses or other visual tricks of that sort do not work for me, they only give me a massive headache. Inversely, there have been other 3D techniques which did work for me, and so I am not without hope - but I do hold a small bit of fear for the day that I find I cannot use a normal computer monitor because they have evolved beyond my ability to perceive them correctly. Does anyone have greater knowledge about this sort of perception, who might have some advice or ideas concerning my predicament? I'd appreciate it.

Re:Handicap distress...

[Preposterous Coward]

Your concern is interesting to me. I had a similar problem as a child -- legally blind in one eye -- but some fairly aggressive action (including a full-time eye patch over the good eye) at an early age corrected me to a point where both eyes are functional, although my bad one still needs a fairly high prescription in order to approach normalcy.

Anyway, I studied a lot of perception and cognition stuff while in college, including some examination of 3-D imaging. The thing is, to get true binocular vision you *must* have two functional eyes, plus the correct circuitry in your brain to integrate the views from both. If you have only one working eye you will never achieve true binocular vision.

Still, it's estimated that something like 5 percent of the population (if I remember correctly) has some degree of problems with binocular vision; nevertheless many of these people are able to compensate, and maintain some depth perception even with a single functioning eye. The reason this is possible is that binocular vision (literally, seeing with two eyes) is not the only cue that can convey depth information: So can parallax with a single eye as you shift your head, for example. Things like relative motion help, too. It's not that people like this live in a completely flat, 2-D world -- but some of the depth information that folks with true binocular vision have is definitely absent.

In particular, lots of the 3-D tricks that rely on binocular vision won't work, because those techniques rely on simulating depth by sending differential (but actually 2-D) images to each eye. (Projecting a true holograph does get around this problem, because it creates a reproduction that is actually three-dimensional, rather than using two differential 2-D objects to fake 3-D.)

As an analogy, think of stereo sound through headphones: If you only have one ear, playback of a stereo recording is not going to have the desired effect. That doesn't mean you're completely incapable of doing some localization of normal sounds with that single ear -- there's a lot that the peculiar shape of the external ear does to reflect signals in a way that sets up phase differences and so on that your brain uses to help perform localization. (This is similar to how you can still get some depth perception with one eye.) However, someone with a single ear is not going to be able to perceive a sound stage artifically created with stereo inputs the way people with two functional ears can -- because what stereo does is essentially cheat and take two differential one-dimensional sequences and let your brain do the two-dimensional integration. If you only hear one of those one-dimensional sequences (which don't individually contain any of the original spatial information because they're effectively point sources on playback) you're out of luck.

On a personal level, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Nobody is suggesting these displays are going to completely displace 2-D monitors anytime soon. (Cost aside, think how much actual business work -- not games -- is done in 2-D vs. 3-D.) In any case, it seems likely that 3-D displays would have a 2-D fallback mode, as this one does. And OSes and business apps (to say nothing of dev tools) that actually require true 3-D imaging are a long, long way off (thank god).

Screenshots would be nice

[BierGuzzl]

A screenshot (for lack of a better term) would be nice, to at least show some examples of this technology in action. So far we've got the diagrams, and some pictores of the lcd screen -- but they left the damn thing turned OFF! What are they hiding?

This is the parralax barrier method.

[cogpp]

The way the do this isn't new. Despite the quite poor explaination of how it works in the review and on their home page I think this is a minor variation on the parral barrier method, explained with diagrams here (N.B. the first method on the page). All they have done is move the barrier from in front to between the liquid crystal and the backlight. It was invented by Frederick Ives in 1903, so it's not that new. If you want to make your own you should try printing a lot of fine lines on some acatate, and experimenting with that, certainly cheaper than their monitor.

The evolution of Human-Computer interface

[Migelikor1]

Finally, there is effective research being done, to make computers, as Douglas Adams (RIP) would have put it, more than typewriters with televisions in front of them. By combining a 3D display with the 3D sensory technology in development by companies like Sensable people can interact with a genuine multidimensional, immersive computer environment. Beyond the prOn possibilities of merging the technologies (fondle-able images anyone?) is a whole new world of design. Though I can't see the displays improving word processing or programming much, designing products on a 3D screen, touching them in virtual space, and printing them on 3D printers offer a whole new world of simple product development. Converse is already using a 3D printing and fax system to design shoes in boston, and give their factories in Asia models to work from.