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The Future Of 3D

Posted by timothy on from the deep-in-the-depths dept.

tlb writes: "I found an article regarding the future of 3D at Beachside Tech. The article discussed 3D is movies and the internet as well as video games. It seems interactive 3D objects are becoming more popular for web use. There's also some history in it, and some info on technologies from Nvidia."

2 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Movies in 3D. by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Imagine if you had a system, where you used two movies, layed one on top of the other. It would look blury of course, but if the viewer were to wear a pair of expensive, high-tech filter glasses (having differently coloured lenses), a stereoscopic 3-D image could be achieved. I bet in 2 years time we could have a working proto-type, and then actually bring it to market within 10 years given the proper funding and agressive marketing.

    3D movies have existed for quite a while. Ancient systems used colour-filter glasses to get 3D. Other ancient systems used various tricks to get limited 3D effects in full colour. The Right Way to show a 3D movie is to have two projectors running films shot for each eye, put polarized filters on the projectors, and use polarized glasses to look at the resulting image. My understanding is that this is the way 3D movies are shown now, though I don't keep up with the industry (and so could easily be mistaken).

    For computers, the nicest way of doing 3D is to display alternate eyes on alternate frames, and use LCD shutter-glasses to decode it. You can buy packages for this off the shelf from several vendors; they work by replacing the rendering driver with one that renders two images and handles the synchronization of the glasses. These have existed for a while.

    Now, the fact that both of these solutions have existed for a while, but that neither of these have really caught on, should tell you the most important thing:

    Nobody really cares about true 3D for most entertainment or gaming applications.

    If they did, stereographic glasses would have sold like hotcakes when they were first introduced.

    A flat projection of a 3D world seems to be enough for most viewers, despite the industry's repeated attempts to provide something more.

  2. Re:I say we boycott Nvidia... by DaRiachu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    szcx: Although you meant that to be whimsical, I'm seriously wondering how you could get that to work. I've seen textmode Quake, but I've heard all that is is a skin for Quake. Is there a way to make a 3d textmode thing? Like old ASCII-type graphics, only 3d? I wonder...

    ...If it was, what demographic would use it? I guess two different kinds: People that would be like, "Whoa, cool!" and those of us who remember the old days of ASCII art before JPEGs and CompuServe GIFs. Heh.

    That'd be fun. I'd buy that kind of product.

    PS: I guess if it was in more than one color, that'd be cool too ;-)