The Future Of 3D

I say we boycott Nvidia... by szcx · 2001-09-02 07:07 · Score: 3, Funny

... until they give us text-mode 3D acceleration. Lynx users wont be ignored!

Re:I say we boycott Nvidia... by DaRiachu · 2001-09-02 18:35 · 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 ;-)

Haven't you seen the new Zelda previews?? by kypper · 2001-09-02 07:11 · Score: 2

3D is going away for a while, bayyy-beee.

Seems bigger better faster is too mainstream for us folk.

Minor Warning by Anonymous+DWord · 2001-09-02 07:11 · Score: 2, Informative

White text on a beige background, so bring your spectacles. Oh, and you need JS on. Or you could just type in
http://www.beachsidetech.com/perfection1.htm
perfection2.htm etc.

--
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden

In the Future by 6EQUJ5 · 2001-09-02 07:25 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

--

Re:In the Future by 6EQUJ5 · 2001-09-02 07:46 · Score: 2, Funny

Woa, who said anything about color movies? Sure the Technicolor Corporation claims to be making progress with their techniques, but I seriously doubt that anything will come of it.

No, what I was thinking of is more of an interactive experience, that's what movie goers want, according to the best research. Think lasers. Think fog machines, right there in the theatre!

What we need is someone to sell this technology. Someone who's bad... and daring. Someone who can dance, and sing, and get the whole family out for a magical evening together!

Enter... "CAPTAIN E - O" !!!

--

It's not just the hardware.. by Xzzy · 2001-09-02 07:42 · Score: 4, Informative

From the article:

> At least for now it is. As the great gods of
> technology continue to design new, unparalleled
> computing power, the detail will only become
> greater.

I really don't agree that the advancement of hardware is the main reason that 3D is becoming, or will become, more and more realistic. Fact of it is, us humans still haven't quite nailed down how to duplicate reality. Skin in FF looked plastic because we still don't know how to render skin well. They looked stiff when they ran because we still don't know how to add in the subtleties of movement. They looked fake when they talked because we still haven't mastered expressions.

I mean, people were doing production TV shows with Amiga's and Video Toasters a decade ago.. and that hardware couldn't hold a candle to today's machinery. It's not strictly hardware. I think 3d animation will only become more realistic once we've gotten better at figuring out how lighting works, how creatures move, and all the subtleties involved.

Movies in 3D. by Christopher+Thomas · 2001-09-02 08:20 · 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.

Re:Fluff piece? by Tim+Browse · 2001-09-02 08:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Anyone else feel that the entire article was written as mere fluff to get page views?

Seconded. Dull info, amateur/sloppy writing.

Take this example:

This July, Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within was released. With it, came the most glorious 3D CG in history. <snip> The level of detail is unsurpassed to all previous movies. At least for now it is.

Leaving aside the gorgeous grammar ("unsurpassed to"?), then quite apart from anything else, if FF's 3D CGI surpasses all previous movies, then it always will. If a wonderful new 3D CGI movie is released that surpasses FF, then it won't be a "previous movie", will it?

Aside from such scrappy writing, he also missed out TNT/TNT2 chipsets in his 'history' of nVidia's products. TNT was a massive improvement in fill-rate - the first time you could really run a game at 1024x768 and higher without huge slowdowns.

And all that "I still remember when Nvidia was the new kid on the block" - wow, he can remember a whole few years..? He can't actually remember enough to tell us why the Riva was not as good as 3dfx - just some vague comment that the 3dfx looked better. The Riva was a pretty buggy part - it had horrible seaming problems. nVidia introduced the TNT to developers as "an apology from us for how bad the Riva was".

When I got to the end of the article, I was left wondering why the hell it got onto the front page of slashdot - basically all the article said was:

"3D is the coolest! And it's going to get cooler! Have you seen the Sharper Image site? Hot dog! I'm gonna get me some nVidia lovin'!"

Harsh but fair, methinks.

Tim

Progress? Or reinventing the wheel? by gad_zuki! · 2001-09-02 10:48 · Score: 2

It takes a computer days to produce what a polaroid can do in minutes.

Seriously, the more I see about photo realism the more I wonder how much more effective it would be to just edit real photographs taken by a decent photographer.

I'm all for photo realism in animation, but for stills it seems like a waste of perfectly good film. I'm not a neo-luddite, but most of this eye candy could have been done with photoshop and a real photo in a fraction of the time.

Re:Progress? Or reinventing the wheel? by Nogard5 · 2001-09-02 13:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

It takes a computer days to produce what a polaroid can do in minutes.
I suppose the same could be said of a painter.
Seriously, the more I see about photo realism the more I wonder how much more effective it would be to just edit real photographs taken by a decent photographer.
Effective for what purpose? I'm a photographer, but I realize the merits of other art forms. Often, editing an existing photograph won't give you the results you want to achieve. 3D modeling gives you the opportunity to create your own worlds, independent of what you're able to capture with any kind of camera.
3D modeling and other forms of computer art are just other media artists can use to create. And in the world of art, having more media available never hurt anyone.
I'm all for photo realism in animation, but for stills it seems like a waste of perfectly good film.
I'm not sure what this means. Do you have a better cause that this perfectly good film could be used for? I suppose it could be given to "decent photographers" to shoot images to be subsequently photoshopped to make "photo-realistic" stills. Which would be great, because then you'd have computer artists having to work their ideas around the images they're given from the photographer (whom they probably don't even talk to) rather than being allowed to create images from scratch if they want.
Not that photoshopped photographs are necessarily bad, by any means. But to say that all computer-rendered stills should have been done as some collaboration between a decent photographer and a photoshop artist is simply naive, from an artist's perspective.
Oh, and by the way, I must agree with the posts that named this among the most pointless of articles slashdot has ever linked to.
Re:Progress? Or reinventing the wheel? by StaticEngine · 2001-09-02 13:22 · Score: 2

Except, you know, actually finding the perfect layout of streams, trees, people, spaceships, alien beings, exploding stars, translucent men, dissolving animals, liquid metal Terminators, or Infernal Machines Powered By The Dead, and then setting up the camera and lighting so that you get the shot you're after, which can be tough if you're shooting inside a trash can, or doing a zoom out which starts inside an office and ends near the orbit of the moon... In any of these cases, your Drug Store Polaroid won't really do the trick.

3d in a broader sense by boboroshi · 2001-09-02 12:30 · Score: 2, Informative

Architecture is moving into 3d, but not in the traditional sense. CAD files, instead of simply being digital versions of paper files, are acctually becoming database related. When you draw a wall, you don't simply draw lines, you enter data about the wall, material, type, height, special notes, etc. All of which ties into a database. From this database one can generate a materials list and based on current market values, a price for materials.

If you add a door in plan, it updates in sectiton and perspective. The next release of Autocad and Microstation should both support this in full (according to what I've heard).

Currently, at the firm I work for (RTKL - 1500 world wide), they do things by standard CAD drawings. They spend hours updating drawings with minor changes. The wonder of 3d chat or real time 3d interaction isn't the most exciting thing here. The most exciting thing to me is revolutionizing the workflow of traditional media types, especially in architecture, interior design, and industrial design.

--
// john athayde
# x@boboroshi.com
# http://www.boboroshi.com/

And the prize for.... by Sanity · 2001-09-02 19:01 · Score: 2

....not spotting the ironic intent goes to:

Yes, it's Christopher Tomas!

Re:And the prize for.... by Error27 · 2001-09-02 20:56 · Score: 2

Sarcasm is all well and good in it's place...

But it's interesting to note that on a -1 to 5 scale Christopher Tomas's post would rate a 3. While your suposededly more creative post would rate a mere 2. That means his post is 16% more interesting than your post.

This fact is more impressive when you consider the subject matter that Christopher had to work with. Three dimensional movies are something that have been around for years. Every so called "geek" should already be somewhat familiar with how they work. Yet Christopher managed to take this topic and transform it into something new and fascinating.

Christopher Tomas I salute you!

15 of 98 comments (clear)