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3-D Monitors From Actual Depth
Klenex writes "True 3-D Visual Effects w/o the use of annoying '3-d' glasses or stereograms. Actual Depth "The Actual Depth monitor is actually two LCD displays stacked on top of each other. The LCD on top displays white transparently, so you can see through to the display beneath it, which is opaque." You need a dual head card or a 2nd video card to drive each display but this seems incredibly cool and it will work with any OS which supports dual monitors w/o any other hardware. Here's TechTV's scoop on the new technology. They even have a link to contact them about a demo in your area. I'd love to see one of these in action even though chances are I would never be able to afford one. Prices start around 6 grand, quite steep."
Whatever happened to just a plain ol' 14 inch CRT and a pair of those 3D glasses from 7-11 back in the day?
*g*
it's in my head
Two layers doesn't seem very deep. Wouldn't it take a few more to create something resembling 3 dimensions?
This is why I don't need a 3-D monitor....
My monitor is already 3D, it is a huge 3D box.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Oh that 17inch monitor looks really cool, but what about the price? I'd say it's at least 2x the price of a normal 17" TFT, and that's too much for home use.
Life sucks.
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.3d
/.ed already??
I know it wouldn't look as sexy, but it would probably work just as well with one LCD in front of a CRT. That would knock the price down.
I've seen the monitor before. The effect isn't impressive. It basically looks like what you'd expect - one lcd layer on top of another, will little illusion of depth.
Porn just became cool all over again. Wait.. was it ever not cool?
This is going to wreck havoc and cause major confusion for the clean-freeks between
us... Imagine trying to clean those nasty fingerprints in 3D..
I wonder what the moiré patterns caused by fingerprints would look like on
this screen..
nice ;)
The video gives a little technical information. At the end, the reporter says that consumer versions are planned and "they will cost less than two desktop LCD monitors".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I think that eventually we will get 3D displays for games. What I'd really love is a dual projector system with polarised glasses. That should look awesome - a bit like a minature version of those incredible 3D IMAX films.
HH
Now the feeling that Bill Gates is choking me to death can be experienced in the ever more uncomfortable word of 3d!
Who ever said extortion couldn't be fun?
What use is there for 3 dimesions, when depth is only one of two values? Is there something I'm missing?
"I'd love to see one of these in action even though chances are I would never be able to afford one. Prices start around 6 grand, quite steep."
Right now the prices may be high, but as with all the goodies, the prices are bound to fall.. and fall. When the company breakevens, the prices should fall, but it is really dissapointing to have such high priuce pegged initially. If the prices were lower, breakeven would be faster... anyways, this tech is cool, but what is being ignored comletely is the effect on eyes. I may be wrong but i do not think that any eye tests have been done! Already lotsa ppl in the IT industry are suffering from poor eyesight.. i wonder what this technology has in store for us?My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Here is an article that explains why this device may be nothing more than two simple overlaid workspaces but not true stereoscopic 3-D. In particular, it says in bold red: "For Stereoscopic-3D you'll need special Stereo-3D software in any case, whether it's photography, film, tv, video or computer software. You will never get a real 3D experience out of standard material. There are products which claim to do this, especially pseudo3D-television devices, but those offerings are bogus! - You can't get 3D out of thin air." From what I have previously heard about stereoscopic vision, and confirmed by what the article says, one needs two slightly different points-of-view of a 3-d object (or simulated points-of-view in case of flat images) for the brain to correctly synthesize the notion of depth. That is why one typically uses glasses with accurately sync'ed shutters (so that one frame is delivered to one eye and the next frame to the other---there are any number of schematics available on the web to roll your own provided the display hardware/software can support this). Alternate techniques for generating stereo vision include polarization techniques, etc.
The manufacturers web site.
An article in the Electronic Engineering Times.
3-D in the traditional sense has to do with showing a different picture to each eye. Everything else is just polygons.
What this monitor does do is lay a transparent layer on top of a regular LCD display. So its kind of having two monitors without moving your neck. Cool, but not 3D.
They passed up the excellent opportunity to use a polarized filter on the lcds. With a pair of polarized glasses, you could have true 3D with that setup. That's what they use in the 3D IMAX setups these days (polarized light on a screen that preserves the polarization), and it works amazingly well. You can sit down for hours and watch those with no problem, despite the bs (why their product is better) from the Actual Depth guy. The setup Actual Depth uses is only two layers. As far as 3D gaming goes, there is little to no difference. I don't see the other applications as doing too well either, except perhaps for the medical ones. Even then, though, it's nothing a normal single layered lcd couldn't do with overlays. -Altaic
People seem to forget that with 3D glasses, you're not limited by the depth of the apparatus, you can render things at infinity, and even things in front of the screen!
Furthermore, with 3D glasses you get to see everything even if you're not exactly in front of the screen (think 'living room' with 10 people watching the same screen, some people will have tilted views). If your 3D TV is shaped like a hollow box, then the sides of the box will hide parts of the image for some people.
The only technology that could compete with 3D-glasses would be a transparent hollow box, or think R2D2 projection hologram. You still lose the range of depth you can get with 3D glasses (so you lose panoramas), but you gain a "stand in your room" effect which could be pretty cool in some cases.
3d-glasses, like rechargeable batteries, a great simple technology that somehow gets dismissed.
Unless I'm horribly mistaken, this claims their cards support Dimension Technologies 3d lcd displays. Their monitors use a single lcd but have special optics that makes alternating columns of pixels visable to each eye.
Last week I saw such a 3d display at an IS conference in Paris. I was in a bit of a rush so I did'nt have time get any details but here are my impressions:
- You do have a "real" depth feel.
- you have to stand at a set distance from the screen (not too far, not too close)
- Don't move your head around too much, it gets blurry.
So yes, I was definatly stumped, but don't go spending your dollars yet is my advice. It's definatly cool but I don't feel it's all that ready either.
how does one change his
3D w/o Goggles
3-D Monitor From Deep Video Imaging
How hard is this? Perhaps with all the money you're reaping from these ads, you could hire some poor sap to search for dupes?
There may be many reasons not to kill you, but among them is not that you'll be missed by NASA - The Long Kiss Goodnight
This was news back in 2000. I guess it's news to ppl who weren't reading tech news back then.
And the TechTV "scoop" is just so much guff. What kind of lousy review doesn't even show pictures of this thing in action? The cynic in me says that they've just copied-and-pasted from a press release...
Grab.
Is it just me, or aren't most of the manufacturer's claims already doable using transparent windows or alpha blending on the desktop?
The monitor may not require a special OS, but TechTV's review sure does.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
3D Monitors??? Bring on the 3D Women! w00h00! -=J=-
-- Goto Blasto.Net for GOOD, FREE E-Mail, with many names to choose! Really! GO!
I doubt that you can achieve the same amount of 3-dimensional impression using such a simple approach as, say, a CAVE with motion tracking. For example, how do they display objects with surfaces orthogonal to the two LCD screens?
Anyhow, the Sharp demo system worked and I wondered what had happened to the idea...
Don't know what he is complaining about anyway there. He has the source (text file) and it is not obfuscated it is commented ( of course all the comments say the same thing "don't spam me" ). All he has to do is edit and compile it as any good open source software geek would do if he/she chose to use this open source material.
This is not 3 dimensions. It's twice two dimensions, nowhere near a possibility to have 3d accelerator video boards taking advantage. No quake. Must feel like two overheads on top of each other. What exactly do you win with this kind of display? You could probably display the windows on the front layer and the desktop background on the back layer (including a nice shadow, osX style). But that's about it.
Yet Another 3D Screen.
Cute, but when can I go down to WalMart and buy one?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Which is likely what you'd expect, except it's only 3D in that there are two flat planes for objects to be "projected" onto instead of one. Sure, having apps that would support this with depth-based widgets could be pretty cool, but I wouldn't get too excited. I'd be surprised to see this becoming a mainsteam hit.
Also, if someone could explain how this would benefit gamers (as stated in the article), I'd be keen for a response, coz I'm coming up blank. I can't see Quake being anything but confusing with this...maybe RTSes or RPGs that have sidebars with widgets?
If you want a real 3D-display check out the ELSA Economo 4D. It consists of an 18" TFT-screen with an eye tracking system that aranges a so called sight prism so that each eye sees a different image. Obviously, however, this only works for one viewer at a time.
This is not a 3D screen. It's two 2D screens and as such doesn't offer any clear advantage over two regular screens IMHO.
:)
Besides, It will be obsolete once they invent the elusive "Translucent Middle Screen".
I am a Karma Library.
and it wasn't very interesting.
If you want a real depth profile (i.e. many
layers) check out the Stereographics Synthagram
at www.stereographics.com or the 4D Vision
monitor at 4d-vision.de (I think).
Are you sure that you weren't looking at an autostereoscopic display? That is - something that is true 3D, and uses lenticular lenses or similar to achieve the 3D. It is also something that is not very technologically advanced yet - resolution is very poor (typically half of a normal LCD, due to the tricks required to get stereo) and the stereo "sweet spot" is very small.
The product in question, however, is simply two LCD screens, one on top of the other, to give you "actual depth". There is nothing particularly 3D or stereo about it - simply that some objects can be positioned an inch behind other objects. The main use for this would be in the area of public touchscreen booths, etc. It may also be useful in ordinary desktop metaphors where (for example) the active window could be positioned an inch infront of everything else.. And more importantly - it has the advantage that it doesn't require you to hold your head in a certain position / distance.
two layers? ha! i think this display has more promise
I wonder how it will download MP3's id tags off of the internet w/o netwok connection...
:-)
o mponent/mp3_hi-fi_component.html
Dude, that must be something I've gotta be aware of
Anyways, that's sorta what I did with an old PC...
http://www.caicara.org/pumar/Projects/MP3_Hi-Fi_C
an array of photophosphoric cubes arranged in 3D space will do!!!
The engineers from "Actual Depth" should study phisics of laser-maded holograms, which are really alike 3d images. Two LCD are not needed, instead they need much higher resolution in order to create optical interference. Otherwise it is not 3D and it will not work on the market.
I've used a multi-dimensional monitor for years!
Admittedly, it's only got 2 dimesions, but is a
hell of an improvement over that one dimensional
SOAB I'd been using beforehand.
I also remember another device where a mono LCD used a colour CRT as a backlight. At the time (about 1985) this offered high black-and-white resolution, and the ability to display CMYK (inverse RGB, and black), which was quite interesting at the time. The CRT had a thick front plate, so the LCD was clearly 'floating' some way in front of the CRT image.
A holodeck, it ain't. Even quite modest volumes contain an awful lot of voxels. Think how many little cubes you get in a bag of sugar.
Yes, I know how LCDs work, so bear with me - instead of using filters that polarize every pixel the same way, one could use filters that polarized every other line at 90 degrees to the previous. Now, manufacturing such filters and fitting them to LCDs is more expensive than current LCDs, but the advantage is that a simple pair of polarizing glasses (with one lens polarizing at 90 degrees to the other) would enable stereoscopic viewing of the LCD from any distance within the field of view of the LCD. I believe there is a company out there already claiming to have developed such displays, but I don't recall the name - they were touting their micropolarizer filter technology, anyhow, which is the hard part of making such a display.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
this could turn goatse into a "hole" new experience
Traditional 3d hardware includes 3d accelerator cards, immersive-display goggles, stereoscopic LCD goggles, crystal-ball type volumetric displays, and the (theoretical) realtime hologram projector. But the problems those devices attempt to solve are almost completely distinct from what the ActualDepth display is meant for. (Well, except that a truely effective hologram projector could emulate any other display technology...)
The point of ActualDepth is to allow your computer to present you more visual information in the same space. If you run traditional software that's not aware of the special screen layout, you can just use the multi-monitor feature of the OS's gui system (in X11 they call it Xinerama) to assign some windows to the front screen and some to the back. That way you can look at both of them at once, and for instance can read the online manual for a game at the same time you play it full screen, or operate a 3d-modeller in the classic 4-way parellel projection while a textured preview of the object sits on the back display. Anything that you'd do with dual-monitors, you can do with this, but using less physical real estate, and, more importantly, with less time to focus your vision from one to the other. Both screens are centered in your field of view at the same time, so there's no looking back and forth nessecary.
It's likely that without modifications, your GUI interface will only allow the mouse to switch between screens by you dragging it across one edge of the screens, where it considers them seamed together. That is irritating and unintuitive, so you'd want to use one screen as more of a read-only device, showing useful data but rarely needing interaction.
Elsewhere, someone asked if this effect can be emulated in software just by alpha-blending on image on top of another. You could try this, but it wouldn't really work. At the points where the foreground image is solid (thick black text), the background will be completely obscured. But with "actual depth" between the displays, the stereo-graphic effect of dual-eyeballs comes into play. Assuming the foreground image is mostly line-art or text and doesn't consist of large regions of solid color, then for every pixel in the background image, at least one of your eyeballs will have an unobstructed line of sight to it. You remain aware of the contents of both displays with no additional perceptual effort.
The device I tested had a touch screen attached in front, and the window-manager (well, Microsoft Windows(tm)) was configured so that a single-click on a titlebar would shift a window 1024 pixels left or right, effectively toggling it between the front and back displays.
To begin to recoup some of the enormous pricetag for ActualDepth hardware, though, you'd need to run software that's aware of the display's special characteristics. (The code doesn't need to link any special drivers or new APIs, but it does need to be aware that graphics drawn at (X-1024,Y) will appear floating over (X,Y)).
Essentially what the application should do is allocate one display for data, and one for meta-data. That is, if you're word-processing a document, the back display should always give a WYSIWYG preview of the output, and the front display should present all the filenames, font names, editing markup (including those automatically-generated spellchecker warning scribbles), section breaks, margin, column boundaries, etc.
I'd really like to see what user-interface innovations would pop out if the programming public got to play with these monitors for a while, but at the current price, that's just not going to happen. (ActualDepth should sponsor some free-software authors to modify their code to exploit their displays- until they get some sample applications out there, potential users won't understand the benefits).
Sure it can do 3D, but only in two planes. It's true and real 3D but so limited, what's the use? It's not 'infinite' planes as could be done with high resolution, high color, antialiased STEREO images and those 'annoying' glasses.
Now, I will say that the 'stacking' of related app data is kinda cool, but you really could get that from a single monitor. If you've seen WinXP in action, the mouse pointer creates a shadow over the desktop. Looks 3Dish. True it isn't in two planes, but who cares?
Sorry, but I'll keep my $6000 bux and buy a sweet rig and some glasses for true stereoscopic vision first. I wear glasses normally so wearing a different pair doesn't bother me at all.
Let's see, we already had the fufme device (http://www.onzin.nl/fufme/index.htm), now there's the 3D monitor. Combined with a force-feedback glove, what more does any pr0n lover need?
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
wouldn't it be possible to just make a "clip on" version of the top layer to just place over an existing monitor to achieve the same effect? that would certainly make it alot cheaper, although i suppose that the whole pixel line up would be thrown out of whack..
shrig.. i'd still like to see it in person
"The world's first commercially available multi-dimensional monitors"
Last time I looked "2" counted as multiple dimensions - a Uni-dimensional monitor wouldn't be much use now would it?
Nintendo's good ol' "Virtual Boy" to me, though it wasn't $500 and it only had 2 colors.
In the white-transparancy LCD. I would just love to have a very-large one of these.
Can you immagine having a huge seemingly tranparent pane of glass with the ability to show any range of LCD images except white? It's like the ultimate HUD. I could install one in my car. The possibilities are endless.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
I saw some of them of CeBIT, and they're pretty cool, although your eyes begin to hurt after a few minutes of watching. So, IMO it's a technology not yet ready for the end-user market.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Instead of spending 6k on a a spiffed out display device spend 500-1000 on a very nice profesional graphics card(heck i think some of the cheaper Matrox cards have this) that supports an overlay plane. CAD software has been making use of these for years. In fact some SGI's support makeing everything in the overlay plane 'superbright' so that labels stand out. And with the overlay plane you are not stuck with white as your only 'chroma key' color choice.
Kevin
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
I spoke with a friend a while back about some work with multiple plane 3D display units a while back. Using Google, I found a few people that have multiple (arbitrary?) layers of depth using lasers. Yes, this is different than LCD and functionally more difficult, but interesting nonetheless.
/. a while back.)
The idea is to send multiple beams into a glass cube. When beams interesct, they flouresce. By controling the way the beams enter the cube, one can create a volumetric display. There is an article here about some work done by some Stanford folks, and a somewhat related presentation here from some Berkeley folks.
(also searching, I found the there was an article about Actual Depth here on
...about 2 months ago at a visualization conference in Boston. You can get these in a touch panel as well. Great for heads-up-display interaction. Also, depending on how hard you press you can send the windows between the front and back pannel. Beats minimizing your window when you don't need it for a moment but would still like to see information displayed on it.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
you turned your head sideways
you moved your head to far to the right or left
you were to far or too near the display
Man, ergonomically nasty. But atleast these people are using the annoying tendency of LCD display to get real dim at a moderate to steep angle to their advantage. You know... Like those evil LCD movie screens on airplanes.
What the fuck is so annyoing about 3-D glasses? They work, don't they? If the monitors don't deliver 3-D better than the glasses do then I'm not in the least bit interested.
I may be since I would like to have 6000$
Yeah, "LCD Display". Maybe I should just go down to the ATM Machine and enter my PIN Number from my personal PDA Assistant.
moron.
That is a good point, but one difference is that because the LCDs are at different distances, when you focus on one screen the other will be blurry and hence not interfere as much with the one in focus.
This isn't 3D. 3D allows for vectors and surfaces along any possible plane. This allows for two levels of 2D. This is usually referred to as '2.5D', meaning 2D but layered so one flat 2D plane can obscure another parallel flat 2D plane.
further, 2.5D usually allows for an unlimited number of parallel 2D planes, and this only has two.
Cool, I guess, but hardly a 3D monitor in any practical sense of the term...
Kevin Fox
It seems to me that you wouldn't be able to get true stereoscopic vision from this monitor only a two-layer 2D setup. Is this really any more useful than having 2 monitor's side-by-side? You can read about a true stereoscopic 3D monitor here. This uses an LCD behind a "vertical-blinds"-type lens to allow each eye to only see alternate columns of pixels. So it displays the left eye's image on "even" columns and the right eye's image on "odd" columns. Sounds cool, works on the same principle as those 3D posters at your local theater, and is only around $1500 compared to $6000. It's made my DTI.
but i get paid more to code for them than i did for the PC^H^HAmiga.
The effect is similar to a heads-up display for a pilot with a screen of transparent GUIs 1" in front of a normal screen. The "stereo" effect was best when a 3-d text (as in the screen saver) rotated on the top layer. There was an illusion of depth at that point.
The cheapest model was going for $8K.
FWIW, Dimensional Media had a true stereo-without-glasses monitor ( $95K ) that allowed 20 layers of depth and looked good, though the depth was not great ( looked good showing a Doom demo, tho ).
I saw a demo of this monitor (my SO is on their testimonial page). The point is not to provide actual 3D stereoscopic displays but to provide layering of 2D data. Visual search and other attentive tasks are more efficient if you can focus on a specific plane. This monitor allows you to overlay two sets of data (text, graphs, whatever) and focus on one or another.
One demo they did was a military logistics map where the topo chart and most of the icons were in the back plane but you could selectively pull certain types of icons to the front to focus on certain groups or types of units. Another application they discussed was an air traffic control situation where items needing attention were shifted to the front plane.
For more mundane programming tasks, imagine having a code editor window and data view window overlaid. On a conventional monitor you could do this with transparency, but on the ActualDepth monitor you have additional depth cues which allow you to selectively focus on one plane or another.
I remember a device for the Amiga that used TEN layers of LCDs. Apparently, the rear layers started to get blurry due to optical distortion.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a link on the internet. This was done at least 8 years ago.
Max Fleischer invented this technology many years ago. This is just multiplane animation in real time.h tm
http://users.bestweb.net/~mentzerm/popeye.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
...this will worsen my habit of bobbing and ducking my head when playing Urban Operations.
There were many companies at SIGGRAPH with lenticular displays (ribbed lenses that give you different views when you move your head around). Members of my company actually saw this particular display at SID last year (Society for Information Displays). They were not impressed. This display works in a similar way to the lenticular displays, except the 3-D image is produced in a slightly different way. It has multiple - 2, in this case - LCD panels instead of a lens directing the light output in different directions.
There are several downsides to this technology:
- It only looks 3D if you are looking at it straight on and standing a certain distance from the display. This makes it difficult for several people to look at at a time.
- There is typically a very limited number of available "depths". This is because you are only showing 2 images at a time.
- In the case of this display you need a video card that has a dual monitor output and special software to take advantage of the display.
- Most lenticular displays have to trade off number of views with horizontal resolution. Thus, their resolution is usually rather poor compared to present day monitors.
The image is sort of like watching a 3-D movie - you know with the red/blue glasses. It sort of looks cool and is 3-D but probably not really useful for anything.
Also, the comment on their web page: "The world's first commercially available mult-dimensional monitors." is total bull.
There are *many* companies selling this technology.
Actuality Systems is one.
DMA is another that uses a similar system except with many layers of LCDs. In fact they have a patent on this technology. I wonder how ActualDepth will get away with it.
Just do a web search. You'll come up with a dozen companies selling flat-screen "3D"
Check out Actuality Systems
They support Linux!
The implications for quantum computing are staggering!
I nearly killed myself falling backwards out of my chair when I went to some seemilng innocent link which actually went to http://goatse.cx/giver.html.
Scary!
-Jeff
hehe this is very beautiful. Only now after you have created your cd art how do u get it to look the same on paper? do u have to get special transparent paper :) hehe.
As for the layers... Those glasses give you as much 3d as you want by spreading the red and blue imagges apart farther to make them appear closer. (in reality that is 2 layers as well, the TV and glasses) But if they can do it with a normal tv and cheesy paper glasses im sure they can make it look that nice (and much nicer) with 2 LCD's. People are posting about putting 3 layers into it, only what would that do besides make the monitor more confusing then it has to be, and what would the 3rd layer do? (1st=color, 2nd=white) whats the 3rd?
- Zac
- Zac Epkes
They were displaying a nice 50 inch screen!
It was very impressive. They were showing various videos, one being a montage of a U2 music video and what looked like explosions from action movies. It really looked like there were continous planes of depth.
Its down side was that you couldn't move much laterally because artifacts appeared at various angles at which point your brain refused to believe it was 3D anymore.
At the time I thought they used a diffraction grating similar to those you find on cheap static 3D displays, but I found this in their FAQ:
1. How does glasses-free 3D-viewing work?
4D-Vision(TM) displays are coated with a special optics, the 'wavelength selective filter array'. This filter defines particular light penetration directions for the light emitted from each coloured image element. In other words, differently coloured image elements can be seen from different spatial positions in front of the screen.
Rohan
What if you stack up 100 LCDs and get 100 depth levels?
Very expensive though.
I think real *volumetric* 3-D is the way to go.
Multiple can view the image at the same time and the image actually occupies a real volume.
Too many technologies just seem to be *faking* 3D
and only provide horizontal parallex with a limited number of views.
IMHO, this technology is really cool!
The effect is surprisingly good. I saw one of these at Siggraph (or a variant of it), and not only was the depth effect pretty nice, but it had a nice interface too.
The one I used was touch sensitive and you could drag windows into the background layer. I remember thinking from the demo I had that I'd have no trouble making use of both layers.
I got to see other '3D' displays at Siggraph, and they were PATHETIC. Either the 3D effect required a little bit of imagination (i.e. it was distorted), or it required glasses. The two layer approach, though its only 2 layers, was very clean and didn't cause a headache.
I'd easily take it over the other '3D' displays they had, with the plus side that it is touch sensitive too.
"Derp de derp."
"I've seen the monitor before. The effect isn't impressive. It basically looks like what you'd expect - one lcd layer on top of another, will little illusion of depth."
The two layers isn't to produce a stereoscopic effect, they're an interface feature. The demo I saw was a guy using Windows with this device. The screen was touch sensitive and he could drag windows around with his finger and then push it into the background layer. You could get a lot more things on the screen with this device because the added layer gave you something to focus on.
They weren't marketing it as a 'watch tv in 3D!' gadget like everybody else, they were marketing it as a practical interface to Windows. (I think I remember the rep saying it'd work on any os, the demo was Windows though.)
Unfortunately, the article that Slashdot posted was misleading by calling it '3D'. It would be better to describe it as 'dual monitors with the form factor of only one monitor.'
Just to make a point, don't pass judgement on this device until you actually see it in practice. I was skeptical of it too until I saw the demonstration. Compared to the '3D Tvs' they had around the show, this thing was by far the clearest. The 'stereoscopic' monitors they had around the show floor were headache inducing. The slightest movement and everything would warble a bit. At least this particular monitor stayed clear.
"Derp de derp."
Was rather unimpressed. This monitor is IMHO totally useless for gamers, and marginally useful for those in cad/cam etc.
It's not 3d. It's a monitor with an LCD superimposed. It's kind of dumb.
We invite anyone interested in real depth 3D Displays that do not require glasses or headgear to visit our site at http://www.dti3d.com, and read the reviews from several dozen web sites and magazines. We are the world's only source of commercially available 2D/3D switchable flat panel displays and hold most of the world's major patents on autostereoscopic 3D flat panel displays. They are in use in hundreds of companies, R&D labs, educational institutions and governmental agencies. And they start at just $1699. This....is the real thing!
3d glasses are far from perfect for representing TRUE 3d images as well. In particular, they don't simulate the different focus for objects at varying depths and instead can only indicate 3d by the seperation of the dual images.
Some people have pretty short memories.
I thought they would invent something better, something that reminds Z-buffering, i.e, each pixel on the display has a Z value, which determines the distance of the point from the viewer.
Now, that would be cool, for viewing 3D maps and such.
got a patent on this idea when it first occured to me 3-4 years ago, bleh.
:)
Not like it is all that ORIGINAL of an idea, the only main issue being the development of transparent LCD panels.
Still though, I wonder if my 16x+ LCD idea would count, or is it just a derivitive? Hmm.
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I've often wondered why someone can't produce a CRT that works in 3D. Or at least 180 degree bubble? The electron gun would sweep about in 3 dimensions instead of just from left to right and up and down ...............??
Having two discrete levels of 'depth' does not a three-dimensional image make.
I've seen these as well, and the 3D effect isn't too bad... Even having only two layers can give your brain a lot more depth information.
My biggest problem with these displays is that they do a horrible job of occluding the back layer. Any object in the front layer that is supposed to be opaque, but isn't black, becomes translucent. So, if you're trying to display a red car driving in front of a building, you can see right through the body panels of the car. It's really rather distracting...
Tricky, and not doable as a display currently, but not inconceivable: we can do it with a 2d still now using holograms.
Tricky, and not doable as a display currently, but not inconceivable: we can do it with a 2d still now using holograms.
Actuality Systems' 3D display is a true 3D monitor, capable of being viewed from 360 degrees. The image looks like a solid model inside of a globe.
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What if you would layer a bunch of these things together? That is, put a bunch of transparent LCD panels on top of one another, so you have a bunch of slices for 3D objects.
I could see this as something similar to the rapid-prototyping machines that compose an object out of tiny slices to turn 2D data into a 3D object.
One problem I would see is the visibility of the lower layers -- they would be obsecured by the top layers. This could be addressed by modulating the luminance value of the respective pixel in each layer, tuned to the depth of the layer (front layers would get less luminance while back would get more).
Would be cool, but expensive as single panels today are $$$.
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