3D LCD Display

Powerdog writes "After 10 years of lab work, Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses. They expect to use the displays in games at first, and expand into PCs and TVs. Production begins in a few months and products using them should be shipping in early 2003. Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago."

Comments

More than a mouthful

[L. VeGas]

Double D's are more than enough on my LCD screen, thank you.

Re:More than a mouthful

[kevinank]

It does bring a whole new meaning to 'pop up ads', doesn't it.

Re:More than a mouthful

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the funniest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Kudos.

Re:More than a mouthful

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagen a marmot cluster of these!

Re:More than a mouthful

[Anonymous Coward]

2D seeing is good. 3D seeing is better. Feeling would be nice, but I'm not too sure about smelling...

But it can never beat the real thing!

Re:More than a mouthful

[orthogonal]

2D seeing is good. 3D seeing is better. Feeling would be nice, but I'm not too sure about smelling...

But it can never beat the real thing!

Oh, c'mon, once Slashdotters get their 3D screens, they'll be beating their real things constantly.

We have already had that, link below

[theefer]

Hey, this is no news !

We had that before here :
Minority Report review.

Does anybody have more info?

[MarcoAtWork]

the article doesn't really have any technical details, I'm curious to see what principle this screen operates on, and what makes it different technologically from the previous 3d LCD screens we've already seen (I think it's the 2d/3d nature of the screen without loss of resolution, as the article says, but I'd like to know how they get this to work)

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[jechoe]

I second that request for more information. I'm curious if they've simply doubled each pixel and biased each to be more intence in a particular direction or if they are utilizing interference in some way. My guess would be the first. If you could do something using interference, it would be able to be seen from all angles if done properly - like a static hologram.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Spy4MS]

Here it is at Sharp's site

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[srmalloy]

I'm curious to see what principle this screen operates on, and what makes it different technologically from the previous 3d LCD screens we've already seen (I think it's the 2d/3d nature of the screen without loss of resolution, as the article says, but I'd like to know how they get this to work)

From reading the article, I suspect that it has something to do with either increasing the number of transparent electrodes on the front face of the display panel, or changing how they're energized in relationship to the electrodes on the rear face of the panel, to change the liquid crystal alignment angles so that the viewing cone for pixels gets shifted. This would result in a 50% loss of resolution in the horizontal axis, though. The article does make a point about how the display won't have a reduced resolution in 2D mode, so the 3D functionality has to be achieved by a mechanism that restricts pixels to being viewed by a specific eye.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[MarcoAtWork]

by reading a post later (which is the original press release) it is clear that there is a 50% loss of resolution in the horizontal axis.

The press release on yahoo says that this 2d/3d display has the same resolution as a 2d-only display, not that in 2d and 3d it has the same resolution (which I thought I saw when reading it the first time)

Basically this display works the same as the 'older' 3d LCDs when 3d, but the parallax blocker is not physical, it's switchable, so the screen can be flipped to 2d when needed and not forcibly left in 3d like the others.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[tkny]

the japanese site provides a little bit more detail - essentially there's a microfine light grill in front of the lcd display bending the perceived light between the left and right eye creating a stereoscopic view much like 3d glasses. i've created a link to the sites through babelfish for those of you who can't read japanese. (the translation isn't perfect, but it's enough to get the gyst of things)

Sharp's News Release : http://www.sharp.co.jp/corporate/news/020927.html

Impress Press Release : http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/2002/0927/s harp.htm

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Ian Wolf]

I think this kind of answers the question I had in the back of my head, "How will this look for people who are effectively blind in one eye?"

The question is of interest to me, because my right eye is nearly useless. I tried Steroscopic glasses once, before I really knew how bad my vision in one eye was, and I was sorely disappointed. Hell, I'm a little disappointed with 3D imagery in the real world. You should see me try and pour a glass of water , its rather comical. If the angle is just right, I can't judge where the glass is.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[phae777]

this is the exact same technology as: dti3d. i have the 15" version. -phae

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[swordboy]

the article doesn't really have any technical details

And it doesn't have pictures, either. I want to see just how well this works!

Errr...Ummm... Wait...

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[plastik55]

The parallax blocker is not switchable; in 2d mode the same image is sent to both fields.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[srmalloy]

The parallax blocker is not switchable; in 2d mode the same image is sent to both fields.

Read closer:

But the main challenge was making it possible to switch between the ordinary 2-D mode and 3-D with the push of a button, while providing the same image resolution in the 2-D mode as in a standard display without 3-D capability.

The parallax blocker, when activated, makes half the pixels in the display visible to the left eye and half visible to the right eye (presumably in vertical stripes, from the available information). When the parallax blocker is turned off, both sets of pixels are visible to both eyes. If you have a display with a resolution of 1024x768 in 2D mode, then it would have a resolution of 512x768 in 3D mode.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Mantorp]

we should get together my left one is basically just good for peripheral movements.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Ian Wolf]

Cool, at the cost these monitors will most likely retail at we can split the cost. I just hope they're dual input.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Here it is at Sharp's site [sharp.co.uk]"

I think I saw an earlier model of one of these at Siggraph 2001. Frankly, what I saw at that show wasn't worthwhile. If you sat in the 'sweet spot' then you got a sublte hint of depth perception, but the effect wasn't stunning to say the least. All you had to do was move your head a little bit and everything would slightly distort. (In other words, it only worked if you kept your head still.)

On the flip side, though, viewing porn on the internet would be more interesting. "Ooo I can turn my head and make her dance!" Heh.

Re:Does anybody have more info?

[M.C. Hampster]

I also have sight in only one eye and was wondering the same thing. According to this description from their web site (link shamelessly stolen from above post):

We see everything about us in three dimensions. This is because each eye has a slightly different view, and the brain is able to interpret the images as a three dimensional scene. Conventional displays, which only present one image cannot reproduce the three dimensional effects.

It sounds like us "mono's" (how is that for a special interest group? ) will not be able to see the 3-D image. I would guess they are creating two images that are each seen by either eye due to the distance between the two eyes.

I can still hold out hope though...

Games come first?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought porn drove the technology industry!

Mmm, 3D porn.

Re:Games come first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I'm not interested until they come out with feel-o-vision ;)

Re:Games come first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, are you blind? How about "braille-o-vision"?

3d displays cannot work

[PhysicsGenius]

Let me enlighten you on a few vision science basics.

Objects are perceived as the same distance away when light takes the same amount of time to traverse from each of the objects. Therefore you can imagine the world as a series of concentric spheres about your eyes, each sphere representing a "plane" of distance. In order to create the illusion of 3d on a 2d surface, it is required that the light traversal time be increased for those parts of the scene that are to be perceived as "deep". The problem is, while there are ways to make light go slower, the thickness of a sheet of paper (or even a computer monitor) isn't enough space in which to do it.

Therefore, until some fundamental hurdles are overcome, 3d computing is only a pipedream.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee man, you probably have only one eye, that's why it doesn't work for you.

Stereoscopes and 3D picture postcards have been around since the 18th or 19th century...

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Bugaboo]

What the hell? We can see in 3D because we have stereoscopic vision that takes advantage of the parallax effect, not some sort of 'light traversal time'. What are you talking about?

Re:3d displays cannot work

[L. VeGas]

Mod this up!

Funniest troll I've read in a long time.

Objects are perceived as the same distance away when light takes the same amount of time to traverse from each of the objects.

That's great! Objects appear further away because it takes longer for the light from them to reach my eyes.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the eyes possibly know how long ago the light left an object? Obligatory Disclaimer: I am not a Physics Genius.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[jechoe]

err ... ummm ... you're nuts.

Depth perception comes from parallax between your eyes. NOT from how long it takes the light to reach each eye. You're thinking of stereophonic sound.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[lostPackets]

It's quite possible that you know something I don't, but I'm pretty skeptical of your explanation. First of all, my understanding was that depth perception was largly "calculated" by the degree of difference between the images from each eye.

Secondly consider the mechanism you're suggesting, that would mean that the human eye and brain would have to be able to determine the time lag between light arriving from say 5 and 50 meters away. Consider how absurdly small a difference in arrival time there will be, and the complex series of chemical and electrical signals required to use this information.

If I'm mistaken I'd love to hear more.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

He seems to be confusing the Pulfrich effect with true stereoscopic vision. Pulfrich ( I think I am misspelling his name ) found that if you cover one eye with a dark gel, lookind at an object in motion would seem to bring out the dimension of depth, kind of a 2.5D.
An example of this is the Superbowl many years back where Coke was giving out glasses that had a dark lens in them, in order to see the 3D half time show. Only thing different about the show and normal TV is that the camers was always constantly in motion on the horizontal plane - giving a constant illusion of 3D.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[lostPackets]

sry... I need a humor injection... I thought you were serious the first time I read this.

....Going for more coffee to prevent more stupid mistakes.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Shagg]

Can I have some of what you're smoking? Sounds like it must be pretty good stuff.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[nullWyvern]

Oh pls... Depth perception is the result of the brain comparing the two images generated by each eye. The closer the object, the greater the perceived difference. Human brains operate on millisecond speed (if that) and your eye can register up to 60 images a second or so, which means that practically speaking, the speed of the light hitting your eyes is inconsequential unless the difference is massive(by several orders of magnitude). Go back to school, 'genius'.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Incongruity]

Objects are perceived as the same distance away when light takes the same amount of time to traverse from each of the objects.

WRONG.

That would only work if you were able to know when the light being reflected from said objects originated. Given that light, in most cases, is a constant element (it's not frequently changing, i.e. stopping and starting, like a strobe), and given that you are not the originator of the light and you have no way of being sure which received photon (or group thereof) is (are) supposed to be synchronous in origin/reflection with which other photon, your explanation for depth perception/3D vision is not possible. 3-D vision actually relies on a number of processing tricks in the brain. You do the footwork, but the most commonly cited ones are: motion parallax, relative size, occlusion and binocular disparity.

Active sonar works the way you describe, as does radar. Human vision does not. Think of it in terms of active vs. passive processes. An active system is one that originates some signal and meters the response. A passive system makes sense of the existing signals whose origins/timings are not often known. Human vision is a passive system...

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Moloch666]

I have come across PhysicsGenius making posts like this. I like him, adding in some hidden humor that takes reading the post a few times. I assume his karma must awful. Well I'm sure he gets some great laughs reading all the replies.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really an idiot or just pretending to be one?

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll ;-)

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, it has been discovered that rockets could not possibly operate in space because there would be nothing for them to push against.

I nominate "Physics Genius" for most egregious misnomer of the year.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Tuna_Shooter]

I've seen them work at DTI with my own eyes you silly buffoon !!!! go away ..better yet go back to school..better yet get a refund for whatever schooling you did get

Re:3d displays cannot work

[CreamsicleSeventeen]

This is correct. It's just like hearing. If you look carefully you'll find that blue objects are very easy to pinpoint spacially while red objects make you stare harder. Think subwoofers and longer wavelengths.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Incongruity]

Wow. You are one ***big*** asshole.

nope.
I just play one on slashdot...
For whatever it's worth, I didn't actually intend to be so harsh sounding in my original post...sarcastic harshness just doesn't play well in a text based medium...

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Semi-Psychic Nathan]

Of course it'll work. All you need to do is this. Just stop the light for however long you need to to make the object appear at the proper depth.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Ian Wolf]

I just play one on slashdot...

Damn, I have got to remember that one. ROFL.

FWIW, You didn't sound like an Asshole to me, just a dotter.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[ahem]

So if you run towards something, you're actually going to be seeing into *THE FUTURE*, and if you run backwards, you can look into the past.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[phorm]

Sounds like bs to me, but then, how do they know how far a really distant galaxy is, based on the incoming light (and also indicating *how long* ago the light was from)? I don't know if human eyes have a mechanism for this regardless, but I believe not.
Depth perception is partly based on having stereoscopic vision (2 eyes) which we can judge between them, and also based on the proportion something takes up in our visible spectrum VS other objects, shadowing etc, etc.
If you had an object X distance in a void, and there were no point of reference of other objects, then you would have a very difficult time determining how far away the object was.

There would still be a diminishing lines (like when you draw a "3d picture" and lines from the bottom corners inwards to the horizon), but if sources of shadow were low it would be increasingly hard to tell the distance of the object as the diminishing lines would not be defined. You may notice that after a certain distance, it can be difficult to tell whether an object on a blue sky is a near bird, or a distant plane.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[andrew_0812]

So having no sense of time goes hand in hand with having no depth perception? No wonder I keep bumping into walls when I am late for work.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

What, so you are going to say it can't exist when it has already been made and proven to work??? Are you still not going to believe it when you finally see it for yourself??? Get over it, it does work.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[SeanAhern]

Good work.

Man, you're getting a lotta flames for what was actually a fairly well written article.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[TheMidget]

I know the original post was not meant to be taken seriously, but...

... human hearing works as described even though it is a passive system too (we're not bats). The trick is phase difference: even though the ears cannot know when exactly the sound was emitted, they can compare the difference between the time it arrives at the left ear and at the right ear. And this difference allows us to localize sounds.

The reason why vision cannot work like this is not because the eyes are passive receivers. The real reason is that light waves have a far higher frequency and speed than sound which makes detecting run-time differences and phase shifts rather hard for our "slow" nerve cells.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[grant harris]

They measure the doppler effect on the incoming light and figure out a distance.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[TheMidget]

I know well that the original post was not meant to be taken seriously but...

... there is indeed something special about blue: it's slightly out of focus! The reason for this is that red and green are relatively close to each other in wavelength (533nm fir max of green , and 564nm for max of red), whereas blue is much further away (437nm). The eye's lens refracts each wavelength slightly differently ( chromatic aberration), and by default focuses for red/green. Hence blue is out of focus. Moreover, blue cones are far less numerous than red and green (there is no point for nature to supply a high retinal resolution if the image is blurred anyways for optical reasons).

That's the reason why tiny yellow text (red+green) on white background (red+green+blue) is so difficult to read: the only difference is blue, which is blurred! However, big yellow text on white background is quite easily readable, as the blurring won't affect large text.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually for very close stars exactly the same method (parallax ) is used to measure the distance. Only the base line used is usually the diameter of the earth's orbit. After that things get messy and a lot of assumptions and approximations come in to the calculation.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

Close one eye. Look out at the world. Do you
see everything at exactly at the same depth ?
Does your monitor appear to be at the
same depth at say a distant house ?

If you do, you have far greater problems than
being an idiot.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, it has been discovered that rockets could not possibly operate in space because there would be nothing for them to push against.

Uh, that's actually true... This is why any rockets that actually travel in space have to bring their own "propellant," which is basically a bunch of particles they can "push off" against. The rockets spread out a path of propellant in front of themselves, and then use their boosters (propellors) to push through them. Pretty clever, actually.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Cow herd]

So if you run towards something, you're actually going to be seeing into *THE FUTURE*, and if you run backwards, you can look into the past.

True... you just have to be running faster than c. =)

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm,

So does that mean that we shoot light out of our eyes and compare the time it takes to recieve the reflection?

Didn't know my eyes could do that. ;)

Re:3d displays cannot work

[grammar fascist]

That's :) what :) smileys :) are :) for. ;)

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Directrix1]

OK, I closed my eye. My conclusion: The only reason you can perceive depth when one eye is closed is because your brain recognizes the visual cues inherent in the motions of the objects around you as a result of your relative movement to them, i.e. parallax. This along with the eyes natural ranging ability achieved through focusing incoming light on the retina. Also, your brain has other mechanisms for checking relative distance to an object and attaching depth from things such as: intersections with flat surfaces and shadows on the object and objects around them, but these things are not usually developed in the brain to an automatic degree because parallax and focus do such a nice job. Unless of course you are one of these "mono"s that I see posting everywhere on here, then I'm sure the brain adapts and acquires a bit of depth information from those other catagories.
Now, if we really wanted some kind of awesome 3d monitor that looked great from every angle and allowed the eye the ability to focus on far off objects (which IMHO would be far more natural) we would probably need about 100 times the density of pixels. For every point you see on the screen you would have to define a ray partitioning mechanism (lets call it per element spherical resolution for fun) to determine how many individual light cones each point would shoot out of it. For a basic reconstruction of a scene to look good from most any angle on a standard sized monitor I would think it would probably have to consist of about 100 rays per point (this is not a constant though it should be directly proportional to the distance from the screen in order to keep the perceived ray density higher), where each ray points in a unique direction which is uniformly distanced from the others, but is always out of the screen (this is all per pixel). Micro$oft's (ooh dare I say that name in a positive manner on slashdot) R&D department has been developing this sort of technology (albeit not for monitors but more like for dynamic focus elements and complex 3d image reconstruction using simple ray maps on invisible cubes) for a while now. I would suggest checking out their site if you really want to know how vision or optics in general work. They have some nice white papers on it.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Directrix1]

You are dumb. Your eyeball does not shoot light out of it, and thusly you cannot measure within any kind of reason the amount of time it takes for light to get there and back, divide by two, and then find the distance by taking the speed of light and dividing it by that time. It just doesn't work that way bucko. Also we cannot detect if the light coming from one object is in the same phase as another object. Our eyeballs only detect frequency. See my above post. I hate ignorance. And I especially hate ignorance when it poses as intelligence. Even if they are trolling.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[Man Eating Duck]

Wake up you people, he's a troll, and a clever one too. Gotta laugh looking at all the people swallowing the bait...

Check out his other posts too, some gold nuggets in there :). Btw, he must have at least a bit of a clue to troll in this way.

Re:3d displays cannot work

[xintegerx]

Monitors aren't meant to be seen from every angle, but mainly from direct, near front.

Are you sure?

[DevilM]

I didn't see any indication in the article that Sharp had developed a 3D LCD. As far as I can tell, Sharp has developed a 3D flat screen.

Re:Are you sure?

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays, said on Friday its researchers in Britain had developed a flat-panel display for either two- or three-dimensional viewing that does not require special glasses.

Last I checked, flat-panel meant LCD, not Flat CRT

Re:Are you sure?

[JabberWokky]

AFAIK, the only way to get a 3D display without glasses or any other 'gimmik' - to where the 2D display itself displays a 3D image to normal eyes - is using the two LCD displays, offset and overlaid technique. Since that's been around for awhile (and even in limited production), that's almost certainly what Sharp is bring to mass production here.

For some reason I want to see a PowerBook with this. A laptop with a 3D display running Aqua (so that 3D gets used for every window) would be amusing as hell.

--
Evan (no SF references)

Re:Are you sure?

[Zakabog]

Yeah really all I see is

Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays, said on Friday its researchers in Britain had developed a flat-panel display for either two- or three-dimensional viewing that does not require special glasses.

It just mentions that Sharp is the largest maker of liquid crystal displays and they developed a flat-panel display for 2D or 3D viewing, I don't see any indication that they make LCD's or flat panel dipslays. These slashdot editor's should really look over the story next time.

Oh yeah a flat screen monitor is a CRT with a flat screen (instead of curved, think back to IBM PS/1 monitors and the like) and a flat panel display is (as far as I know) an LCD screen that's completely flat.

Re:Are you sure?

[andrew_0812]

Plasma is flat screen too, but in the article at Sharp, the specify that it is a LCD screen.

Re:Are you sure?

[Yobgod Ababua]

I'm pretty sure it's an LCD and not just a flat-panel.
Quoting from http://www.sle.sharp.co.uk/research/3d/index.htm

"Sharp Laboratories of Europe has developed a technology that creates a 3D display on a single LCD without the need for any special glasses. Sharp is currently in discussions about the commercialisation of this amazing new technology. "

Re:Are you sure?

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

Yes it *is* flat, but nobody calls a Plasma display a 'Flat-Panel Display', they call it a 'Plasma Display'

Sharp isn't the first to do it

[Hays]

http://www.dti3d.com/

http://www.neurokoptics.com/press/archive/giga.d e. 1.shtml

Re:Sharp isn't the first to do it

[Raccroc]

Here is a little more info on the DTI...

http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/01q2/010516 /i ndex.html

Philips also has some info...

http://www.research.philips.com/generalinfo/spec ia l/3dlcd/

Re:Sharp isn't the first to do it

[srmalloy]

The DTI process uses a special illumination mechanism behind the LCD array to control which pixels get seen by which eye; the Sharp process uses a second LCD array in front of the main LCD array to control visibility of the pixels by each eye. The results look to be similar, but the mechanism is different. The Sharp process is likely to be cheaper, because manufacturing of monochrome LCD panels is a mature technology.

The article about the Russian development is too vague to be able to extract a mechanism from.

Re:Sharp isn't the first to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year i and my sales mamanger to a little trip to Rochester for the demonstration of DTI's "patented" 3D display. It works as advertised without glasses. We brought a copy of Quake3 with us and their sales manager was kind enough to install it on one of the demo machines. All i can say it was KILLER and got out the ol credit card to use as a deposit so that i might take one home with me. Needless to say i had about a week's worth of gaming ecstasy before my wife found out and made me return it. !!!

10 years of lab work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year a husband and wife team made the exact same thing and it was reported here. Slashdot should have some sort of built in redundancy filter.

New business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Create 3D LCD that works without glasses.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Re:New business plan?

[Latent IT]

When you actually *make* something, it's not a mystery business plan. You say, wittily:


1. Create 3D LCD that works without glasses.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!


In this case, ??? can be expressed as:

"Sell 3D LCD for more than it cost to manufacture it."

Okay?

Re:New business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupid fuck. This was funny A FUCKING YEAR AGO!! Stop posting this shit on each article. One more thing, FUCK YOU!

Re:New business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Write this stupid fucking non-joke
2. ????
3. Be murdered

Re:New business plan?

[zbuffered]

You forgot:
Patent 3D LCD, license patent to big companies, make killing.

The Real Question

[nullproductions]

How quickly are gaming/entertainment industries going to catch up to this kind of stuff?

Re:The Real Question

[mustangdavis]

I don't think it will take the porn insdustry too long .... lets face it, big boobs sell ... big 3D boobs in your face will sell better! (and seem even BIGGER! Bigger boobs = bigger profits!)

As for games, this may take a bit longer since game programing companies count on mass distribution to make a reasonable profit. Since this 3D screen will be somewhat pricey for a few years, it may take a while before games begin to widely use this technology (of course, there will be one or two crappy games that will try to be the "first to the market", but I doubt anything good will be available for atleast a year or two).

Besdies, does anyone have a driver for this yet?
:)

Re:The Real Question

[Ian Wolf]

Who knows. But, I can tell you that after watching the Doom 3 trailer, I swore I would never play that game after 8pm with the lights out. If this technology was available to me at release time and the game supported, I'd likely be too frightened to install it.

Re:The Real Question

[Anonymous Coward]

It cant be too hard to port any 3d application for these displays, you could even build it into a 3d card(if it does T&L in hardware). That way You wouldn't need to make any changes to the apps themselves! the only problem I can see is that displays would have to be standardized.

When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed...

What would you use it for?

[actappan]

Aside from gaming, what are we planning to use these for?

I can see the use in design, nd maybe medical imaging? Any others?

I'm not disparaging the technology, or those who want one (I do) I'm genuinely curious . . . 3D is one of those "cool" things we've all had on our minds since watching our godzilla 3d movie as a kid, now that it's "here" how are we going to make use of the technology?

Re:What would you use it for?

[Diamondback]

remember the future office microsoft announced? since surround sound is so important in the Office Of The Future (no doubt with flying chairs and melamine), 3D displays should fit right in. :>

Re:What would you use it for?

[avalys]

For displaying spinning renderings of the Death Star, silly!

Re:What would you use it for?

[jechoe]

Since you can only see the the image (while in 3D mode) near a particular "sweet spot", it could be used for privacy. No one else could see what you're looking at.

Re:What would you use it for?

[Moloch666]

Haha, wish I had some mod points...

If I had a 3d monitor I would have to find a good death star image to impress my friends.

Re:What would you use it for?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about real-time remote control? Especially of moving robots. This might make it easier to drive the remotely controlled vehicle.

How about medical imaging? CAT, MRI and PET scans can already be made of portions of the body, not just a planar view through some section. This could have lots of diagnostic uses.

Re:What would you use it for?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Aside from gaming, what are we planning to use these for?

Imagine viewing the exhibits in your favorite museum's web site on such a display. Sculptures that finally look onscreen as they are. Hell, oil paintings may be able to finally show the textures that you just don't see from photographs, but make viewing a painting a different thing from just seeing its picture.

The profitable uses for porn I'll leave to your imagination..

Re:What would you use it for?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Since you can only see the the image (while in 3D mode) near a particular "sweet spot", it could be used for privacy. No one else could see what you're looking at.

Do you not see the image at all, or only don't see it in 3D unless you're at the sweet spot?

Re:What would you use it for?

[azizlumiere]

Many Bothans died to bring you this.

Re:What would you use it for?

[gleam_mn]

There are numerous applications in the mapping industry for this technology. In order to do create topographical maps and orthophotos (arial photos that have been corrected for the roll of the underlying terain so that you can accurately mesure on them) you have to be able to see the area in 3D (technically, you can do it with side-by-side 2D images but corralation is a pain that way and doing it in 3D is much faster, anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know what they're doing). Any time you see a highway construction project there have almost always been orthophotos of the area produced before construction started... also many landfills and surface mines use them to track growth.

Currently, you have to use either a monitor overlay system combined with a pair of polarized glasses (one eye sees the overlay image, the other sees the monitor image) or a rapid image switching software system used with a pair of shutter glasses to get the 3D effect necessary to make the terain maps... after 8 hours a clunky pair of shutter glasses get really annoying!

Re:What would you use it for?

[jechoe]

My guess would be that it would be like old LCD screens in that you can't see it very well if you are at an angle - only worse since the the direction of the LCDs are focused in a particular direction that intersect around the sweet spot.

Re:What would you use it for?

[hal9k]

>> Aside from gaming, what are we planning to use these for?

Uh, hello?!?! PORN

Re:What would you use it for?

[Kintanon]

Great, so it's just going to give me a raging headache because I have it 2 inches too far away from me or ny head is an inch too far to the left?
Suck, let's get the 3d projectors going instead....

Kintanon

Re:What would you use it for?

[TOGA! TOGA TOGA!]

crystallography, baby!

Re:What would you use it for?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the option of doing interlaced stereo, though, its not nearly as good as overlay, but does require considerably less resources on the graphics card.

AC

Re:What would you use it for?

[mabinogi]

>Aside from gaming, what are we planning to use these for?

does anything else even matter?

Re:What would you use it for?

[slashfoxi]

Probably nothing. There have been 3d displays for years for both TV and computers where you had to wear some kind of special glasses. Every now and then game and CAD complanies take a stab at developping for them, and it's always a huge failure. Sega had a game where you shot at missiles in 3d. Capcom made a raster arcarde game where you looked through some glasses to pilot a tank in 3d. Those ViewMaster slide viewers they sell at theme parks are an older, non-electronic example. It's all crap and I'll tell you why. Adding depth perception is a cool gee-wiz trick, but ViewMaster's never encroached on photographs or 3D games on 2D games because it really doesn't do a lot for the experience. You move your head to the side to get a better view around the corner of your 3d object, but you're still looking at the same image, it just bends along with your head moving. It's a nausiating effect. And it's just a 2d image with a perception of depth. Don't think that you'll be manipulating objects in any meaningful 3D way. You can't put one object behind another. No way. All you can do is map your 2d image over a depth field. Sorry this comment is a little disjointed. My main point is, if their were serious CAD, entertainment or gaming applications for 3D they would have appeared long ago, and don't invest in this glasses-free 3D technology because it's a warmed over bad idea.

Multi-tasking

[Patik]

This could be great for multitaskers. Imagine behind able to put windows behind other windows (not just overlapped as they are now, but actually behind and still visible), scooting less frequently used desktop icons into the back corner, and having 3-D menu systems and directory structures (actually move into a folder or menu to find what's inside, instead of shifting to the right of it).

What would make this even better would be a way to easily rotate the "cube" representing your screen: you could have six applications open, each maximized on one plane, then just rotate the cube with a joystick to quickly switch around, or position it such that you can view parts of 2 or 3 apps at once.

But how would one implement a 3-D mouse?

Re:Multi-tasking

[jechoe]

But how would one implement a 3-D mouse?

Add a wheel ;). Although you don't get the same resolution, you do get another axis of motion.

Re:Multi-tasking

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

Ever see Johnny Mnemonic?

Johnny navigated through his 'virtual environment' using a set of gloves, and he could reach in and 'grab' information, programs, etc...

That'd be an awesome way to work with a 3d 'desktop'

Re:Multi-tasking

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an old 3d mouse, 1995 date. http://www.byte.com/art/9512/sec19/art15.htm

I think Logitech sold one also for a while. Mainly used for 3D CAD.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Moloch666]

Don't forget Minority Report.

Re:Multi-tasking

[ThwartedEfforts]

Like this?

http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/

Re:Multi-tasking

[swb]

What would make this even better would be a way to easily rotate the "cube" representing your screen: you could have six applications open, each maximized on one plane, then just rotate the cube with a joystick to quickly switch around, or position it such that you can view parts of 2 or 3 apps at once.

This would be better accomplished by placing the viewer inside of an N sided polygon with each inner face of the polygon representing a different desktop/environment/etc. By being inside the polygon you could zoom out and see many more desktops simultaneously. Adjusting the width of your field of view ('fish-eye') would allow you to see probably at least half of the inside of the polygon.

A conventional wheelmouse would be all that would be necessary in navigation mode; the wheel would zoom and the mouse's 2D axis would move you the other dimensions.

Another idea would be being inside of a sphere and the inner surface of the sphere being a very large rectangular desktop mapped onto the sphere. You'd adjust the working frame to display as rectangular but the rest of the display would curve away showing more information on the other windows.

I'm not sure that any of these ideas would be meaningful even with a depth-enhanced LCDs without seriously high resolution.

Re:Multi-tasking

[gsfprez]

I guess that the easiest implimentation of this would be to have an OS that uses OpenGL or something to draw the basic user interface..

Soooo.. i guess Apple is closer to being ready for this than other OSes thanks to QuartzGL?

Re:Multi-tasking

[fractaltiger]

Interesting. I like how this can make workspaces easier. I lost my original post to you, but I'll try to be more concise now. It is easier to misplace things when you put them in a "corner" in a 3D workspace, though you could then just press keys to let the system locate the possible filename matches (like current systems), or maybe highlight all the possible windows and rotate around the space so you can see close matches' locations.

I talked about multiple workspaces and my problems with them now (see my jornal). It seems that implementing true 3D workspaces, is the next step after we can show 3D more accurately, whatever the solution winds up to be. I will be happy when I see something like what they show in Gene Roddenberry's "Earth: Final Conflict" where you could wave your hands around and interact with controls that were in the air.

Even without the translucent projections, I can imagine us using some sort of virtual gloves to wave our arms in the space between us and our monitor, and having some magnetic sensors define an area of a cubic foot where we can use move both hands as we see the resulting movements on the screen in front of us.

HOPEFULL_TAG_BEGIN ( I know that this kind of interaction will probably be great coupled with future Speech Recognition integration ) HOPEFULL_TAG_END. No one but us coders really want to use keyboards, in the grand scheme of things of an ideal world. Besides, we knooow from StarTrek ;) that the future has voice recognition for everything but the engineers/coders and people who push buttons that make the ship go woosh. Come on, it's Speech recognition, and not some crewman, that turns on the sirens and dims the lights when Janeway says "Red alert!"

Re:Multi-tasking

[Chasqui]

funny thing is that we saw it in 2-d (on a big flat screen) and it still looked good. It could be done in 2-d right now.

Re:Multi-tasking

[AdTropis]

i'm sorry but i just have to say that the 3d environments in movies just won't work. there's too much movement. it seems like it would be very tiring to be waving your arms around like that. i have a hard enough time moving between the keyboard and mouse...

Re:Multi-tasking

[HawkinsD]

Yeah, but apart from looking really cool, I'm still not sure I understand how this would help.

Windows behind windows... 3D would only help this if I could move my head around to see what was behind them. Otherwise, what's the point? Yes, that window that's partly obscured looks like it's farther away. But so what? It's still obscured.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Patik]

Even without the translucent projections, I can imagine us using some sort of virtual gloves to wave our arms in the space between us and our monitor, and having some magnetic sensors define an area of a cubic foot where we can use move both hands as we see the resulting movements on the screen in front of us.

I don't know, that sounds like a lot of work. I use a thumb-trackball because I'm to move my wrist to navigate a normal mouse.

Seriously, I actually prefer to use keyboard anyway, the constant sprinting back and forth across the screen is tiresome; it's not just you coders that want a keyboard.

Re:Multi-tasking

[swb]

I was trying to build on the idea of the previous poster's 3D cube-surface environments.

I'm not sure that dimensionally distorting (ie, simulating peripheral vision) a desktop or set of windows buys you much, especially at standard display resolutions. Maybe having MRTG graphs or something would be meaningful, but not stuff you'd need to read or interact with.

Probably all the same value could be accomplished by having a massive desktop (10240 x 7680) and then having a zoom rectangle you could move around. A second physical monitor with a (resizable) view of the entire thing would be nice, as well.

We already have extra-large virtual desktops, I think all we lack is a way to zoom in and out on them. Sounds like an OS X Aqua thing.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Cybrr]

3D mouse

Re:Multi-tasking

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

May I ask why all the mac zealots think that this has anything to do with a mac just because it involves 3D?

FUCK, PEOPLE, STOP TALKING ABOUT THE MAC AS IF IT WERE INNOVATIVE. IT ISN'T. DEAL WITH IT. IF YOU WANT INNOVATION, CERTAINTLY DONT BUY A MAC. Macs have pretty cases, and pretty 2D Desktops. there is nothing "3D" about the pieces of trash you call macs.

The mac's video card doesn't "think" that the desktop is a "3D" application just because STEVE JOBBS said it did. The mac has nothing whatsoever aove any other machine in the relm of "3D" just because STEVE JOBBS said it did. If ANYTHING, the mac is 3 years behind the rest of the world in "3D" and the use of some OpenGL calls in the latest desktop doesnt mean FUCKING JACK SHIT TO YOU OR ANYBODY WHO CARES ABOUT "3D".

Re:Multi-tasking

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he has a point. for some reason "mac" and "apple" and "OS X" keep coming up in this discussion. A lot more than most. and this has nothing at all to do with apple computers.

whoever moderated this as flamebait is an idiot.
+1, insightfull.

The _real_ information

[mfago]

Why cannot anyone link to the actual press release?! It contains more information than cnet or yahoo articles (not a difficult proposition).

The P.R. Gives some indication of how it works:

Principle of Operation of 3D LCDs
A 3D display requiring no special viewing glasses is generated by controlling the path of travel of light from the display so that slightly different images reach the left and right eyes; in other words, the right eye sees only the image intended for it, and the left eye only the image intended for it.
This newly developed 3D LCD employs a technique called the "parallax barrier," an older, well-known approach to generating a stereo display. The 3D LCD combines a conventional TFT LCD with a Switching LCD, a proprietary Sharp development.
This Switching LCD establishes an optical parallax barrier, and by controlling the path of travel of light, makes it possible to separate the display images so that slightly different images reach the left and right eyes.
By displaying the image intended for the left eye and the image for the right eye as a stereographic pair on a TFT LCD, each eye sees only the image intended for it and the brain combines the images and perceives them as a 3D representation.
In addition, the Switching LCD electrically controls the parallax barrier to make it transparent, eliminating its ability to separate light paths. This way, the right and left eyes can see the same image when viewing ordinary 2D content. In other words, the display can also function as a conventional standard imaging device.

Re:The _real_ information

[cyber_rigger]

"generating a stereo display"....... ...So it's not real 3D.

Re:The _real_ information

[shadow303]

What is real? 3d vision is simply caused by differing signals from each eye to your brain. As long as you can get those signals sent properly, does it really matter how those signals get generated? Free your mind ;)

Re:The _real_ information

[Anonymous Coward]

The key is to not try to bend the spoon and only realize the truth. There is no spoon. =)

Kindd

Re:The _real_ information

[rseuhs]

You only have (a maximum of) 2 eyes so it won't get any more "3D" than that.

Re:The _real_ information

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. Even with perfect stereo separation, your eyes are always focused on the image plane of the display, while the parallax suggests that objects are behind or in front of that plane. The worst effect of this is that objects which you are not looking at are not blurry like they should be when they are close to your line of sight but at a different distance. In that case, the parallax of the object becomes disturbing because it is not faded out of your active perception.

Re:The _real_ information

[Anonymous Coward]

compare this to the system described 4apr02...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/0 4/04/056201 &mode=thread&tid=137

Just curious...

[dissonant7]

...what effect a 3D display like this might have in terms of eye strain. If something like this were to become really widespread and used for day to day applications and GUIs, it's something to consider. Anyone out there that has worked with similar displays have an answer?

Re:Just curious...

[MarcoAtWork]

the whole point of this display from sharp is that the '3d' mode can be switched on on demand and that day to day applications and GUIs will work the same way they always do.

When you're using word etc. you keep the parallax element transparent, and the screen is just a normal 2d LCD display, when you're using 3d studio, playing doom3 etc. you switch it in 3d.

Now, it will be interesting to see if there is going to be more eye strain for people using the 3d mode all day long vs using LCD-shutter-based solutions (with the screen at 160Hz obviously). I don't think so, but you never know...

Re:Just curious...

[twifkak]

Now, it will be interesting to see if there is going to be more eye strain for people using the 3d mode all day long vs using LCD-shutter-based solutions (with the screen at 160Hz obviously). I don't think so, but you never know...
I dunno... I got some pretty bad headaches back when I was looking at Magic Eye-type pictures all the time.

Re:Just curious...

[UpnAtom]

I suspect a 3D display would produce less eye-strain than a 2D one. A 2D display is completely unnatural.

Eye-strain comes from eye muscles being locked in one position, essentially a muscle spasm. The more variation in depth, the less this can happen.

I also suspect the quality of the image has a minimal impact. I've certainly noticed no reduction in strain on my eyes in the 20 years I've been using monitors.

Dave.

3D cameras

[suhit]

If you like 3D screens, you will like 3D stereoscopic cameras - stereoscopy.com and curtin.edu.au. Pretty cool stuff.

lenticular

[Scrameustache]

The article doesn't say how the 3D effect is done, but I would venture a guess: Lenticulars.

I used to work for a company that did a bit of research in lenticular software, its pretty neat, but a bitch to align properly.

And we all wanted a lenticular screen ;- )
(For those who don't know what lenticulars are, they are those plastick "ribbed" images you often got in cracker jacks boxes and on some toys, erroneously called holograms by 99.9% of the population.)

Re:lenticular

[andrew_0812]

The Sharp site has more information. It does not use Lenticulars, but a latent parallax barrier to discriminate between vision for each eye. The barrier is latent because it polarizes the light differently for each eye. In 2D mode, this polarization is invisible to the naked eye, so you get a regular, full resolution, 2D display. If you add a 3D polarizing screen to the monitor, and have it aligned within 1 degree of its true allignment, then this screen will discriminate between the two images, and effectively create 2 windows in space. One for the left eye, and one for the right. They have improved previous attempts at a 2D/3D display. In previous versions, it was the parallax barrier that you had to place on the monitor and allign properly. Typical constraints on the alignment were about 5 arc seconds. That is about 700 times more precise than the 1% constraint. So this makes it useable for most people. I guess you can just keep adjusting the polarizing screen until you get the correct image.

Obligatory simpsons reference

[ferrocene]

Legs: [gasps] I'm seeing double here: four Krustys!

Re:Obligatory simpsons reference

[zvogt]

fix your sig. should be "folk'll" not "folkS'll".

Re:Obligatory simpsons reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Some folks'll never lose a toe, and then of course some folks'll....

Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll..../

Re:Obligatory simpsons reference

[yelligsc]

Mod this up! I hate seeing mangled Simpsons.

Re:Obligatory simpsons reference

[geekoid]

like Cletus, the slack jawed yokell!

Re:FUCK!

[LordKariya]

don't mess with the master, son

You are confusing light and sound.

[tdyson]

Depth perception is a function of the angle of the eyeballs away from parallel. The closer an object is, the more the eye is turned in. That's why depth perception works very well up close (relatively large angular change for a small distance change) and depth perception doesn't work well for distances. Beyond 20 feet (maybe yards I forget) the mind uses other cues to decide distance. Once you have distance simluation, 3D is just shading.

Slashdot Chain

[CommieLib]

---new Technology
|
|
---------Porn
|
|
---------Obsolescence joke

No thanks....

[lateralus_1024]

...I'll wait for the 2nd generation release. You know, the ones with dual 1 watt speakers. That, and only that will justify the $4,000 pricetag.

Good idea, but no dice.

[wackybrit]

Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses

I applaud Sharp's achievements in this exciting area of optical technology, but if the display only works without glasses, this eliminates a good percentage of computer users who, like myself, have to wear glasses.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Err..

They mean, no special glasses are required to get the 3d effect. Ya know..like when you go to those old 3d movies, with the blue and red lensed glasses?

Sometimes I wonder where people come from, then I remember the vote was close enough to 'elect' Bush, and it all falls into place.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[wackybrit]

I thought my sig gave away my new identity as a troll. Clearly not, judging by the response to my last twenty posts.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[ashitaka]

Probably an Anonymous American Coward over whose befuddled head your wit swiftly sailed.

If I took off *my* glasses my nose would have to be two inches from the screen.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[wackybrit]

Call me successfully trolled back since I feel a sudden urge to ask whether you're telling the truth. Unregistered users can't see sigs? I'm not sure that's the case.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[slashfoxi]

You're kidding right? The point is that you don't have to wear gay 3d glasses like you did at 3d movies or for that Coca-Cola superbowl comercial. Your wearing eyeglasses won't make the display not work.

Re:Good idea, but no dice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm a different Anonymous Coward and I can assure you that this is indeed the case -- no sigs whatsoever.

Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you're right, but you forgot one significant detail: the software solution.

If you have a sufficiently efficient 3d card that has an incredibly low latency, you can emulate the long light traversal time by simply just sending the light from the deep objects *later*. This probably would require the logic to be integrated to the LCD screen itself because the signal latency in the vga cable from the sound card to the monitor in itself is too high. I'm unsure whether Sharp used this in their monitors, it'll be interesting to see when they give out more details.

Re:Software

[Valar]

The only difference between a graphic card considered 3d and one that is considered 2d is the card's ability to handle vectors in three dimensions. I imagine that in order to really make use of this with current cards you would have to implement x 2d buffers, where x is the z resolution of the display. That means the entire image would be constructed in approximatly x times more time.

Re:Software

[grammar fascist]

Oh! So THAT's why everything seemed so close-up after I bought my Radeon.

Thanks!

3D? That won't last long.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone noticed that very few (if any) movies have been made in 3D since the 80s? 3D Computer Animation doesn't count, it doesn't fall under the whole 3D thing, since it doesn't "pop off the screen before your eyes" or anything like that.

The only thing "In 3D" that I've seen in recent years are laser shows at the science center, and that lame-ass "Bebop and Bamboozle" Super Bowl halftime show a while back. Other than that, 3D just isn't really all that neat anymore, glasses or not. 10 years of research down the toilet, if you ask me.

Re:3D? That won't last long.

[ashitaka]

Go see Space Station in IMAX 3D.

Re:FUCK!

[Anonymous Coward]

true..I should know better. it's just that I already got one today and then I going for a double whammy and, aw fuck it...

Right!

[richie2000]

1. 3D LCD monitor
2. pr0n!
3. ?
4. Profit!

Re:Right!

[PygmyTrojan]

Sometimes that joke just doesn't work. Let it go.

Re:Right!

[shadow303]

I have never actually seen a case where that "joke" actually worked (kinda like the whole "are belong" bs). I agree, let it go.

Re:Right!

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, that joke isn't funny anymore. Second, pr0n=money, so there is anything wrong with that plan.

Re:Right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're probably right. The porn industry's always been one to use new tech sooner than most others; it's a highly popular and profitable business and knows its customers' tastes. I'd expect porn websites to advertise their special subscription-only 3D-enabled interactive fantasies as soon as these monitors become anywhere near reasonably priced.

Re:Right!

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

1. Post the same lame joke on slashdot everyday
   
2. ???
   
3. Profit
   

Nothing personal, but that joke was officially dead the second I used it, which was at least four weeks ago.

Patent Infringement?

[LightStruk]

Dimension Technologies makes products which, by the looks of their technology, are identical to Sharp's "new" breakthrough. DTI's made their first display with this technique years ago, and claims to have several patents. Can anyone show how Sharp is not infringing on DTI's patents?

Re:Patent Infringement?

[Eccles]

It sounds like DTI does it by varying the backlight, whereas Sharp uses a standard backlight and blocks some of the light from in front of the pixels. DTI's should be lower power or it should be brighter, since it doesn't throw away half of the illumination.

Re:Patent Infringement?

[mabinogi]

Did it ever occur to you that Sharp might have licensed the technology?

The article did mention that the 3d part was nothing new, and that Sharp's innovation with the ability to switch between 3D and 2D mode without sacrificing resolution in 2D mode.

How it's done

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/01q2/010516/3 dlcd-01.html

Also here

It's everywhere!

Deep Video Imaging

[Anonymous Coward]

This announcement from SONY is amusing.. maybe in a few years they will achieve what is already for sale at Deep Video Imaging.. heh

http://www.actualdepth.com/index2.html

These people have working products you can buy right now in 15" and 18" models...

And this is good for what?

[RealAlaskan]

I can see how this would be great for Autocad (if they ever write a driver to diplay their 3d drawings on this), and for POVray (if they ever write a driver ...). I'm sure that Quake et al will eventually support this, since gamers spend big bucks on gadgets.

This is really neat, but if you're running a word processor or a spreadsheet, will you ever care? If you're simulating something n-dimensional, what good is 3d? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Of course, so was the laser.

Re:And this is good for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, eh? I mean what is with all these assholes and their "advancements"? I mean, if _I_ don't want to use it for lynx browsing website, what the fuck is anyone else thinking that they should use it for? I am deeply offended that this product was made, much less even conceived in the first place.

3D Flat Screen?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is flat, then it is obviously 2 dimensions.

no pic's

[Rader]

How come there weren't any pictures on the linked site? It would be nice to see

Re:no pic's

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

How come there weren't any pictures on the linked site? It would be nice to

Heheh, just like the HDTV commercials on tv.

Look at the resolution and colour - it's incredible! :)

2*2D = 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago.

Well, couldn't you just set up these two displays to display a stereoscopic picture or something? (Left eye viewing one screen, right eye the other.) It'll require some practicing, but it must work.

Splat.

[Arcaeris]

I wonder how the purveyors of bukkake and cumshot videos will react to this?

Tricking the Eye

[skroz]

I'm surprised this took so long, now that I think about it some. The illusion of depth on a flat surface can be achieved by forcing each eye to receive a different image, effectively tricking the eye into believing that what it's seeing has depth.

Try looking very closely at an LCD monitor some time, like within 4 inches. Due to the narrow viewing angle present on LCDs, each eye will see a different view of the same pixels. If you angle your head just right, you can perceive something resembling depth, though without any real control. I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to engineer a panel to make use of this effect.

Then again, my eyes are pretty jacked up, what with me having severe macular degeneration and some pretty crappy color vision. The experiment may also work a little better if you drink a bottle of 'tussin right before viewing.

Re:Tricking the Eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Try looking very closely at an LCD monitor some time, like within 4 inches....Then again, my eyes are pretty jacked up, what with me having severe macular degeneration and some pretty crappy color vision.

Might there be a correlation between your, err, hobbies, and your condition?

3d for Business

[z_gringo]

I understand why 3D has potential for Games, and the advantage in movies is also obvious.

My question is, Is there a business application for 3D? Ive been trying to think of one, but Im drawing a blank....

Re:3d for Business

[skroz]

Two words : CAD/CAE

Re:3d for Business

[Hayzeus]

Two words : CAD/CAE

Two other words: lunchbreak/porn

Re:3d for Business

[Viking Coder]

Medical imaging.

You want the neurosurgeon to have a REAL GOOD idea of the spacial relationships of things in your brain before your skull gets cracked open.

Re:3d for Business

[RealAlaskan]

Yes, some engineers will have a use for this. So will chemists who want to visualize molecules. This will fill a lot of other little niches, too. All those little niches together probably won't add up to the size of the games market, which is a niche itself. These guys are using high-end PC's or workstations, and that's not a huge market compared to general PC sales.

I saw the claim recently (wish I could remember where) that 25% of PC's are sold for home use, and the remainder for business, probably meaning spreadsheets and word processing. I don't see these monitors catching on in the sort of business that people have in mind when they ask: ``Is the linux desktop ready for business users?'' For spreadsheets and word processors, I can't imagine that this will be better than color.

Re:3d for Business

[andrew_0812]

Also don't forget the 3D rendering platforms. They are already well suited to take advantage of this.

Re:3d for Business

[DLWormwood]

For spreadsheets and word processors, I can't imagine that this will be better than color.

And yet every business PC I've seen uses color; the early Macintosh developers worked with the idea that B&W is all that's needed by businesses and were shown to be wrong.

Assuming this technology evolves to allow a wider viewing angle, I wonder what the PowerPoint presentations of the '10s are going to look like... (-;

Re:3d for Business

[psamuels]

Assuming this technology evolves to allow a wider viewing angle, I wonder what the PowerPoint presentations of the '10s are going to look like... (-;

People will still be using PowerPoint ten years from now? Now you've got me all depressed.

Organic Crystal technology at play here...

[Anonymous Coward]

University of Oxford, Dept. of Organic Chemistry, Dept. of Engineering Science

sharp labs info

Will this 3D display be ruggedized?

[TyZone]

I hope they're going to put some solid transparent material in front of the screen. I mean, dealing with fingerprints is already irritating, but all the LCD screens *I* have used would suffer significant damage if people repeatedly tried to reach *through* them.

You know, like, to grasp the rounded, perky ... uhhhh ...

Re:fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

While your core point may be valid, it is hard to discern with the length introduction you present before it.

Re:No Drivers License? No problem! Drive Today!

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me the webpage and then I'll believe it

my lcd can already do this

[Anonymous Coward]

i can see 3d images on it. can't you ?

Re:my lcd can already do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I can't, where? *ouch* I twisted and displaced my eye!

I know I'm not the only one out there thinking...

[Ranma]

That this is one small step for man, one giant leap towards holodecks being a reality ;).

New media

[starlabs]

The biggest and most obvious usage for 3D LCD screens are NOT for games.

As with the case for any new media (TV, VHS, DVD, Internet), the driving killer app is: pr0n.

Bring on the boobies!

Re:New media

[Eccles]

Now that you mention it, I remember long ago seeing a Mapplethorpe hologram at Siggraph. It was of a large schlong, and the 3-D effect was rather inadequacy-inducing...

(...for most people, at any rate.)

illusion of 3D

[lingqi]

parallax barrier will only give the illusion of 3D, but not *real* 3D where you can see from different perspectives.

i will go with a volumetric display any day of the week.

Re:illusion of 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

> parallax barrier will only give the illusion of 3D, but not *real* 3D where you can see from different perspectives.

You've seen those Apple panorama movies (I've forgotten the name) where you can use the mouse to get a 360 degree view of a given scene, and pan up and down, yes?

Now imagine that movie generated using the stereo technique, and presenting the two streams of data to the 3D monitor. Now, you can pan around, zoom in and out, up and down, and each change of perspective *is* seen in 3D by virtue of how it was originally shot.

Re:illusion of 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a nice display to bad it's only 8 colors ar max rez or a whole hundreds of colurs at a lower rez.

Re:illusion of 3D

[plastik55]

Alternatively, you could simply wear a head tracker and render it in real time.

Volumetric displays are low-res, uber-expensive and cannot depict absorptivity or occlusion (everything projected by a volumetric display is transparent.) They are nice for some applications where 360-degree walk-around ability is useful (I can see how one would use them for air traffic control) but not for, say, playing Quake. The two technologies definitely occupy different niches.

Re:illusion of 3D

[jetkust]

Very nice, but from what i can see this volumetric 3d display is only for displaying static 3d models where no animiation whatsoever is possible. Also checkout their pricing scheme:

Perspecta display (hardware): US$45,000

Perspecta "O/S" and SRK (spatial rendering kernel): US$3,000

Developer's Program and Software Development Kit: US$2,000/month

Installation: US$2,100

Hardware Support Programs: Basic (US$3,000/yr) and Premium ($7,000/yr)

Software Support Programs: Basic (US$3,000/yr) and Premium ($7,000/yr)

Software Maintenance: 30%/yr of software

Re:illusion of 3D

[MJArrison]

I don't think these prices qualify as "ready for prime time". From the Actuality-Systems website:

# Perspecta display (hardware): US$45,000
# Perspecta "O/S" and SRK (spatial rendering kernel): US$3,000
# Developer's Program and Software Development Kit: US$2,000/month
# Installation: US$2,100
# Hardware Support Programs: Basic (US$3,000/yr) and Premium ($7,000/yr)
# Software Support Programs: Basic (US$3,000/yr) and Premium ($7,000/yr)
# Software Maintenance: 30%/yr of software

How it works - good picture

[bigmouth_strikes]

A nice explanation.

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/020927-1.gif

Re:How it works - good picture

[bongholio]

Dermatoglyphics (another 15 letter word without repeats)

Re:How it works - good picture

[bigmouth_strikes]

Damn you! ;)

Autocad sales will rise.

[RealAlaskan]

The largest single use for these things will probably be porn. Lots of people will be embarrased to admit that they spent the big bucks just to satisfy their porn addiction, so they'll just have to get some respectable software that can use their 3d monitor. Since Autocad will probably be an early adopter, I predict their sales will show an upward blip.

MAN: ``Honest, dear, it isn't for porn, it's for designing ... uh ... stuff! Yeah, that's the ticket! Stuff! Look, I bought it to use with Autocad!''.
WOMAN: ``You paid HOW MUCH to look at pictures of nekkid women?'' (loud footstomps. door slams.)
MAN: ``I thought she'd fall for it. Oh, well, bakk to bukkake!''

Re:fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by your viewpoint. How may I subscribe to your newsletter?

Pretty poor tech for 3D

[uradu]

Parallax occlusion might be the most economically feasible technology at the moment, but it's not that great. You can only see a good 3D image from certain angles and certain distances from the screen. Given a "Switching LCD" (their terminology) with a fine enough vertical grating (i.e. considerably higher than the horizontal resolution of the display LCD), and given a tracking system on the monitor (IR sensor or even a camera with position sensing software) that can sense where the viewer (singular!) is, the switching LCD could adjust the occlusion dynamically to make a sweet spot follow the viewer. This could also be done mechanically I guess, using a simple static grating, by moving the switching LCD left and right and forward and back as needed. This wouldn't work so well at the edges though, or anywhere the viewing angle deviates considerably from 90 degrees.

I'm still hoping to be able to buy a holographic monitor within my lifetime.

Re:Pretty poor tech for 3D

[HardeH]

The guys at Dresden 3d have already done this: TFT with integrated stereocams to track the eyes and a automatically adjusted (mechanical) lenses. A friend of mine told me it was amazing. I sure hope its better than the "regular" lenticular display like the Syntagram I've had on my desk for a couple of days (ouch, my eyes!).

Re:Pretty poor tech for 3D

[uradu]

> The guys at Dresden 3d have already done this

I've read about them over a year ago, but haven't heard anything else from them since then. Of course, they might just be plugging away without releasing a stream of pre-announcement press releases.

No 3D FPS?

[bongholio]

...by controlling the path of travel of light, makes it possible to separate the display images so that slightly different images reach the left and right eyes.

So does this mean that your head has to be in the right place to see the intended effect? It would suck to have to keep your head perfectly still to see the correct image. And that would make fast paced games tough...

Or does it just depend on the angular difference? If so, that'd be super cool, since several people could all crowd around a monitor and all see the same 3D image. Imagine a wall sized monitor at a FPS tournament. 10ft high 3D characters shooting at you. SWEET!

Re:No 3D FPS?

[andrew_0812]

According to Sharp, there will be a "sweet-spot" where you can see proper 3D. If you are outside of this area, the image will not display correctly and you would not get a 3D view. I don't know how large/small this sweet spot is, though. They are hoping for a system in the future that would allow many people to crowd around a display and see the same image. But not yet.

Doomed to failure

[Reality Master 101]

In the same way that black-and-white TVs switched to color, we really think displays are going to switch to 3-D," Stephen Bold, managing director of Sharp Laboratories of Europe Ltd, said after a news conference.

I hate to throw the wet blanket over 10 years of research, but I got news for both the pointy heads and the marketing department: Going from being able to have friends over to watch TV from different positions around the room to requiring everyone to look at a certain angle (and probably occupy the same space at the same time) is NOT an improvement over existing displays, 3D notwithstanding.

There might be specialized applications, but to compare this to the change from B&W to color television is absolutely absurd.

Call me when you have THREE DIMENSIONAL television that I can see from ANY angle. Then I'll be interested. I'll actually be impressed when I can walk around the image and see different angles.

Re:Doomed to failure

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

I'll actually be impressed when I can walk around the image and see different angles.

Mom, I can see up this Britney's skirt!

Henry Taylor Thomas, you get out of the TV projection area right this minute or you won't get to watch anymore MTV!

More 3D information about parent!

[Anonymous Coward]

xusxaouxzx cauaxocsuxzx cusaxsoxuza csuxoscxuzx csuacaoucsz
f"' `" "`j Mk"" "` "`Ml tMP"' `"Yfj k""lfkjtMQt M`"MlfkjtWQ
Moum.,muvM MM,.movw,. M W' .mmm. `M M,.MltbfdhM M,.MjfbdhjM
WLfh,.jWkM M',. n ,. .L M,.MsltL,.M W.,MllbtthM W.,MqpoijdM
MbdM.,MfLM WM.,Mltb. 'M W.,WqrMW.,M M,.MkkbjwhM M,.MsdflkjM
WhjM,.MhbM MM,.MtlbM.,M M. `MQM' .M W.,MMlkthbM W.,MbdhkltM
MtlM_.MttM WM,.MdblM,.M MMb.._ .dMM M..,__ ,. M M., __ ,. M
WbdfgQRhlM MMtlttfhPBlM MfhhlGKdbtM MMbdfggCllM MbdlQhbdRlM

Who likes to read?

[fetus]

fuck the hype.
Where are the god damn pictures?
For something that useless, atleast have cool pictures to back it up - like Apple.

This is an old fallacy

[Steve Franklin]

I first ran into this notion in the sequel to James T. Culbertson's _The Minds of Robots_. The earlier book was quite interesting and threatened to actually solve some basic problems in the origins of consciousness. The sequel (I forget the title offhand) was a true pseudo-scientific excursion in which he presents this exact suggestion that depth perception results from the distance traveled by light rays reflecting off of an object. His earlier book relies on relativistic effects applied to signals traveling through the nervous system whose points of origin are light rays bouncing off of objects in external reality, so it wasn't a great leap for him. I doubt whether Culbertson actually invented the idea. It sounds like something out of the late Middle Ages, just prior to the Renaissance. Galileo shot most of those ideas to pieces, but some folks just never get the message.

LCD NOT LCD display

[boogershoots]

Liquid Crystal Display not..

Large Color Display
Little Color Display
Large Card Display
Little Card Display
Little Colored Dots
Liquid Core Display
Liquid Color Display
Light Color Display

As a hardware guy I HATE it when people get it wrong.

Ever hear of 3Dwm?

[Anonymous Coward]

That LCD would probably rock with 3Dwm

Pictures...

[earthdark]

If anyone's interested, here's a babelfish'd link to a Japanese page with some pictures of the unit and more information. Looks pretty cool to me.

Keep your extra D

[back_pages]

"In the same way that black-and-white TVs switched to color, we really think displays are going to switch to 3-D," Stephen Bold, managing director of Sharp Laboratories of Europe Ltd, said after a news conference.

Hm, seems to me that going from B&W to color was a no-brainer. It just seems to me that to make this transition to 3D as widespread as color TV, we would have to really want a 3D display all the time. Spend your 40 hour work week staring at a flickering, retina burning, 3D workspace. I'm thankful that using my computer doesn't require depth perception, and mimics a flat document rather than an interactive, immersive, buzzword, buzzword, environment.

Looking after you buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago.

You are reading about monitors when you just bought two? Don't do that, you will only cause yourself heartache and grief.

When I make a major purchase, I research the hell out of it for a while, buy it, and then don't look at the market until I need to replace it. You will always find a better deal after you buy something, especially with computer hardware.

subliminal messages?

[tswinzig]

It does bring a whole new meaning to 'pop up ads', doesn't it.

Yest it sure does!

What? No screenshots?

[velcrokitty]

Sheesh - I wanted to see that 3D effect in my 2D browser window...

3D's for losers - I want 4D

Just guessing, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I know there was research using two layers of LCDs, with the top layer as a mask, and the second layer a fixed distance behind it.

Once the eye position is known (either fixed, or using a camera & eye recognition, or something else), the stripes can be chosen so that each eye sees a different image...

et voila!

I hate to be a 'not news' messenger

[unDiWahn]

But Tom's Hardware had an article reviewing a 3d LCD display back in May of 2001.

And I'm going to vote on the whole "it's crap' side. I don't want to be forced to sit in one spot for it -- so, I won't buy it. Still, it's cool that it's being produced.


Well, anyway, it is news in that it, um, is slightly different. But it's hardly revolutionary.

3D shutter glasses are fairly cheap now, and work better, and hell buy two and two people can watch in 3d!

Great, something else to fight over.

[dohnut]

The screens can only be seen in 3-D from certain angles and distances, however, and a "sweet spot indicator" -- a small bar at the lower end of the screen -- appears solid black when the viewer is at an optimum position for 3-D.

Get out of the sweet spot runt!
MOOOOMMMMMM!

Microsoft Longhorn in 2005

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great news since the consumer version of windows in 2005 will be 3d enhanced. This is excellent news, I am glad to see things innovate like this. If you don't believe me check out some insider information at http://www.winsupersite.com

I can't wait.

Nvidia and Stereovision

[Mark4ST]

Nvidia already has rather whoop-ass drivers for stereoscopic viewing of OpenGL or D3D under Windows. (It's good to see such a major house supporting such a tiny niche.)

I bought a Geforce2 from MSI with an Elsa 3D Revelator bundle. The bundle contained polarised shutter glasses (dongled onto the VGA cable) that sync up to your CRT monitor's refresh rate, opening each eye in turn. The drivers show you a different picture for each eye.

These things rock. Almost all OpenGL or D3D games work with them. It's very useful for platformers where you have to judge distances to jump accurately (like in American McGee's Alice). It's good for heaving grenades accurately (like in Counter-Strike, Grand Theft Auto 3). It's good for flight simulators, where judging distance can be crucial (like in MS Combat Flight Simulator). Driving is great (!) in 3D.

If it doesn't actually improve the way you play certain games, then eye-candy alone makes it worth it.

You can do some weird things with stereoscopic gaming. Using GLDoom (or the like), you can play Doom in stereo. Using an emulator like ePSXe, you can play console games in stereo.

There can be some problems. Some games use 2D elements with their 3D games. GTA3, for example, has 3D cars, people, and architecture; but it uses 2D for most particles. This means that fire, smoke, and some debris appear at screen depth (along with the 2D hud elements).

The only really practical use of this system right now is games (is that really practical?). There are no workable 3D desktops/web browsers/word processors/etc., so the Snow Crash/Johnny Mnemonic metaverse-thingy isn't quite there yet. However, there is existing technology lying around to do it today.

Another thing: These glasses are CHEAP! (

Re:Nvidia and Stereovision

["Zow"]

Nvidia already has rather whoop-ass drivers for stereoscopic viewing of OpenGL or D3D under Windows.

That sounds very cool, and it makes me wonder, does anyone know of a similar solution for Linux? I did a little Googling, and it sounds like some people have cobbled together some solutions for specific applications (doing like crystal modeling and stuff), but I'm wondering if anyone can say, "Sure, you'll get stereoscopic OpenGL if you use this card, with this driver, and these glasses." I'd really like to be able to do it with my Matrox card, as its 3D, while not as slick as my nVidia, is a lot more stable (my nVidia seems to cause X to hang pretty quickly in moderately complex applications, like GLTron). And I really don't think I'd consider a non-XFree86 server -- been there, done that, more trouble than it's worth. Anyway, it's not that important, but I think it'd be awefully cool.

-"Zow"

WOW!!! 3D

[bigfinger]

Now when I look at porn and the girl has DDD breast they'll be in 3D. no I'll never get any work done.

Welcome to my website, take off every 'zig'!

[Anonymous Coward]

• Extended Cable TV subscription - $35/mo
• Slashdot account - Free
• DSL so that you have a chance in the race to first post - $30/mo
• Getting flamed by humorless geeks for beating a meme into the ground and then some - priceless

Some things can't be bought with money. For everything else, there's Trollercard.



"3D LCD Display -- ATE MY BALLS!"

Already done

[PunchMonkey]

Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses.

I have a 3D LCD display at home that works great with or without glasses.

Now what would really be cool, is a 2D LCD display... I mean, sure they're already pretty thin.....

oh wait.... I'm supposed to read the article first, aren't I?

ANOTHER one

[akheron1]

*sigh* We all know it's just another technology that will be used mainly for porn.

Re:ANOTHER one

[Anonymous Coward]

what's wrong with that??

In other news....

[Salden]

Thousands of cases of epileptic seizures in children reportedly triggered by Super Pokemon Sunshine 3d for the Super Advance Game Boy 3d video game system.

So if you were dumb enough not to catch the joke

[glrotate]

I guess you voted for Gore?

ebay? (Re:3d for Business)

[phorm]

Actually, if there's a corresponding capture device then this would be good for anything with products for sale. Customers could look *around* the product before buying.

They mention realty for an example, but I'm sure auto sellers, antique sellers, etc would love to have their customers be able to look at the product left front right top bottom.

Re:ebay? (Re:3d for Business)

[Viking Coder]

What you're describing requires true "3D". What this device does is much more like "2.5D" - two dimensional images, with a depth component. What I mean is that you won't be able to look *around* the product just by taking a stereo pair of photos of it.

Actually constructing a true 3D model of something from photographs alone is a much harder problem than merely presenting two images to a user who does the spatial integration in their head. Sure, there's work being done, but it's fairly primitive, very sensitive to noise, etc. It's not yet ready-for-primetime.

Re:ebay? (Re:3d for Business)

[phorm]

I was thinking that to do this it might help to have a more convex-style display, having the inner pixels represented in 3d by using a form of overlay. The future monitor may actually be some sort of ball which projects the image from an inner core. Feasible, but requiring a whole lot more surface area and likely 10 times the cost, not to mention one heckuva powerful video card.

There was once something that used a convex display, more of a bubble actually, at the arcade which had 3d in this form. It was many years ago, so there's probably an improvement, but it was actually somewhat reminiscent of the holodisplays from star ways. The character that talked to you actually did seem to be standing up inside the bubble.

This might not be great for FPS games, but would be awesome for 3d modelling, and space/strategy games... very awesome

If you code it, they will come - phorm

The Irony...

[jonadab]

A 3D Flatscreen. See, it's flat, but it's 3D...

Aah, nevermind.

My experience with these screens was...

[omarKhayyam]

...Pretty good. I was lucky enough to get a demo of this technology a couple of years ago when some Sharp guys visited a "certain company that makes processors for a certain company named after a fruit" that I happened to be working at. The effect is very good, however as they noted you have to be sitting at a very specific distance, and dead in front of the screen (at least as of two years ago). This is not too big a deal for games, at least if you're like me and you go into a 3d shooter trance as soon as Quake or the like boots up. However, for CAD type tasks I image keeping your head still for hours on end would be a bit aggravating.

Personally, if they could sell it for only 50% more than a normal moniter, and if the LCD could refresh fast enough w/o ghosting for 3d shooters, I'd pick one up in a heartbeat.

Re:My experience with these screens was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked at the MIT Media Lab a few years back, and we had a system there that gave similar 3D display off of an LCD screen, but without a fixed head position (using a digital camera to track user position and adjust viewing locations accordingly). I reworked a 3D game engine to run on the system...deathmatch was a lot of fun.
Check out the overview.

RTLAS Syndrome strikes again

[the COW OF DOOM (tm)]

LCD display? Liquid Crystal Display display?

michael, you're going on The List, along with people who say "SAT Test" and "HIV Virus" and "GUI Interface" and "ATM Machine" and "NIC Card".

Re:RTLAS Syndrome strikes again

[oe1kenobi]

And "Built on NT Technology" ("NT" might have meant "New Technology")

Re:RTLAS Syndrome strikes again

[bytesmythe]

Don't forget:

PIN number
SCSI interface
ASCII code

(At least I've never heard anyone say LED diode...)

Check your math

[wadetemp]

"Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago."

2 x 2D = 4D
4D > 3D
QED

Re:Check your math

[MarkoNo5]

Actually, you proof contains an error. 4D > 3D only if D > 0. Check your math :p

Neck cramps, eye problems... it won't work.

[dpbsmith]

"The screens can only be seen in 3-D from certain angles and distances, however, and a "sweet spot indicator" -- a small bar at the lower end of the screen -- appears solid black when the viewer is at an optimum position for 3-D."

Right... this is basically the same idea as many kind of "3D without glasses" dating back to the turn of the century. Including the well-known lenticular displays.

In effect it creates a pair of invisible "virtual glasses" in the air and you have to line up your head with them to see the effect. The problem is that your eyes are only 3 inches apart, so even ideally, at the VERY BEST you only have 3 inches of freedom to move your head before the left eye moves into the right-eye "virtual lens" or vice versa. In real life, the image is likely to blur or darken or otherwise turn funny if you move your head less than that.

This is going to create neck cramps like you won't believe, and all sorts of other irritations.

It's one thing to have a gimmick on a cereal package, or a poster, that grabs your attention for a few seconds. It's quite another to look at it for as long as you'd look at a computer screen.

Consumer cameras that produce lenticular "view-without-glasses" prints have been available on and off for decades. They have NEVER been popular.

Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys have had a 3d LCD for a while:

http://www.dti3d.com/

I think their product was announced around may '01. Is this different from what sharp has made?

You've got to be joking...

[Jack_Frost]

Three dimensional hearing works because your brain is able to detect minute differences in the *arrival* of soundwaves at one ear vs. the other and then determine the direction of origin.

Three dimensional vision works because we have a small amount of seperation between our eyes. The brain compares the image received from both eyes and composites them together. 3D vision is a result of depth perception. Numerous optical illusions can trick the brain into seeing 2D images as 3D objects by playing with the relationship between what the individual eyes see and how the brain composites those images together.

What you describe would require advanced knowledge of when light leaves a distant object, and the computing power in our brains to detect the small intervals between the arrival of photons moving at the speed of light.

I'll leave the relativistic implications of being able to see in a vacuum as a homework assignment.

stop patents! qjkx

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were no IP laws, this would have taken much less time. (Cue the stupid dinosaurs who say no research will be done without the ability to protect ideas).

wrong

[GunFodder]

The parallax blocker is a mechanical filter fitted by the user to the display. It most definitely is switchable.

RTFWP

Materials Research for one...

[Jack_Frost]

Being able to manipulate a molecular structure or actually see a 3D representation of a ternary phase diagram would be hugely useful. Also surface plots of multi dimensional data would be much easier to manipulate.

Then you toss in all the design, CAD-CAM, visible relations in a database, etc and the possibilities are endless.

And that's just for materials and design. A lot of the same applications would work for drug research, medical applications, entymology, architectural renderings, etc etc.

This technology is at least 4 years old!

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a company selling glasses-less 3D LCD screens at SIGGRAPH 1999, and there was a 3D CRT based prototype display at SIGGRAPH 1998. It basicly was a regular TV turned 90 degrees so the scan lines were vertical, with a sheet of tiny prisms (like on the 3D postcards) so that at a certain distance, each eye saw ether the odd or even lines. This is the same technology used in the 3D LCD pannels. It might be possable to update a regular LCD panel if you could find the right prism sheets with the same dot pitch. Sharp didn't develop this, another company has been selling these displays for the last few years, and the prism sheets have been around since the at least 70's as I have a children's book from that time with one on the cover.
At SIGGRAPH 2001, there was some prototypes of screens with head tracking used to try to eliminate the sweet spot effect, but none of them worked very well, and they all took an entire table top to function.

Actually, it COULD...

[MadCow42]

Depending on how many different images it could show under each parallax barrier, you could easily generate volumetric displays.

I do this all the time with Lenticular Images. The trick is that the parallax barrier (or lens in the case of lenticular) blocks more than 50% of the display beneath at a time. If it blocks 80%, and shows 20% to each eye, there's room for 5 separate "views". By moving your head side-to-side, you see different stereo pairs, effectively seeing "around" objects on the screen.

By blocking 90%, showing 10% to each eye, you suddenly allow 10 views.

The problem is that by blocking 90% and showing 10%, your screen is now only 10% as bright as it used to be.

MadCow.

Unintended FX!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you have to take twice as much Gravol to play your favourite FPS.

Stereo on Linux?

[agentk]

I'm hoping that this device will interface with OpenGL stereo quad buffering, or with a dual-output video card. So far the only 3D graphics card I've encountered with stereo that works in Linux is the nVidia Quadro 4... Does anyone know of any others?

reed

Re:I know I'm not the only one out there thinking.

[Anonymous Coward]

one giant leap towards holodecks being a reality ;)


Oh great! Am I the only one who has noticed that the holodeck usually plays the role of endangering the lives of the entire crew?

That's just what we need.

Best '3D' Screen I ever saw...

[Anonvmous Coward]

... was a two-layer LCD screen where the foreground layer was transaprent and the background layer was about an inch or two back. I saw one of these at Siggraph 2001.

Okay, it didn't look 3D, but it was still damn cool, and it looked just fine. They had one of these hooked up to a Windows box. I'll tell you guys something, it was cool having a foreground and background layer to put windows around in. I was really getting into that! It was certainly more interesting than trying to pull off stereoscopy with a 'sweet spot'.

Un-headbang compatible

[Ligur]

"The screens can only be seen in 3-D from certain angles and distances, however, and a "sweet spot indicator" -- a small bar at the lower end of the screen -- appears solid black when the viewer is at an optimum position for 3- D." Well that's not very useful since I usually headbang to my fragging.

Technically 4D?

[Anonvmous Coward]

Aren't these screens technically 4-D?

You've got X coordinates, you've got Y coordinates, you've got T as in time, and now you've got Z as in depth. X,Y,T,Z is four dimensions.

Measuring it that was is kind of interesting. Paper'd be 2D because the image doesn't change. Typical monitors would be 3D since they update 60-100 times a second. And stereo monitors would be 4D (In a sense...) since they are monitors with depth.

Anybody remember 'electric ink' that's supposed to show up one day? That'd become 3D and so on...

Re:Technically 4D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Naaah. T as anisotropic, non-spatial dimension is nr. 0, so it's still 3D, but with count starting from 0, not from 1.

Pfft

[xcracka]

Is Sharp the same company that makes those shitty little calculators?

Re:Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

no, its the company that makes great new innovations like the Zaurus Linux PDA... but, i will admit they do make shitty calculators...

Re:Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

In a same way as Matsushita is the company who does your Panasonic phones/TVs/VCRs/whatever and also builds oil tankers, trains, spoons and everything between. Japanese companies don't really give a shit about Western idea of "specialize in your own little niche".

3d mice do already exist

[danimrich]

A friend of mine once had one... at least six or seven years ago. It consisted of a wireless sender of the size of a peanut (including shell) and of an antenna that had to be fixed to the screen. The sender, which had two mouse buttons on it, was to be attached to the index finger. The antenna consisted of three ultrasonic microphones (I guess?) and was fixed to one corner of the screen. One microphone sat right in the corner, the other microphones were located a couple of centimeters away from the corner on the screen's top and left edge.

Basically, the sender constantly transmitted ultrasonic signals. The antenna setup made it possible to calculate the mouse's position along the two axes parallel to the screen from the signal's delay between the three detectors. Concerning the third axis, there are two possibilities:

a) Assuming that the signals are sent out at a given interval, movement to and from the screen results in different delays between the individual signals.

b) Assuming that the mouse is calibrated regularly to compensate for the loss of battery power, the distance can be calculated from the signal strength.

As I said, I saw this mouse at least six or seven years ago. I was pretty impressed by the device, which functioned properly and exactly. However, this was the time of Windows 3.1, and I thought it was pretty useless. I remember that there was a game where one had to throw rings onto a stick-apparently this was distributed with the "mouse". One or perhaps two years later, I saw one (just one) of these mice on sale at a local store, in bad condition, for only a few bucks.

In conclusion, this device was invented waaay before it's time.

screen shot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see a screen shot so I can judge the 3D quality for myself.

Display is redundant.

[c_jonescc]

LCD means Liquid Crystal Display. LCD Display means Liquid Crystal Display Display. Maybe the poster was just trying to get across that it's 3D with a display^2.

You still need ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... two working eyes for it to be useful .-(

Toon Moene.

Is it just me...

[Rui del-Negro]

...or does anyone else find the sentence "flat 3D screen" a bit funny?

RMN
~~~

LCD cost keep people awat, these are 3D ergo $�

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this LCD display be cheap enough for gamers
Cost for most of us drives everything, it will be a while before most of us could even think about getting something like this, i am not willing to pay much more than £250 for a display so untill it get down to this level (with out scraficing my current resolution) it a non starter.
Your new purchase of LCD displays will last about the 5 to 10 year cycle before this type of display becomes affordable

BUT OUR LOVE CAN WORK!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wherever you are, just know that I love you, and will continue to work on the small shrine I've erected in your honor. If you could ever see fit to send me a lock of your hair, I would just about die with ecstacy!

ET

1d vs 3d

[Lord Bitman]

Because of the "sweet spot" I can't help but call this display a 1d display. It shows depth, that's nice, but something isnt "three dimensional" unless you can move your head and see it differently. This current method with LCs facing in different directions will not lead to that technology..

Not the first 3D LCD without glasses. link inside

[jelle]

That is not the first autostereo LCD display at all. More information and lot of links on this page.

A guy demoed this at Hackers' years ago.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

He used a grating that he'd generated by writing a little postscript program for a laser printer (to make lines with the right spacing) then copying it to an overhead-projector foil. Put in front of a standard LCD turned 90 degrees (so the three colors of each pixel are aligned vertically) and you have a stereo display.

All these guys did is substitute a second LCD for the grating so they could turn the grating off to switch between a full-resolution 2-d or a half-resolution stereo display.

Why can't they show us what it looks like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Foolishly, I was hoping to see an image of the 3D monitor, to see how clear it was.

Hmm... I always wondered why the color TV's that were advertised on TV didn't look much different to me...

And here we come to the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

> You move your head to the side to get a better view around the corner of your 3d object, but you're still looking at the same image, it just bends along with your head moving.

Integrate two cameras in the screen to find your head position. And when you move your head, modify the displayed contents accordingly, letting you look "behind" things. It's single-user solution (no way to comfort two different people viewing the same screen at the same time) but in 90% of cases it will finally realistically create the impression of true 3D!

Say what you want but I'd love to have different windows on my screen really stacked with some distance from each other, me being able to look under one without moving the other... Just look at your screen, wherever a semi-3d gadgets appear, all the sliders, buttons, edges of bars etc - Replace this with real 3D objects. Useful? Not really. Pretty? Beautiful!

See it in Action.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a working example of this screen at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. It is part of the Star Wars: The Magic Of Myth exhibition that is currently on display there.

Personally I think the effects are not that good, the image is blurry, but it does have a very distinct 3D effect, seeing the Jedi Starfighter in 3D on a flat screen is pretty cool.

DTI in stores!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not infringing on patents, DTI now has 14 on their technology. From what I understand there is a loss in brightness when Sharps model switches from 3D to 2D, not so with DTI's units. DTI will have units in select CompUSA stores beginning next week. Beating Sharp by months to the market!!!

Last Post!

[alpg]

The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the
battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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