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More 3D Displays to Come
Anonymous Writer writes "The first laptop using an autostereo display to show images in 3D without special glasses was the Sharp Mebius PC-RD3D in Japan, later released in the US as the Sharp Actius RD3D. NEC has a line of computers with autostereo displays as well. They are the NEC Valuestar T VT900/8D desktop, the LaVie S LS900/9E laptop, and LaVie RX LR700/8E laptop. The line uses NEC's SoundVu technology that uses the display as a speaker! Autostereo displays are becoming more popular according to Martyn Williams and Tom Krazit from the IDG News Service. In their article in PC World, they claim laptops are just the start of it. A new satellite service by Mobile Broadcasting will be broadcasting 3D content to handheld devices in Japan some time soon. Another player in this market is Dynamic Digital Depth (mentioned in a previous post of mine), whose content services convert 2D video to 3D for display in this medium. Sanyo may be releasing 50-inch Plasma Displays that can display 3D. MIT's Media Laboratory is developing a more advanced 3D display, calling it a full resolution autostereoscopic display, that would allow a viewer to walk around and not lose the 3D effect, which current autostereo displays can't do."
If only the images could be made solid and warm to the touch!
http://pymol.sourceforge.net/
... that carry these 3D display laptops? I'd like to actually see the damned things before I buy one, you know!
:)
And wow, 1.3 hours of battery life. Looks like I'd need to get a really long extension cord to retain portability.
This would be extremely useful, especially in the CAD community. While I only know a little about the area of CAD and manufacturing, this combined with the inkjet plastics printing (I forget the term for it) or rapid prototyping machines would be really neat. Imagine designing something, and being able to view it in 3D from all angles (instead of a render), and then sending it to be printed off. I've never seen one of these 3D displays before; how are the objects rendered? How much processing power is needed to create such a display, especially from a 3D model? I'm sure it needs to be rendered first, but what about a flat-shading 3D program like Autodesk Inventor? 3D displays would be neat for new GUIs. Instead of having a flat 3D desktop, you could have a true 3D desktop. That would be interesting to see...
I don't want to be an smartass... but the SoundVu technology is not property of NEC, it was developed by NXT... just a word...
Traditionally the 3D demo object of choice is a teapot.
I'm trying to wrap my mind around what exactly that convoluted mess of an MIT press release is trying to say. If I understand correctly, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, the system tracks the heads of the people surrounding the display, then projects left-eye right-eye information through an adjustable polarized filter and lense system so that the viewable angle only includes the intended eye. The reason they need such a high refresh-rate is because they want a system that would work with 4 people... 4 people = 8 eyes = 8 times the updates.
In essence, that's very cool. Why couldn't they just say that?
The ______ Agenda
Well, I guess you could take the thermal elements from a heating pad and stick them in a real doll.
Best I can do for a 100 quid.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
The "3D displays to come" that hold the most promise, however, will require that you wear (non-dorky) viewing glasses. These normal looking glasses will use a safe Retinal Scanning laser to directly overlay 3D imagery onto your field of view. Of course, we won't see this tech in BestBuy until the Law of Accelerating Returns has run the course of a few more years.
It's not too hard to think of several killer apps for augmented vision that make all other conventional displays pale in comparison. Even a wall-sized OLED display would take 2nd.
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Power to the Peaceful
// Just my few cents
If you click on the Sharp Actius RD3D link and then click "Where to Buy", they show you the direct-from-the-manufacturer cost and allow you to purchase it.
If it's worth it, I'd buy it. It's running at $2,999.00 at this moment. Can't really tell if it's worth it by looking at a picture of it over the Internet, though.
You could use one of those 3D pin-cushion displays as a projection screen with a heating element behind it. That way it A: meets all of your requirements and B: stops you from doing with it what you were planning on doing with it.
Filthy, filthy, filthy.
The ______ Agenda
It gives us some pretty cool stereo graphic images. The only way I've found to get a true color 3D image is to put both images side by side, then look at their center cross eyed. Is there a better way?
Also, speaking as someone who spends much of the workday turning 2D CAD files into 3D models, I don't think a 3D display would really be that useful in CAD, except maybe for client presentations. For starters, leveraging a 3D display to full usefulness would require a good 3D input device, and those just haven't arrived.
Furthermore, given the limited number of scanlines, It would seem you'd be restricted to a fairly low number of pixels (depth-xels?) of Z resolution, which could quickly become a problem with fine detail.
"This would be extremely useful, especially in the CAD community. While I only know a little about the area of CAD and manufacturing, this combined with the inkjet plastics printing (I forget the term for it) or rapid prototyping machines would be really neat. Imagine designing something, and being able to view it in 3D from all angles (instead of a render), and then sending it to be printed off."
Figured since I'm a 3D artist, you wouldn't mind if I chimed in. Would a stereoscopic display help me? If the display is convincing enough, yes! Right now, while I'm modelling, I'm constantly rotating the model around, sometimes just slightly, just to get a sense of the parallax. This gives me a clue as to what vertices are where. A stereo display could potentially relieve me from needing to rotate it as much. If that's true, I could get more detail on the screen without worrying about the vid card not being powerful enough for what I'm doing.
I wish I could tell you for a fact that it would or wouldn't work, but I've yet to experience stereoscopic work-flow. I am rather curious, though.
"Derp de derp."
SeeReal and other stereo monitor manufactures use a similar technique as the Sharp laptop, but the go one step further and track the viewers position and shift the internal LCD to face the viewer. This improves the small view angle, but make the monitor thicker and wider to accommodate the clearance required for the shifting.
I'm sort of an expert, in that I have had dual mono-scopic vision for almost 40 years now.
People without stereoscopic vision who are that way because of large deviations in the angle at which their eyes point will get no 3-D from any form of 3D technology.
Why, well I have 6 degree vertical separation between my eyes, so when both my eyes are open simultaneously my brain has to ignore one of the images to cope.
So it will continue to ignore one of the stereo images even if produced artificially.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I'm not sure about that model, but here's a picture of the R3D3 display in action.