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3D Flat Panel With No Glasses
m4c north writes "From Japan Today: 'Toshiba Corp said Friday it has developed a brand-new flat-display that allows viewers to see three-dimensional images without using special glasses. The display is expected to be applied to arcade games, virtual menus at restaurants and simulations of buildings and landscapes. The company said it aims to commercialize the display within two years.' JCN Network offers a few more details than Japan Today's rather short summary. And Toshiba's [toshiba.co.jp] press release has some simple figures. Maybe pinball will make a comeback!"
Can we view pictures on our 2D monitors?
I dunno about pinball, but we could have some rocking porn.
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I thought there'd been monitors out that do this for a while? Wasn't there a laptop with this tech?
Isn't Sharp already selling 3D LCD screens?
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But I liked those red and blue glasses! They made me look cool...
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Until I have one, so I can keep reading this story but only IN 3-D!
Sharp has had 3D Displays that don't require glasses for some time now.
These faux 3D moniters sound nice and all, but I can't really see the big use of it. In specialized ways like the examples stated they sound good, but for games and regular applications it's probably useless. We're not talking holograms here, it's just basically what you see on a cheezy 3D film just without the glasses. I'm more intrested in the day when digital paper is cheap and effective. Imagine layering a room with this, and getting images on all 6 sides, and playign things such as an FPS, or RPG. Even adapting movies and such would be quite useful.
Will the next generation of Game consoles be able to make use of this technology? Seems like the uber-realistic shooter could be nigh.
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of course you can still see 2-d pictures. the display ALLOWS you to view in 3d. boy will this be weird. just imagine all the abuses of this...
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I can't believe that you wouldn't have huge headaches from all of the eye strain that these would give you. Normal computer screens are bad enough already...
Writing "SHARP recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional" on the page surely didn't help them get any geek point for their product.
Toshiba has applied the new technology to 24- and 15.4- inch displays with 480 x 300 pixels, a resolution 1.5 times that found in the company's conventional 3-D displays, allowing viewers to see high quality stereoscopic images. Ok, so the resolution is 50% higher than current 3D displays... hardly amazing. And who wants to look at a 480x300 resolution object on a 24 inch screen?
Watch another prototype which uses only 16 times the screen resolution of its 2d counterpart. Have a seat at our stand while we give you some flyers about our other exiting products. No don't move your head out of range, simply keep your back to the back of the chair. Their you go, don't you just want to reach out your arms!? Yes, now you can move your head a little, isn't that a cool effect?! That really works.
No, its a prototype.
No, it requires a custom videocard cluster.
No, it doesn't come with software only this demo movie.
What you saw the same 10 years ago at Philips? Never heard of them.
Well yes, if GPU and video bandwidth evolves just a little bit further this thing could be in the shop the next day.
Don't forget the name of our 'innovative' company.
See you next year.
If you RTFA, it becomes evident that this display technology isn't the same as Sharp's 3D LCD. Sharp's display requires you to be in center of the display, and at a certain distance, and the 3D effect works by projecting steroscopic images at each eye. They direct two different screen images essentially, but it's still the same old trick, just without glasses, instead, a diffusion filter angles the output to each eye.
From this article, it seems as if each pixel is a microlens that redirects the display to your two eyes on a per-lightwave basis. This obviously allows a much wider viewing angle, and for multiple viewers, while still creating the illusion of depth.
Saw one of these at E3 two years ago, though I forget who made it.
Granted, it kinda made my head hurt to look at, but regardless, you could see 3D images on a screen outside the booth.
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As a few people have said, this technology has been around for a couple of years already, most commonly seen in the Sharp3D laptop. There's still a lot of reasearch going on in this area... I'm a MSc CompSci student and my dissertation this year is looking into how these displays can best be used. There is a big problem with nausea... if there is too much image disparity (i.e. if the image it _too_ 3D) then it can make certain people feel ill. I've played some simple 3D games on these monitors and they rock! Also, some colleagues of mine did a short study to see if autostereoscopic displays can increase game performance. The results showed that it can make a large positive difference if used correctly, so I can't wait to see this technology used in mainstream games.
Anyone have a link to the screen shots? I really would love to see how good the 3d effect is.
Robert
Bet this
I have 20/400 vision in my left eye. Because of that, I perceive almost everything with my right eye. As a kid, this made taskes such as hitting a baseball or catching a football exceedingly difficult because I have piss-poor depth perception. It almost made those red & blue "3D" movies pointless for me. Will this mean that I can't read any informational displays that use this type of tech in the future?
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My company was given a demo of a similar product only from another vendor. It was a pretty interesting demonstration consisting of video and real time 3D animations. The only problem I could see with their implementation was that it had "sweet spots", four if I recall correctly, and unless you were viewing the display from an one of the correct angles it didn't look quite right. One thing that was pretty impressive was that using a custom driver that they made, it would be technically possible to alter any program on the fly to appear correctly on their display. Apparently their driver looks at the data in the Z buffer and constructs the various angles required to make the image look 3D. Also, they could turn almost any monitor with a high enough resolution into a 3D monitor by applying their special coating to it. All in all it was very interesting, but I still think it needs some work, mostly to get the sweet spots larger and create a slightly clearer picture. Otherwise it was impressive.
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This monitor, along with the Sharp one, would accompany well with Longhorn, which IIRC will include 3D desktops. So, it would be one step past that.
Like always, we need the actual software and applications to actually utilize new hardware.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
But the real question is, will they provide support for Linux since they're offering a "complete solution"?
Has the porn industry approved this technology?
Maybe you have headaches with current screens because your eyes see something flat which your brain finds unnatural, and that a 3D screen would fix that?
Mod parent up. How is this news story more worthy than a product that is already on the market? Commercial within two years?
You can see it here.
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That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The only restaurant that could afford this would be a very high-end one and they're not going to disrupt their elegant atmosphere with a bunch of 3D LCDs.
Maybe Planet Hollywood would go for this. That way they can show what a $15 hamburger looks like in 3D.
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This technogy reminds me of some higher-ups in a war huddled around one, planning there next move... Or some Vulcans and Humans planning some exploration....
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However, mainstream 3-D technology is limited in terms of the viewing angle at which it can display 3-D images, and the images are also tiring to view.
Toshiba's new displays employ an integral imaging system that reproduces light beams similar of those produced by a real object, not its visual representation.
But that's all they say. How does this work? Are they somehow able to emit light waves going out at every point from a flat surface, so that you see a 3D object with correct perspective no matter which direction you look at it from? I guess that isn't that unrealistic; I mean, mirrors do exactly that. But how does it work?
Is this for real or are they just being overenthusiastic in their own press releases?
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and now we'll be able to watch our lovely american flag billowing in 3d when we walk by our local schools
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This will pop-up ads to a whole new dimension.
Well, there already was a company that up until last year was making vitual pinball machine games with a large flat panel monitor mounted vertically. It failed and now the company has retrofitted the machines to play other games. The only way pinball would work, outside a real pinball machine, is to have spot on physics and force feedback to match and to be almost holographic. Pinball is a visceral experience, you hit the ball and it goes where you hit it. No computers to cheat you of that.
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My eyes don't like to look at the same thing at once, which is how depth is perceived. Is this another nifty 3D product that I won't be able to use?
(Yes, I have lived my life without 3D movies, funky optical illusions, or Virtual Boy)
There could be a gesture which brings the "window" you're moving around closer towards you on the Z-axis (like a beckoning gesture) and one to move the windows further away on the Z-Axis. (Like a pointing gesture.)
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There will come a day when you witness a 3D goatse, and then you will surely regret this.
I have just skimmed over the article. 3D LCD's have been out for a while. I have read a large 3 Page article on it in new scientist a while back. If my memory serves, as mentioned above. Current 3d screenes only work so long as u are virtually straight ahead of the screen. As it relies on 2 filters to filter one screen from each eye. They had developed 3d screens using 4 LCD's and several filters to allow viewing from as large a range as normal LCD screens. But much more costly. (obviously)
The current main problem with 3D flat screens which doesnt seem to be mentioned in the article is eye strain. Your eye see's 3d so tries to focus on these objects. Which are fake as its all just a flat screen. This causes eyestrain and headaches after 1/2hr to an 1hr. But the main plus side is for 3D TV it will only require around 5% more data to set the depth for each pixel and would require a brand new format, just an extension of the existing formats used. Also there is already technology to quickly make 2D video into 3d video. by using computers to track objects in the scene.
The current main use, as far as I am aware is in the medical proffesion. For the new 3d ultra sounds and CAT scans. As toshiba was advertising laptops for this purpose on the back of new scientist.
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I came up with the idea for 3d monitors back when I was a kid in the 80's. You just put little lenses above clusters of pixels, which causes different pixels to shoot light in different directions. Software does the rest, and the math is easy. The only catch is you lose resolution, so you'd have to pay more for a hi-res monitor.
But then I opened a popular science about a year later and saw that a Japanese company had just patented more or less the same idea. Grrr. If they're gonna take my idea, the least they could have done is commercialized it a decade ago.
So, every few years, another company 'invents' the same idea, publishes a press release, and claims to patent something. Meanwhile, my display is still 2D.
From the it's-been-just-two-years-away-for-the-last-10-year s dept.
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I saw pseudo 3d lcds at the CeBit (can't remember who produced them) and they looked like, you know, ugly.
If you weren't in the sweet spot all you could see was a distorted image in different colours, and even if you found the optimal position the colours were wrong. I wouldn't want to have one of those.
It has to be terribly un-ergonomic not to be able to move your head.
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This is not 3D -- it is 2 images that are each 2D. What this gives you is perspective. Unfortunately, most of the experience of "3D" is being able to move your head and see a different perspective, which works on a holograph. With this, you move your head and see the same thing which breaks the illusion.
Ever notice that "3D" movies really look like a bunch of 2D layers? Each actor is on a flat card and you can see some depth for placement of those cards, maybe 3 layers or so. Visual effects that use depth to create something enjoyable are truly rare -- T2-3D had one with the metal morphing up to the viewers eye. The problem is that you have to plan for this in the production. Just using a 3D camera doesn't make the content compelling.
Lets do an back of envelope calculation, they are so fun...
Lets suppose a 90 degree viewing angle (both horizontal and vertical) with 1' degree quantization. Thats 29 thousand times as much information as a 2d display with similar resolution and color depth. Compression of the video signal from the source to TV would be absolutely mandatory.
If we assume that each voxel can emmit a maximum of 32 virtual photons per screen refresh rate than we get roughly only 64 times as much information, 32 times as many pixels plus 26-32 extra bits per pixel to describe the emmision degree. This would be much more feasible but then we still need to know which of the numerous viewing directions contains a receiver (eye ball) and then we can only handle 16 viewers (enough for non-theatrical viewing)
Couple this with the difficulty of crafting such a physical device it would be far easier just to go the matrix route and plug-in.
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10 or more views?? it's going to look like those lenticular "3D" playing cards.. you know the ones.. where the wrong angle results in you seeing a combo of more than the recommended number of frames.
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Of course you won't be able to use it.. this is like saying you can only see black and white, so will you be able to see color.
The answer, amazingly enough (!) is:
NO!
Unlike stereograms which really requires 3D vision to see them, this tech only replicates the lightfield as in-the-real-world, and therefore you will *not* be handicapped more than you already are.
Stereovision is the *same* image twice. The only difference is a ~6cm shift of the point of view. Seeing only one of the 2 nearly-identical images is fine for informational stuff.
This will probably be much the same, another attempt that falls just short. I predict 3D will take off big time when very small, very light weight, very high resolution headsets arrive, whether LCD or scanning micro-laser or whatever.
Despite my pessimism I think we should plan for a 3D future now. I doubt the HD-DVD people or Blu-Ray camp will see this post, but they should build in 3D compliance now. Since digital compression is about encoding similarities between frames, it should work well to compress two nearly identical images to one probably only adding a 10 percent overhead for a film shot in 3D. All players should be able to read a 3D title, ignoring the 3D enhancement data on standard players. Blu-Ray especially would have both the capacity and bandwidth to pull this off, in fact imagine the Marketing coo a Playstation 3D would be. I'll bet you wouldn't have to change most off the shelf 3D games to be true 3D in true stereovision if the hardware is done right. Existing titles transformed to a more immersive experience overnight.
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This is almost good enough:
http://www.pinballsim.com/
Hello, the Sega game I played in 1992 called and wants it's technology back.
Remember the flickering 3D glasses for Sega's old Master System? They were pretty good. It'd be great if a modern game console had something like that.
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not these, but i've seen a model from these guys on a fair in helsinki in late 1999. i always thought it would be nice to have a 3d display that worked without glasses, and all of a sudden i found myself standing right in front of one. it was quite impressive, good image quality and yes, a convincing effect. only when i moved my head it took a very short moment to retrack my eyes and readjust the prisms (there are prisms in front of each vertical pixel row. they direct the light so that one eye sees the even and the other the odd numbered pixel columns). the guy peresenting it told me they had played quake III on it :)
i came across their displays again on cebit a few years later, there also were some by the fraunhofer institute (the ones i've seen are probably not on the page, they had one or two that tracked your eyes and adjusted to your position, and one that only worked at a specific position, iirc).
anyway, while searching for the seereal link above, i came across this list of 3d displays, there even are price quotes for a few.
any depth perception, you insensitive clod.
are they doing this the same way that 3-D posters work. Two offset images behind a lintcular prism array?
This looks very much like the old (1993) David Beavers' "Magic Stage" - a 3D projection of a real-time computer generated image using laser pointers. Light is light, regardless of the source. In the Beavers' project, he was not limited to a few inches above the projection platform and he integrated it with "Poser" so the 3D images could be manipulated by actors. Last I heard, his project was taken in my David Copperfield and nobody else really uses it. Kind of sad because it looked very interesting when I saw it about 10 years ago.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
You just have to wink each eye in rapid succession to get the 3d effect, the panel is a regular one! They have quite clearly patented the idea of winking rapidly.
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A 3D-like sensation can be acheived using panning around the scenery. This is probably far cheaper and far easier on the eyes for extended play. The brain uses motion parallax to estimate distances. It provides just about the same info as stereo vision, just not quite as fast. Thus, you get 80% of the effect/sensation with 20% of the cost and eye-strain.
(Google "Mars Pathfinder Stereo Wiggle")
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Pinball 2000 had 3d back it 1999 but they made the playfield to small and in the 2 games they made you had to shoot the center a lot.
Yes. When intel comes out with a new chip, do you say "Hey, I thought we had microchips already"?
It's a *new variety of 3-D monitor*. There are going to be lots. At some point you're going to have to stop being surprised that something can be new without being unprecedented.
You would have a hard time finding someone who wants autostereoscopy to look good than me. I've bought three different sets of LCD shutter glasses, installed and tweaked ungodly numbers of drivers, and partially went to SIGGRAPH simply to see the state of the art in the technology.
As of September, 2004, it's all awful. I've seen the Sharp Laptop. I've seen the X3D display. I've seen every attempt to create 3D without glasses, and they're all embarassingly bad. One inch of depth does not 3D make, especially not at the cost of visually hideous artifacts (half the horizontal resolution means you end up looking at these double width, very blocky pixels). There was one exception, which used several stacked layers to simulate 3D without attempting to use lensing. The depth was still awful but it didn't hurt at all to look at. Of course, you'd never notice any depth from a distance.
Of course, it's not just lensing that's problematic. I got strapped into not one but two HMD-based systems -- one, a swimming simulator, the other a fairly cool cockpit simulation with per-finger force feedback gloves. Both systems looked cool from the outside, but having played with this stuff off and on since the days of Amiga-based Arcade VR (what *was* the name of that system?) I can tell you it hasn't gotten much better. I wanted it to be immersive, but...no.
Really, the only display tech that really blew me away used dual rear projectors that fed back into one another to achieve alignment, then emitted polarized light onto a single screen. With very light and simple glasses, the effect was utterly seamless.
I vaguely remember the spinning display approach also worked.
--Dan
What is the big deal? This has been displayed (working prototype) on the CeBit for over 2 years. There's really nothing new to this, yet it is portrait as a completely new phenomenon/Technology.
Obviously this is a hoax, objects can't be flat and 3D at the same time!
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Checked it out about 6 months ago. Looked like total shit.
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The monitor lies flat on a surface and the image is project upwards...that IS NEW!.
Now we can see porn in a much more realistic way.
best experience I had was with polarized light systems, but I don't really have access to those. Shutter glasses aren't great, they really kill the 3d effect, I don't know why. What anyone can afford is red-blue glasses, that is if you don't mind looking at the stuff in "black-and-white" (your brain really gets used to it and the color's dont matter so much). In the old times I made a really simple DOS game using this. You also used to have driver support for that and I remember playing quake, but I remember they didn't get it all right. Also the real angle of view doesn't match what it is displayed on your screen (I think by default in quake the hfov is 90degrees, while the real one is about half as that, which makes people that are not used to it sick at first)
The closest that I've seen to a 2D monitor is an LCD, and even those are around an inch thick.
How do you prevent light from shining through your 2D monitor?
I should think that, due to quantum effects, your 2D monitor would be, in essence, invisible.
Also, being 2D, I should think that even the slightest breeze would destroy it.