IBM Develops New 3D TV Technology

neutron_p writes "IBM has recently announced a new and affordable 3D video system that works with normal DLP (Digital Light Processing) televisions. IBM demonstrated the new system on a 50-inch, flat-screen Texas Instruments rear-projection digital television at the 22nd annual Flat Information Displays conference held in San Francisco this month. This "black box" device can be connected to any DLP projector or television via the common VESA 3 pin stereo connector. Exact details concerning the 3D technology - still unnamed - were not forthcoming, but the company spokesperson said it was compatible with OpenGL and Direct Draw, which is definitely aimed at software developers who make 3D games."

Comments

Re:Sharp3D

[aussie_a]

Doesn't the Sharp 3D have a very limited range in which you can see the 3D effect? I think that the Sharp method is more promising at this stage, however it's just a case of who can do away with their disability first. Will Sharp learn how to increase the range to a more acceptable level, or will IBM learn how to do away with the glasses first? CAN either of these obstacles be overcome? Are the current methods of creating 3D images, doomed because the obstacles are inherent in their designs?

I personally don't know. I'm not an engineer. But I'm not seeing anything that says either company (or any other one for that matter) is about to make a breakthrough in overcoming the problems. But then again, perhaps the solution will come from an unexpected quarter, and will blow the television world away.

Some prior research work in the area

[Samir Gupta]

At my last job at SEGA, my lab was in charge of coming up with many different and pioneering ideas for new ways to play video games, many of which, for one reason or another, never made it to market.

One of those was HOLO-GENESIS. It was a 3-D laser holographic projection device for the MegaDrive/geneis. It could have displayed 3-D rendered images, in full-color, in real-time, using a system of 3 red/green/blue lasers, and a finely-meshed micro-faceted surface which gave a pseudo 3-D effect based on carefully utilized light diffraction effects, a la printed holograms.

It was slated to come out in mid-1995, but at the time, we couldn't get a acceptable frame rate (3-D graphics accelerator hardware was still very primitive and expensive, the province of SGI workstations and arcade machines), so we decided to not commercialize it at the time.

In any case, I must say, this is a very interesting announcement, and I must congratulate IBM for further and seemingly admirable work on bringing such technology to the market. Hopefully they can continue to lower the price point and make it adopted wider.

Re:Sharp3D

[InvalidError]

The Sharp LCD was goggle-less thanks to a special surface finishing and double LCD matrix.

This IBM '3D' display is the same old alternate-frame display trick we have had for years... look at the older nVidia cards, the 'Deluxe' models had an extra port for 3D goggles. This is the same technology, only with an IBM spin. Most modern mid/high-end CRTs could already handle alternate-frame at ~100fps up to at least 1280x960 but video card manufacturers have apparently given up on the 3D goggles and people have forgotten them.

Nvidia 3d=vid card+50$glasses=SAME TECHNOLOGY

[Xyleene]

All Direct3d and OpenGL programs ALREADY have this ability. Nvidia has been doing this for years. It's built into they're drivers. All you need is to purchase a 50$ pair of 3d LCD Glasses (the same type described in the article) and download the '3d stereo' driver from their website and you're ready to go. Nvidia does it by rendering to two buffers at the hardware level (one for the perspective of each eye) and showing the buffers in succession. Say you have a monitor with 100hz refresh rate it just dumps one buffer on even frames and the other on odd frames. (note: the refresh rate is constant and not related to your fps).

This IS the same technology that IBM is talking about. The traditional problem with this is the refresh rates of projectors. Basically a refresh rate of 50~60hz is not enough to fool the eye without major strain. This is a limitation of the projector and not of any other hardware involved. So I don't know what IBM is relly talking about.

And an other thing! To have 3d VIDEO all you need is two 2d video streams from slightly different perspectives. Basically two regular cameras positioned beside eachother. By expensive they mean the price of 2 cameras instead of one. The hardest thing(and not very hard atall) is encoding a new codec that would encode both streams into one. kinda like stereo audio).

And yes, Half Life 2 is awesome with the glasses on. Especially when a projectile like a rpg or a rail gun type thing shoots at you. You can actually tell how far it is and what trajectory it's on.