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Has 3D Video Finally Arrived?
pospisil writes to point us to an enthusiastic writeup on Tech.blorge.com about a 3D display technology just launched at the eGames Expo in Melbourne. The technology, from a company called Fountain Consulting, is set to ship in January. From the article: "The Vortex Home Entertainment System isn't just set to revolutionize 3D forever, they have revolutionized it. With a library of 500 current PC-based games titles converted to flawless 3D, and even the ability to convert 2D live television into 3D live television, as well as pre-recorded movies on DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD." There is no second source for this story. Exciting news if it pans out.
Jeez people, not a single comment and it's already slashdotted...give the rest of us a chance!
I'd truly hate to see what the adult entertainment industry would do with this one ... sure, there'd be some gems, but how many plots would revolve around having the stars "reach out and grab you" over and over.
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http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7242/52/1/0/
Ability to convert 2D television to 3D? I'm skeptical. Now, if there was a way to transmit my chocolate, that would be something.
You need a 3D monitor to view the site.
Here is a link to the "OMG JUST A COUPLE MORE DAYS UNTIL RELEASE" website that Tony's taken out for his company.
http://www.3dvisual.com.au/
The glasses look like the same old headache-inducing crap that no one wants to wear while watching TV.
... ends here:
"and even the ability to convert 2D live television into 3D live television, as well as pre-recorded movies on DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD."
How can you "upconvert" 2D images to 3D when there is no 3D information to work with, hm?
Will this be bundled with the Phantom? Launch alongside DNF?
If this actually does pan out that would be very cool. I have my doubts, however it does seem to be reputable. For people who can't see it here, http://www.itwire.com.au/index2.php?option=com_con tent&do_pdf=1&id=7242, is a link to a PDF version of the text.
I'm curious as to whether or not laptops will be able to use this technology. Pretty sure it's no but I can always hope they'll make something available...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
"and even the ability to convert 2D live television into 3D live television" I hear their also adding a feature to 'zoom' and 'enhance' grainy pixelated feeds into high quality 1080p as well.
"This just in: perpetual motion machine doesn't stop; gives off extra energy!"
There is no second source for this story. Exciting news if it pans out.
From the article snippet: "even the ability to convert 2D live television into 3D live television"
Come on, don't bullshit me.
Definitely in the "If it sounds too good to be true ..." area. Jeeze guys, could you exercise a little critical thinking before fan boying all over it?
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Forget high-definition, the future is in high-def 3D
eGames Expo Melbourne Australia: I've seen the future, and it's in 3D. This technology has threatened to sweep the world many times over the past few years. But new US technology, developed in Silicon Valley and exclusively launched worldwide at the eGames Expo in Melbourne prior to its global launch on January 1, 2007, blows all the misconceptions away and finally launches the true era of high-def 3D for movies, games, TV and more.
Remember having to wear those red and blue glasses to watch 3D movies at the cinema? 3D was big for a time in the early days, but predictions that everything would be filmed and displayed in 3D simply haven't eventuated beyond the IMAX theatre and early adopter computer users who have downloaded 3D drivers for their NVIDIA graphics cards.
Now a new 3D technology called the Vortex Home Entertainment System isn't just set to revolutionize 3D forever, they have revolutionized it. With a library of 500 current PC based games titles converted to flawless 3D, and even the ability to convert 2D live television into 3D live television, as well as pre-recorded movies on DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Besides making their own modifications to existing high-end NVIDIA cards and putting it into their own PC systems, which will sell pre-loaded with 150 top PC games, Windows XP (with Vista to come) and a special interface that can be controlled from a games console controller (in addition to being easily controlled by a standard keyboard and mouse), Fountain Consulting also aim to sell a pack for US $150 that allows anyone with the same hardware to modify their own system to make it 3D compatible.
The number of people that already have the high-end equipment required is huge, as true gamers are not only growing in number, but always want the best technology to deliver the highest quality gaming experience, so sales of the upgrade kit are likely to be huge.
But if you just want to buy a ready made system, the Vortex Home Entertainment System computers with all the 3D capabilities demonstrated at the show will be on sale in 2007, in different configurations. They had their systems on display powering the 3D displays, with gamers eagerly playing titles such as Star Wars Battlefront II, the latest Quake and many, many others. The eGames Expo show is still on for one more day - Sunday the 19th at the eGames Expo held in the Melbourne Exhibition Centre as I write, so if you want to see it for yourself, come on down and check it out.
It's also compatible with existing high-definition TVs and projectors - all you need is a pair of 3D glasses from any manufacturer - the Vortex has been designed to seamlessly work with them all. It also works with any of the new 3D televisions from Sharp, Panasonic, LG, Samsung and others, where you don't need any glasses at all.
You really need to see a demo of the system playing the latest games, in 3D, with a pair of standard 3D glasses (similar to those handed out at IMAX or Real D cinemas), to truly appreciate how much better your favorite game looks in 3D. The depth, the explosions, the action and the detail is enhanced to a new 3D level.
I was also shown some video clips of a football match, a home video of someone driving their car (with a standard video camera bolted onto one of the seats to capture the vision as you're driving down the road) and some TV commercials that were all effortlessly converted into 3D. Watching a football match on 3D on a huge 70-inch projected screen, using a standard video projector is so good, it simulates the feeling of being there more than anything I've ever experienced.
So, who is the creator of this amazing new 3D technology, what led to it's development, and what is the website to find out more information? The story is quite amazing, click on the next button below to find out!
The CEO and Founder of Fountain Consulting, Tony Welch, is a visionary 27 year old who has an amazing story to tell. His grandfather was a pho
Revolutionary 3D systems are anounced about as often as Bigfoot sightings and pan out about as often. I'll believe it when I see one.
Expect any 2D to 3D conversion to work about as well as those B&W to colour conversion filters you could get back in the 50s and 60s. The tecnology they used was called "faith".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
But does it run linux in 3d? ;)
"Smellevision replaces television: Carl Stalling sez, 'It will never work!'"
It's stereoscopic, not really 3D. Shouldn't be too hard for a new game, if assume the viewing equipment. But how do they convert existing TV?
It's straightforward to do this for 3D games, because the system has real depth information. Just use shutter glasses and render alternate frames with the viewpoint shifted by one eye separation distance. That's easy, and looks good if the system can render upwards of 70 fps.
But any scheme for converting existing 2D content to "3D" will probably fall somewhere between "looks stupid" and "generates splitting headaches".
Stereo vision doesn't do anything useful for objects more than a few meters away. It's most useful for close work, which is rare in games. It's more useful for mechanical CAD, medical imaging data, and similar stuff you need to view close up. Which is why 3D movies, TV, games, etc. never really caught on.
There are too many stories that amount to nothing more than psudeo-scientific marketing spam, as you have so succinctly pointed out the summary is enough to debunk them.
Slashdot Bullsit Meter (SBM): I propose each story be displayed next to a thin vertical SBM, users can vote with either a lightbulb icon at the top or a steaming bullshit icon at the bottom. The benifit of a bullshit meter is that it would make reading the summary as redundant as reading TFA. Further, if you could sort stories by BS rating, you could pick out the best regardless of size. Of course this doesn't mean that there will be anything worth reading on slashdot but at least you could find that out faster.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's not that good. Seriously. I mean yeah, it's cool, you look at it and think WTF?? That stuff looks like its sticking out of the screen like I'm wearing 3D glasses, but I'm not wearing 3D glasses! But after a while you think "geez that's blurry", and you soon notice that it suffers from the same problem as early LCD screens; move a little to either side and the screen goes all dark.
It's a promising start though, I look forward to what they can come up in a few years once all the problems have been worked out. And when they've got a better demo than the Team America DVD!
Ben Affleck will take this apart and make a better one in about 5 minutes.
Well I got cellophane glasses out of a cereal box that work just fine! Results are debatable, but Alyx sure looks fine in Red/Blue.
haha americans, for once I can say I was there... and it sucked. perhaps it'd be useful if you want to induce epileptic fits in people, but honestly, the "3D Video" stall was really lame. people would pick up the glasses, look for a while wondering why nothing happened, then someone would point out then needed to be infront of the little sensor/projector thing. so they'd move in front of it, and think to themselves "wow, this looks like crap and is giving me a headache" and put the glasses back down. total turnaround time of about a minute.
TIAEAE!
"I'll believe it when I see one."
The problem is not everyone can see 3D. Remember those magic eye books?
enough said, lets move on.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I was at the eGames expo on Friday and tried out the 3d display. My thought was "Oh, someone's still doing the LCD shutter glasses?". It was just the same old technology from years ago as far as I could see. The only new thing was that they'd made a clever driver which hooked into DirectX so existing games could be used in 3d.
Sorry guys, there was no 2d->3d conversion at all.
"The Vortex Home Entertainment System isn't just set to revolutionize 3D forever, they have revolutionized it."
Right. That makes total sense. The power of article submission moderation has prevailed!
as soon as they make it work with a console, I can have reason to dodge back and forth in Unreal Tournament 2004 when it's 4v1 and all I've got is a biosludge gun! It'd seriously be sweet if they added sensors that could detect you, which of course they have (you know, the black suits with white ping pong ball thingies) Ever since DDR and now the new tilt controllers, gamers are going to be moving around like crazy, especially with the development of 3D display technology. I would totally go for a sword fighting VR setup without a dumb helmet weighing me down.
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They had to come out with this just after I got my 60" HDTV. It's so EXPENSIVE staying current!
j/k
3D from single photos has been available for a little while, mostly working with geometric content lines to establish likely 3d patterns, then mapping the image onto that pattern. It's possible that they're using color and focus clues as well, though I don't know about that part.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuoljANz4EA
It's a pretty impressive technology. If you could do the analysis 60 times per second, you could have a convincing system for single-perspective 3D in most circumstances.
I wish I could remember the names of the companies, but I know there are "traditional" 3D screen display manufacturers working on upsampling using the additional depth cues of between-frame camera movements, which the above example did not take advantage of.
The ______ Agenda
As many other posters have pointed out, this is not real 3D. If it were, I would be able to move to the side and look *behind* the characters in the show. Such information simply isn't there, and can't be faked. They can play games like with the colored glasses, but that's about it.
Now, if they could convert some of these movies to make them GOOD, that would be something.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
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The Sega Master System sold 3D games with shutter glasses. The system actually worked really well except for objects close to the screen, as you'd get rather severe image separation if you were at all too close to the screen or if your television was bigger than they had expected.
The Virtual Boy also provided real stereoscopic 3D images, though the instruction manual mentions on 5 of 7 pages that it will probably make you nauseous. And they weren't kidding.
On the other hand, work from Carnegie Mellon earlier this year showed that it is possible to create reasonably usable 3d images from a single 2D snapshot, assuming your snapshot contains sufficiently geometric imagery for the system to make guesses about the form. With the additional depth cues of a moving camera, and limiting the 3D to the location where the image was shot, the final 3D image could come out rather well, albeit using large strokes rather than fine brushes.
And admittedly, that's where 3D shines. Small geometric details are lost to most 3D... that's why normal maps are sufficient for most geometric details rather than full modeling, because the parallax effects are far more minor than the large color changes. Likewise, on platforms like the Virtal Boy or shutter glasses on your PC, the difference between a left-eye image and a right-eye image is so fine that using flat cardboard cutouts for each eye would be sufficient, assuming the cutouts were of good enough internal representation to make you think you see the additional depth. Just like you don't need to model the depth in a character's eye when a nice textured normal map would suffice, you wouldn't need to render the image at that level of 3D detail for a stationary dual eye image. Just make shure the person-shaped blob aligns in front of the building-shaped blob at roughly where you would expect it to assuming that the ground was flat. That's all most people would be able to discern anyway.
The ______ Agenda
batter chances than Smell-O-Vision
Man the first foot commercial... and its all over!
"Don't Forget to Salt the Fries"
This is fake, and here is why: The same author wrote an article at iTWire. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7242/52/ Where he refernced: Vortex Home Entertainment System (as the system) and http://www.fountainconsulting.com/products.htm (as the company) The list of Exhibitors from the egamesexpo in australia: http://blog.egamesexpo.com.au/static.php?page=exhi bitors
Hmm... not listed as an Exhibitor
- Only 3D aspects of games are supported. Dialog boxes, text, HUDs all will not work properly unless they are drawn as part of the 3D model (which they usually never are)
They would be a novelty for a few minutes, but no self respecting gamer would use them.www.shortman.com.au - top shorted stocks on the ASX
Not sure if this is the same thing (sites out so can't check), but here is a video of something similar off of YouTube. Looks pretty authentic to me... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdY98GH7sQ
I'm fighting The War on Drugs!
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hmmm. i think it goes something like: smoke and mirrors.
i have to invest in some of them. everyone's buying it!
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
IP-TV will become more interactive now. And this session has great impact on tech of 2007.
the website was created in Feb '06
there is no physical address listed. only emails.
the website itself is a bit shady. lots of tech speak and lots of funny looking product mockups and some sample images.
nothing hardcore or concrete. no corporate records found.
caveat emptor
invest wisely
They're using their grammar skills there.
It should be noted that "3D" video is quite different than "Holographic" video that the title of the article may bring to mind in some readers. Literally all this company has created is a way to play games and video in two different color fields on a monitor- the same way that 3D movies have stereo red and blue color fields. This means that you still have to wear the 3D glasses when you play. I hate misleading headlines. Unfortunately, this won't let you play 3D Star Wars chess just yet... But you should still be advised to let the Wookie win.
I met Tony Welch during my senior year in high school (a year ago), when I was working part-time as a sales associate at Micro Center in suburban Dallas. He came to the store to pick up some high-end hardware, and when I asked what he was using it for he explained it to me. I even saw his 3D-projection LCD TV with my own eyes. It was in his apartment. I remember it being made by either BenQ or LG. I remember his three-legged cat as well and his wife, who was really nice. He explained how that the hardware of 3D TV's was already developed in other countries such as Japan, and that the U.S is lagging behind in this sort of technology. His company is responsible for integrating the software into the hardware innovation. I clearly remember the videos he ran from his computer to demonstrate, common commercials you frequently see on TV. He also gave a demonstration of Half-Life 2 on his 19" LCD monitor. He also took apart one of his workstations (I remember it being an Aspire X-QPack for the case) and showing me the NVidia Quadro FX5500 that was in it. I also recall the light gun he made out of a toy airsoft M4 rifle. Based on all the comments I have read here, I know you guys will be skeptical of what I just said. If it means anything at all I'll try to dig up the pics I took if I still have them. Tony Welch, a graduate from SMU with degrees in CS and EE. He is such a cool person in my eyes. Too bad I let him down (long story).
This sounds a lot like the old ELSA 3D Revelator glasses you could use with your games. An external driver would use the Z-buffer information in the Direct X code as its "3D extrapolation" You did, in fact, see 3D effect in Direct X games. It was a bit like looking at a stereo photograph. The driver / glasses combo added definite 3D depth to the view but it was like looking at cardboard cutouts in 3D space. The problem with the glasses was that the effective refresh rate was 1/2 your actual refresh rate since the LCD shutter glasses and had to give each eye its own image.
What nVidia's been doing for years then? http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d_stereo.html for more info, but I remember having a pair of these back in the GeForce 3 days. It would work with any 3D game, though how good it looked depended on the game, my guess is it had to do with how it handled the 3D data. The most impressive were (of course) the nVidia demos which could actually appear to jump out of the screen a bit.
Looks like these days they aren't doing their own glasses, but rather have drivers that will work with 3rd party stuff.
So sounds like this is not only nothing but hype, but it's not even original in any way.
499 of which are rule variations of solitare.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Would add a whole lot of fun to Goatse.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If I remmember correctly, if the brain is used to the item you are looking at, even looking with one eye you will ahve the eprception of depth, NOT because one eye is enough, but because the rbain "remember" it. Now try the same (only 1 eye) in an unfamiliar item or environment, that the brain cannot recognize.
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"It also works with any of the new 3D televisions from Sharp, Panasonic, LG, Samsung and others, where you don't need any glasses at all."
So says this article..
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7242/52/1/0/
Also the website you mention is actually from "a local Australian distributor", not the company making this thing which is apparently based in silicon valley.
Think of the PORN!
Sigs are overrated.
The idea of converting 2D to 3D is not at all impossible, it is just very processor intensive. Here is a a basic outline of how it can be done:
(1) Using Computer Vision Systems, a software program represents the scene it is seeing with 3D polyogon/spline models. This is not an easy task, but it is doable - a combination of heuristics, neural nets, basic image processing and 3D rendering out of a database of common models, combined with a GA / hill-climbing algorithm that compares rendered models against the 2D images - with enough horsepower, such a system (assuming it has a large model database and the ability to adapt and learn organic shapes) should be able to do a reasonable job of extracting 3D scenes and animating them to choreograph a 2D video against it's internal 3D model/animation plot.
(2) Use the 2D video as, essentially, a set of texture maps against the 3D model and render the movie.
(3) Profit?
We are probably 10-20 years away from such sophisticated compuer vision systems - it is really computer "imagination" systems that try to imagine a scene that matches what it sees. It will happen. But today? This thing? No way... It's pure bologne.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
It can't be a coincidence... These guys are totally playing off of the idea that porn will sell their product.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
They do it on CSI all the time!
Well, in the case of this particular story, people are right to claim bullshit IMHO. There is no computational way of generating the 3D info out of thin air, short of having a computer powerful enough to "understand" the image and extrapolate from secondary cues.
And for the general case, we might be able to make the bullshit meter more reliable by weighting the votes. Assign a reliability rating to each voter. Reliability of a voter increases the closer his rating (in previous opinions) is to the final rating. Occasional review by editors might be needed, especially in the early stages, in order to avoid trolls flooding the bullshit meter and skewing its perception of reality ;-)
And bullshit ratings may be made subject to metamod (putting voter's karma in jeopardy) to further help keep people reasonable.
Hardware: Everything needed for systems based on 3D Auto-Stereoscopic Displays are commonly available, off the shelf, with a minimal need for technical support. The controls and systems are based on present day PC platform. The media players can be locally or remotely scaled to suite any need to support for broadcast channels, narrowcast networks, and standalone media player applications.
Software: Virtually any of the popular 3D applications such as LightWave 3D, Maya, or 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4d, etc. can be used to create content for an ASD. Fountain has been able to appropriately set drivers and tune ASDs for over 300 industrial CG.CAD, DCC applications
Video Production: To produce true 3D Video it is necessary to use either a High Definition camera with an alpha based range finder or multiple cameras that are recording from separate perspectives. A multi-camera configuration can be either a dual/side-by-side camera setup or a series of multiple cameras aligned on a single mount in parallel or arc format. It is possible to produce 3D video using a standard 2D camera but this requires the addition of a depth map in post-production.
Glasses Free, Multi-Viewer Stereoscopic Display Systems: Reaching backwards to the first cave drawings, man has tried to produce images that reflect the reality of their experiences and have been limited to a 2 dimensional canvas. Photographers paved the way for film and today computer animators deliver 3D imagery that is virtually indistinguishable from reality. Current projection systems capable of producing stereo pairs for viewing require special glasses, and often deliver a less that satisfactory experience. Other approaches such as holograms, particle suspension, fog screen, dual projection, spinning cylinders, and a countless number of technologies have not been widely adopted by industry or the public. In contrast Spatial 3D Auto-Stereoscopic Displays (ASDs) create a true 3D experience and provide the worlds first opportunity for mass market appeal.
How Auto-Stereoscopic Displays (ASDs) Work: Decades ago, audio playback developed from a single channel, mono sound system to a dual-channel, stereo sound system and eventually to multi-channel, directional Dolby Surround - Stereo sound is produced by providing two different channels of sound, left and right, to the ears of the audience. Stereo images are similarly produced.
Like stereo sound, stereo video signal produce a left and right signal for the viewer, allowing for spatial separation. Audio formats have changed as Single channel sound progressed into Stereo sound (2 Channel) into Quadraphonic sound (4 Channel) and finally into Surround sound (6-8 Channel). Similarly video formats have changed as Single channel video progressed into Stereoscopic (2 Perspective) into Stereoscopic + Depth (2 Perspectives + 2 Depth Maps) into Multi-channel (4,6,8,9 or even 16 Perspective Views).
Multi-channel displays produce multiple perspectives of a scene in front of the viewing audience. The scene is presented by the display in such a way that makes it viewable in stereoscopic 3d, by multiple people, from multiple locations without the need for any 3D glasses.
Where 3D Content Comes From: True 3D content requires 3-axis in the graphical space (x-y for planar, z for depth) of real-time software that contains a total of. OpenGL and DirectX5+ applications are immediately available for integration with ASD technology. A second source of true 3D content is multiple-perspective rendered computer animation and live media that was captured with multiple live video cameras.
Multi-perspective media, in conjunction with real-time software, provides for the most true-to-life depth impression and special effects. Additionally, specially produced multi-perspective productions allow for an endless convergence of all forms of standard 2D and 3D live actio
axis discrepancy indicates hexagons beyond control anomaly
http://www.business-sites.philips.com/3dsolutions/ about/Index.html ...after checking the name of his logo, "philips3d.jpg."
and seeing a "GoDaddy" proxied registration.
Come on, guys. Even the most cursory inspection indicates "Fountain Consulting" is phoney-baloney.
...how there were a lot of text books written about virtual reality in the late 70s or so...I even remember the slogan on the back of one of them,
"Virtual Reality will not replace television. It will eat it alive."
Thing is...and this is what none of the academics at the time could have predicted...but "virtual reality," as it turned out, didn't happen.
Doom did.
Some buddies and i went to the Expo in question.. (Mostly to get some wii in action :) We saw the little tent these guys had set-up flogging a bunch of 3d related gear. I sat down and tried the 3d glases (same tech as iMaxx, with the semi-bulky glasses etc)
However, good fried who loves his flight sims actually spoke to the rep and tried the system this article refers to. Breifly.. his summary was something like "f&*king pile of sh!t". The head tracking system was "shakey" and the guy apparently could only demonstrate teh system on the windows desktop... No games, no 3d extrapolation of live TV, etc. So i call bullshit.
Cheers.
Oh dear me. From http://www.3dvisual.com.au/html/vortex.html
"The Vortex System Console
- Windows XP Platform- 7.1 20-bit Audio THX Cirtified
- Entertainment Interface Shell- Dolby Digital-EX & DTS-ES
- 3D Profile Settings- 24 Bit Crystalizer
- Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, 800 MHZ FSB - 109 db SNR Playback
- 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM- IR Remote Control
- Data Storage BFG Nvidia 6800 GTOC
- 2 7,200 RPM 300 GB drives- 256 MB GDDR3
- External 16 x Dual Layer DVD RAN Drive - 370 MHz Core Clock
- Ethernet Port- 1000 MHz Mem Clock
- 6 LISB 2.0 & 1 Firewire 400 Port555 million verticesIsec
- 32.0 GBIsec Mean Bandwidth"
This is meaningless nonsense. "20-bit Audio THX Cirtified". Dear god. Plus the system and glasses look awful.
I remember an arcade game back in about 1986 that had a genuine 3d display. No glasses were required. Some clever optics were employed. It was fascinating to watch but cost like 6 quarters to play a game so I never actually played but watched the rich kids play it, it was pretty cool.
I can't seem to find any info on the web about it (try narrowing a Google search on "3d" anything).
Beowolf 3D cluster of this ?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
A 2d scene in which the viewer is moving has 3D information available through parallax. By judging the difference in movement between objects it would be possible to get a rough idea what is in the foreground & what is in the background. Perhaps enough to do useful encoding?
Until it stops.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Umm.....ahhh.....err...Can you....no....errm....can you provide...ahh...ummm....a link....please?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
in the 60's , 70's and 80's , when it was slow news week, the common nerd/geek magazine would sport an article on flying cars; in 90's and 00's , it is 3D TV (or 3D computer screens).
Thanks for taking the time to 'google' me, feels tingly. Where as most people have fairly unique names that are searchable, mine is so popular that you need to go ten pages deep before you find anything about the real me. Check out thematthewcraig.com for a long listing of us out there. "Protect your identity on the Internet. Change your name to Matthew Craig today!"
Non broken site w/ the same article
http://ddd.com/index-2.html No glasses, looks 3D.
I've been seeing good auto-steroscopic 3D displays at SIGGRAPH for over a decade. They operation on different principles, some using vertical lense systems, others using multiple depth-of-focus planes, to name a few. They all seem to be fishing for some sort of market. Some try for high-end scientific or military visualization. Others aim toward the advertisment market.
Science Friday on NPR ran a segment on Bigfoot just a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, Bigfoot is plausible as a real creature. I'm not one of those "believers" either, and I was a bit upset when I looked at the title of the podcast, but Dr. Meldrum makes a compelling argument for the existence of Bigfoot.
Especially the ones who tipped their televisions forward to peep down the some woman's shirt!
Doesn't work worth a damn!
It's straightforward to do this for 3D games, because the system has real depth information. Just use shutter glasses and render alternate frames with the viewpoint shifted by one eye separation distance. That's easy, and looks good if the system can render upwards of 70 fps.
Nvidia already offers stereo 3d drivers which work great with my eMagin 3d visor. As you say the games already have Z depth information to render a realistic environment, which the software just renders from a slightly offset perspective. I believe it is 30Hz from each perspective for a combined 60Hz. Though, the HUD and crosshairs could use a little work in some games, since the game creators always give them depth. But if it is distracting then they can usually be disabled if you can't get them to line up properly with the 3d background.
The best stereo 3d effects are in games which have a lot of close at hand objects. Looking down the barrel of the gun in Call of Duty for instance is pretty darn cool. Or climbing up a ladder where the ladder looks like it has real depth. I'd say virtual objects out to about a virtual 10 feet or so, just like in the real world, are really compelling in 3d.
... The one eyed man is up a creek
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
3D Television and video have been not only available but cheap for some time now, and the adult industry has basically ignored it. A few adult 3D movies were made some decades ago, but they were just treated as a novelty and didn't catch on.
For stereoscopic video to catch on, there are two major requirements:
1) no glasses. Sharp already makes displays that meet this qualification, as does one other manufacturer (I think it's phillips but I'm not sure).
2) Cheap. No-glasses 3D displays are not yet anything like cheap. Too bad. Once it gets to the point of "I can have that 2D display, or I can have the same size 3D display for the same price" then it will start to spread.
True. 3D is not the most important thing. Having a very large field of view is the key to making you feel you are there. Sadly, most head mounted displays have a very poor FOV, even the very expensive ones.
Let me confirm this. Kfg is right, most of our depth perception does not come from stereoscopic vision. Parallax, color fading, bluring, occlusion and about 10-20 other systems all process visual information to provide depth perception. I can still throw a ball or a frisbee right to you, but I have a hard time playing pool and I can't thread a needle to save my life.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If there is anyone here in the states that would like a demonstration... and holds any credibility in the industry, then you are welcome to request a demo. Our demo facility is in San Francisco Bay and we have multiple units in circulation for closed door product proofing.
This is definately a "see it to believe it" product, we will not deny that. Once you play a game in quality, stereoscopic 3D (NOT Simulated as some articles have indicated) you will never play in 2D again. Same graphics quality as a high end gaming PC, but 3D and it's a system that actually works with PC titles off-the-shelf. For those of you that don't like the glasses, we have glasses-free 3D panels... if you have the money for it. Our 45" 3d-HDTV will be going for about $12,000US next year.
By the way, we use the same glasses that NASA used to repair the Hubble telescope; the same glasses that scientists have been using for years...so for all of you skeptics, no, the glasses can't hurt you and thank you for the press.
Do your homework. Almost every major display manufacturer today is presenting new era 3D television sets, we know because we've seen them all. Some of them are very impressive, others aren't. Drop us an email, and we'll answer any serious questions that any of you may have.
vortex@fountainconsulting.com