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No Glasses Needed For TI's New 3D Display

Posted by timothy on from the you-may-still-need-them-for-driving dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "At the MWC, TI showed off a tablet-sized device with a 3D display that doesn't require glasses, running on an existing TI OMAP3 chipset. The 3D demo showed images and video in 3D by using a standard 120-Hz LCD with a special overlay film from 3M that can direct images either towards your left or right eye. By flickering two images very quickly, running at 60 frames per second rather than the usual 30, the display transmits a different picture to each eye, creating a simulated 3D image. The 3D picture can be created using a handheld with dual 3-megapixel cameras and an 800-MHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset."

146 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Forgive me by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 1

    This might just blow my mind, I have to RTFA.

    1. Re:Forgive me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      For those that didn't RTFA, it uses that technique where you have to move your head from left to right at 60-Hz

    2. Re:Forgive me by MrKaos · · Score: 1

      This might just blow my mind, I have to RTFA.

      It looks great in the picture, it really captures the 3dy'ness.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    3. Re:Forgive me by Stele · · Score: 1

      Can we assume a free coffee travel mug is included then?

    4. Re:Forgive me by dimeglio · · Score: 1

      I don't get it. How does my left know if it's meant for my right eye and vice-versa? Hence the 60-Hz movement? Woah!

      I'm going to be really impressed when I'll be able to turn my 2D girlfriend to 3D!

      --
      Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
    5. Re:Forgive me by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      For those that didn't RTFA, it uses that technique where you have to move your head from left to right at 60-Hz

      My head has Tru-Motion 120Hz technology.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    6. Re:Forgive me by mhajicek · · Score: 1

      it really captures the 3dy'ness.

      How do you pronounce that?

    7. Re:Forgive me by Cleveland+Steamer · · Score: 1

      This reminds me of the time I was talking to a co-worker about how a particular piece of software didn't take advantage of the "SMP-ness" of our 4-processor system. Whoops!

    8. Re:Forgive me by longhairedgnome · · Score: 1

      three-DEE-ee-ness

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    9. Re:Forgive me by vikstar · · Score: 1

      I've seen tens of posts with devices and TVs promising true 3D without the glasses, and they're all bullshit vaporware. If you want true 3D you need glasses, period. There is no other way to effectively direct a different picture to each of your two retinas at the same time. If someone invents such a way you'll first hear about it in scientific publications, not on some bs device that no ones ever heard of. If a device claims to give true 3D without glasses, then it is either bs, or requires you to position your eyes in a very specific location at which point it would be better/easier to just use glasses anyway.

      I've long ago stopped getting excited by such bs marketing stunts. Until they actually post something like "Directional pixels deliver photons to your eyes through eye-tracking camera" rather than the current "3D without glasses!!!!1111eleventyone".

      --
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    10. Re:Forgive me by reboot246 · · Score: 3, Funny

      >>I'm going to be really impressed when I'll be able to turn my 2D girlfriend to 3D!

      If you keep doing that, you'll need glasses anyway! :)

    11. Re:Forgive me by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Actually, 'directional pixels' is exactly what they need, albeit not with eye tracking or whatever. The only way to get "real" 3D is for each pixel to transmit different colours in different directions. If you think about it, our current lenticular sheet 3D screens are a very primitive version of this, with only two directions (and hence only a very small viewable 'sweet spot' where it works). I predict that as tech improves, we'll have a new metric for 3D screens, describing the number of different colours a single pixel can be at the same time depending on viewing angle. Currently we're at 2. In a few decades, we'll be able to do, say, 128 of them, and things will look pretty good wherever you sit. Of course, we'll need 2060s technology to store the massive video files that will result from effectively storing 128 images per frame of the movie.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    12. Re:Forgive me by vikstar · · Score: 1

      You're overlooking that adding more viewing angles doesn't change fact that you're only adding more sweet spots, with the requirement that your eyes must not be located in between sweet spots. Otherwise given sweet spots A and B, your right eye could be looking at the left eye version of sweet spot A, and your left eye could be looking at the right eye version sweet spot B.

      So you still have to keep your head still and within the sweet spot otherwise you creep into an inverted 3D image. Only thing you're adding with extra directions is extra viewers, where each viewer is watching an effectively 2 direction monitor, and you're back where you started.

      You'd need to be able to do eye tracking with directional projection if you want to expand the sweet spot, or, just use a pair of cheep circular polarized glasses.

      --
      The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
    13. Re:Forgive me by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Actually no - you're adding more 'slices' of the 3D scene, different views each projected at the correct angle. As long as your eyes are each getting a different view and that view is close enough to what it 'should' be, you'll get a 3D view. Once the slices are much thinner than the distance between your eyes, the 3D experience becomes seamless.

      Due to our eyes being a fixed distance apart, this approach works best with small screens viewed from close up. If you consider slices an inch thick at 5 feet from the screen, with a 90 degree viewing angle, you'll need 90 slices for a seamless view. You'll even be able to actually move your head and look 'behind' objects on the screen.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    14. Re:Forgive me by vikstar · · Score: 1

      I see now, you're not trying to project only 2 images cloned into multiple slices, you're actually projecting the 3D scene itself where each slice has a unique image of the scene viewed from that angle. So instead of a camera with 2 focal points capturing what you should see with your left and right eye, you'd need a camera with a focal point per slice to capture what you would see at each eye position.

      --
      The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
    15. Re:Forgive me by vcgodinich · · Score: 1

      And it wouldn't be "that" much bigger of a file the relative similarities between each "slice" are fractional of the entire frame. Maybe 5-10x bigger, which isn't "that" much for moving from 2D to a "real" 3D

    16. Re:Forgive me by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Yes, exactly! Generating the image would be challenging unless it was computer generated (in which case adding virtual cameras is easy) - it would probably be done with a setup similar to what the screen itself uses. Doing it per column instead of per pixel is a bit of a hack but is sufficient for our binary optic system as long as viewers keep their heads upright. Doing it with a full variable-directional-emission image per pixel would effectively be making it a realtime hologram, rebuilding an approximation of the light wavefront as it hit the camera.

      Phased Array Optics are where all this stuff is ultimately headed.

      --
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    17. Re:Forgive me by LBt1st · · Score: 1

      Am I the only one that could care less about all this 3D hype?
      I'm still waiting for something with a good story to come along. A 3D turd is still a turd.

    18. Re:Forgive me by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 1

      It can enhance movies (Avatar), or serve as a stupid gimmick where shit flies out of the screen at you (every 3D ad I saw when going to see Avatar). If Hollywood can restrain themselves from going the gimmick route there is a lot of potential for the idea. Quite honestly I'm more interested to see what game developers do with 3D because I don't think most movies would benefit that much from it.

    19. Re:Forgive me by paganizer · · Score: 1

      If you want true 3D, you don't need glasses, you need holographic projection.

      I've seen working examples as simple as a aquarium filled with very fine glycerin mist with (if memory serves, this was 5-6 years ago) 6 sets of RGB lasers lighting up the droplets at the point where 2 or more similar frequency lasers intersect; the demo I saw had a pretty terrible "framerate", something like 10fps. But that should be an easily solvable hardware problem with enough money thrown at it; you could, I would think, even do away with the enclosure (and possible even the lasers) by doing something with an electromagnetic field and the proper teeny tiny particles.

      I think even the aforementioned primitive demo could have gotten a usable frame-rate with the proper software controlling things.

      as to "The 3D picture can be created using a handheld with dual 3-megapixel cameras and an 800-MHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset", I imagine that's just an attempt to hype a ancillary product; I'm betting you could do just as well with 2 camera phones duct taped together.

      --
      Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
    20. Re:Forgive me by JimFive · · Score: 1

      I mostly agree with you. However, 2-D with glasses isn't 3-D either. It's 2-D with glasses.

      A holographic projection box that truly displays a 3-d environment (e.g. you can walk around it to see the back of the scene) would be 3D. Anything less is 2-D with gimmicks to fool the brain.
      --
      JimFive

      --
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    21. Re:Forgive me by Lem0nHead · · Score: 1

      You didn't understand the technology article correctly. You actually have to blink your eyes at 30 Hz each.

    22. Re:Forgive me by vikstar · · Score: 1

      You're eyes see 2D only anyway. You get two images, one on each retina, which your brain uses to interpret the scene as 3D. The utility of 3D glasses is that you can watch the scene from the same point of view irrespective of your location relative to the monitor/tv or cinema screen.

      --
      The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  2. Viewing angle?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Does this technology have a reasonable viewing angle?

    1. Re:Viewing angle?? by gd2shoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It can't - unless that "film" is capable of more than 2 angles and a webcam is tracking the position of your head. You'd have to position your head such that the cutoff point between images is between your eyes. (There's some indication in the article that it might just be crummy 3D which opens up possibilities for slightly wider viewing angles.)

      Anybody with greater insight (or "in the know")?

      --
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    2. Re:Viewing angle?? by snowraver1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Two angles only, but maybe if you got cuddly and placed your head on someone else's you might have some luck. There is a diagram of the film here It seems to suggest that with larger screens, the edges of the screen will fade out due to light not reflecting cleanly off the ridges of the film. Maybe this can be fixed by using variable sized ridges, but that would require a special LCD with variable sized pixels, which introduces new problems, and you still only have one viewing spot.

      The operation works as follows. Taken from here: "Sumitomo 3M utilized the directionality so that the light from the left LED light source comes to the right eye and the light from the right LED light source comes to the left eye. And the company enabled to view 3D images with the naked eye by synchronizing the lighting of the left LED light source and the display of the image seen by the right eye (and the lighting of the right LED light source and the display of the image seen by the left eye).

      Furthermore, it is possible to show 2D images by using the right and left LED light sources at the same time and displaying the same image for both the right and left eyes. Therefore, it is easy to switch between 2D and 3D images.

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    3. Re:Viewing angle?? by gd2shoe · · Score: 1

      The PCMAG article does mention 3M, but seems to suggest a reduction in refresh rate (by half). It implies (but does not clearly state) that the projected images would alternate eyes. There would be no need for this if it were a simple trick of refraction.

      I suspect this is a different film. Otherwise, these two articles seem to be at odds with each other.

      --
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  3. Viewing Distance?? by Drethon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not only viewing angle but how is the viewing distance? Does it work at any distance or just a narrow range?

  4. No glasses? by Mashdar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Great, now if only they could find a way to require no glasses on the person watching it.

  5. Effective viewing angle? by jeffmeden · · Score: 1

    The usable viewing angle has to be something like 5 degrees +/- unless it somehow can target your eyes with a camera and tune the overlay to compensate... Either way it is limited to one user at a time, which is probably acceptable for most tablets.

    Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

    1. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

      You can't see 3D in the real world, what makes you think you'll see 3D in an image? That's as unrealistic as expecting technology that enabled my dad to be able to tell red from green.

      Your only recourse is surgery, and in many cases not even that will help.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    2. Re:Effective viewing angle? by jeffmeden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Think big. Sooner or later, we will have neural implants that can feed visual information directly into the brain. All I am saying, is that it would be cool if it came along *sooner*.

    3. Re:Effective viewing angle? by jeffmeden · · Score: 1

      And another thing. When are they going to finally perfect the first two dimensions? For those of us with Amblyopia that would be good enough. All they need is a display with a gamut equal to or better than typical vision, along with a resolution beyond the Nyquist limit of the eye at the practical viewing distance.

      Oh, and I guess a camera that is all of those things too. Not too much to ask, all things considered.

      Seriously, why is everyone obsessed with the third dimension? We have barely scratched the surface of the first two!

    4. Re:Effective viewing angle? by RESPAWN · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

      You're 5% of the population. Where's the profit in catering to you?

      --

      If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

    5. Re:Effective viewing angle? by vlm · · Score: 1

      All they need is a display with a gamut equal to or better than typical vision, along with a resolution beyond the Nyquist limit of the eye at the practical viewing distance.

      Already done, more or less.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_density

      Theres still some issues with dynamic range, which in a way is good. You know how cruddy teen romantic comedies always have the audio mixed with the "music" 30 dB louder than the talking? I dread the day extreme dynamic range is available to our video "artistes".

      Why is pop music compressed to 1 dB of dynamic range, but pop movies have the music 30 dB louder than the talking? I hate both.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    6. Re:Effective viewing angle? by noidentity · · Score: 1

      Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

      You can't see 3D in the real world, what makes you think you'll see 3D in an image?

      Now, how about something for the 1% of us with blindness? Will it allow us to see (and in 3D, no less)?

    7. Re:Effective viewing angle? by noidentity · · Score: 1

      Seriously, why is everyone obsessed with the third dimension? We have barely scratched the surface of the first two!

      Scratching the surface requires a third dimension, duh!

    8. Re:Effective viewing angle? by ivan256 · · Score: 1

      Who's going to be the early adopter of that? You want to be the person stuck with the low-res neural implant when the new ones come out in 6-months?

    9. Re:Effective viewing angle? by ianezz · · Score: 1

      You're 5% of the population. Where's the profit in catering to you?

      The inhabitants of EU are less than the 5% of the population. Where's the profit? Even that 1% of that 5% having the means and the desire to buy a product is still a respectable number.

    10. Re:Effective viewing angle? by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Isn't Braille already 3d? Isn't that enough?

      --
      Infuriate left and right
    11. Re:Effective viewing angle? by adolf · · Score: 1

      Easy. You just price it high enough to be profitable, and hope the market (however small) will bear it.

      --
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    12. Re:Effective viewing angle? by RESPAWN · · Score: 1

      Easy. You just price it high enough to be profitable, and hope the market (however small) will bear it.

      Point taken.

      --

      If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

    13. Re:Effective viewing angle? by RESPAWN · · Score: 1

      The inhabitants of EU are less than the 5% of the population. Where's the profit? Even that 1% of that 5% having the means and the desire to buy a product is still a respectable number.

      That's a good point, but maybe not an apt comparison. And perhaps in the interests in brevity, I didn't fully elucidate my point. We're talking about an emerging technology requiring significant R&D. 5% of the population may be targeted later, but not initially. That 5% of the population isn't going to be where you will recoup your investment initially. Maybe I should have appended the words "right now" to my initial statement, but that is neither here nor there.

      --

      If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

    14. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Rathum · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Almost every movie I've watched in the last few years has had a terrible range. Why must all dialogue be whispered nowadays?

      whisperwhisperwhispeBOOMEXPLOSIONwhisperwhisperOPEwhisperRAMUSIwhisperC

      Watching movies with any sort of sound going in the room with me gives me the choice between ramping up the volume and making my ears bleed, missing half the dialogue, or having to constantly adjust the volume.

    15. Re:Effective viewing angle? by longhairedgnome · · Score: 1

      Subtitles dude

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    16. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Rathum · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, I'm illiterate.

    17. Re:Effective viewing angle? by tool462 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Apple.

    18. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Late+Adopter · · Score: 1

      Plenty, but I know what you meant, 95% is even better! Sort of how Honda and Ferrari are both profitable, but I'd much rather own Honda.

    19. Re:Effective viewing angle? by quenda · · Score: 1

      Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

      Actually, you can still gain benefit from these 3D displays, much more easily than with systems using glasses.
      You move your one good eye left and right between the two images, thus seeing Motion parallax.
      I saw a demo with a camera at a sports game, where they bob the camera up and down. This dramatically improved the depth perception.

      Of course, especially with a moving picture, you probably have a ton of depth cues already, just like the rest of us.
      I don't see this latest 3D fad lasting any longer than the one on the 50s did.
      Stereoscopic still photos are much more useful, as photos lack motion cues. Yet even they had only brief popularity,
      and are now seen as merely a children's toy.

      I predict that in 10 years, the only new 3D movies will be in the Children's section.

    20. Re:Effective viewing angle? by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Now, how about something for the 5% of us with Amblyopia?

      Here ya go... I call it a 'monocle'.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    21. Re:Effective viewing angle? by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Watching movies with any sort of sound going in the room with me gives me the choice between ramping up the volume and making my ears bleed, missing half the dialogue, or having to constantly adjust the volume.

      I have exactly the same problem. I used to live in a tiny apartment, and I have a nice surround sound system. Then suddenly every movie that came out had moments of incredibly quiet ambience and pins dropping and whatnot (which I couldn't hear over the road noise from outside anyway) switching suddenly to thunderous explosions and shit. It's great if you're in a cinema but if you just want to watch something at home over some level of background noise without the loud bits demolishing your building (and without constantly fiddling with the volume) it's frakkin horrible.

      Honestly I think a lot of it is to do with shiny digital systems that play the movie back exactly as it's recorded. Try watching the same movie on a 68cm CRT tv from 2002 and you'll find that the built-in speakers squash the dynamic range down to something watchable outside a theater.

      --
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    22. Re:Effective viewing angle? by slashtivus · · Score: 1

      Probably the only thing that would work for you would be a form of "Wiggle Stereoscopy"

      http://www.isnichwahr.de/r16975-beeindruckende-stereo-bilder.html/ Is an example.
      Probably not too helpful, but really the only thing I am aware of that might work.

    23. Re:Effective viewing angle? by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      I always figured the problem was that by the time you work your way through the business until you've got the veto power of being the head sound engineer, your hearing has degraded to the point that you really don't know what you're doing. Through a combination of age and too many hollywood cocktail parties, you can't hear the music OR the dialogue very well, but can feel the vibrations (like a snake) if you push the music up high enough.

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    24. Re:Effective viewing angle? by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 1

      You're 5% of the population.

      Come on people! These fat jokes have to stop!

      --
      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
    25. Re:Effective viewing angle? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      That's called having a decent dynamic range.

      In the real world the loudness difference between explosions and whispers can be way greater.

      What you might want is audio dynamic range compression or similar (limiters).

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

      You can find it in use in most music studios nowadays.

      --
    26. Re:Effective viewing angle? by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Yes, but this isn't the real world, it's a movie on my TV. It's my entertainment and it should fit itself around what I want - the quiet bits should be clearly audible even if a car's going past my house, and the loud bits should be quiet enough that my neighbours don't call the cops again.

      Dynamic range compression is exactly what I want, but I want it to be something I can turn on and off. If I'm watching a movie with my wife on a quiet night, I'll want it off so we can get the full cinematic experience. If I have mates over for the afternoon and we're watching Iron Man again then I'll want it on. It would be simple enough to make it a built-in function on any digital home theatre sound system.

      --
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    27. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Thomas+Miconi · · Score: 1

      The inhabitants of EU are less than the 5% of the population.

      But much more than 5% of the global spending power.

    28. Re:Effective viewing angle? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Look for DRC in your TV or other home theatre equipment.

      e.g.:
      http://www.retrevo.com/r/23138ag206/64/DYNAMIC+RANGE+COMPRESSION+(DRC)/

      http://www.retrevo.com/r/23303ci172/13/Setting+DRC+(Dynamic+Range+Compression)/

      --
    29. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Eudial · · Score: 1

      How did you come to that value?

      World population ~ 6.8 billion
      EU population ~ 500 million

      So the EU is roughly 7% of the world population. The US, on the other hand, is less than 5%.

      --
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    30. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      along with a resolution beyond the Nyquist limit of the eye

      The Nyquist limit doesn't apply to analog data, and all human senses are analog.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    31. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      In some situations, I like the increased dynamic range; a shotgun is a whole lot louder than a human voice, so when a shotgun goes off in a movie and it's the same volume as speech, it's not realistic. Other times (late at night when someone is trying to sleep) it gets in the way. I'd like a button on my TV remote that removes the dynamics so that all sound was the same volume when I didn't want the dynamics, or with full dynamics when wanted.

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    32. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      Amblyopic individuals can see in 3d

      No, they can't. A two dimentional painting can look three dimentional with use of various forms of perspective, but it isn't 3D. Close one eye and a hologram is no better than a 2D photo.

      The lens of your eyes will still send conflicting depth information

      Not if you're over 40; the eye's lens becomes hard in middle age and won't focus. That's why geezers need reading glasses or bifocals, and focus is one clue to distance.

      I don't know how far along they've come representing things like chromatic differences in light scatter with depth.

      That form of perspective was perfected in ancient Rome, and learned by the artists in the Renaissance. In fact, there are several forms of perspective, all which have been understood since ancient times.

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    33. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      Through a combination of age and too many hollywood cocktail parties, you can't hear the music OR the dialogue very well, but can feel the vibrations (like a snake) if you push the music up high enough.

      They've found that today's geezers have better hearing than yesterday's geezers, and they credit hearing protection in the factories and better medical care for it. A sixty year old sound engineer today will have better hearing than one who was sixty when he was making movies in 1930.

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    34. Re:Effective viewing angle? by jeffmeden · · Score: 1

      It's not about the signal itself per se, it's about the discrete resolution of a cross sample of the signal gathering area. Human senses are interpreted in analog, but eyes have discrete photoreceptor sites for vision (rods and cones); meaning there is a fixed limit at which the retina can derive detail out of the light being fed to it. Go over the limit, and you start to see weird artifacts like red-green-blue concentrations appearing to be white.

    35. Re:Effective viewing angle? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      It's not about the signal itself per se, it's about the discrete resolution of a cross sample of the signal gathering area.

      In a nutshell, it says that you cannot reproduce a sound that is more than half of the sampling rate; a CD's Nyquist limit is 22kHz. Your rods and cones have no sampling rates; it's continuous, with the signal strength from each rod or cone analog. Again, Nyquist does not apply. Nyquist only applies to discrete samples and does not apply to your eyes, ears, or LPs; eyes, ears, and analog media have continuous sampling.

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    36. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Spatial · · Score: 1

      That's a product of having high dynamic range, not bad range. It's a good thing.

      You may be able to reduce the dynamic range using a compressor. Provided you're willing to re-encode the movie and all that jazz.

    37. Re:Effective viewing angle? by Spatial · · Score: 1

      That's quite possible actually, and not terribly difficult to implement either. Good idea.

    38. Re:Effective viewing angle? by logixoul · · Score: 1

      Dynamic range compression is exactly what I want, but I want it to be something I can turn on and off.

      You're in luck, this can be done in software. Install the K-Lite Codec Pack Standard. Open your movie in Media Player Classic. Go to "View->Options->External Filters", click Add Filter and add a "Compressor". Rightclick the blue "FFa" systray icon, click "FFDShow audio decoder", enable "Volume" on the left, and in those volume settings enable "Normalize". Voila, quiet parts are louder and loud parts are quieter.

    39. Re:Effective viewing angle? by logixoul · · Score: 1

      It can be done on the fly.
      http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1553928&cid=31208856

    40. Re:Effective viewing angle? by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Yummy. Thankyou, will do this when we get a media box set up. :)

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    41. Re:Effective viewing angle? by ianezz · · Score: 1

      But much more than 5% of the global spending power.

      100 times more?

  6. Might be interested in it without glasses by Kitkoan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since I already wear glasses, I don't really care about those 3D viewers since its a pain to have to remove my glasses, put on contacts just to turn around and put on another pair of glasses. Removing the middleman here would be a step in the right direction since I'm not alone with having to already wear glasses and not everyone can/has contacts.

    --
    Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    1. Re:Might be interested in it without glasses by TexVex · · Score: 1

      I have horrible vision requiring heavy thick corrective lenses, but I'm able to wear the circularly polarized glasses for 3D movies over my corrective glasses with no issues.

      --
      Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
    2. Re:Might be interested in it without glasses by ricotest · · Score: 1

      Since so many of us geeks wear glasses, it's no surprise that most 3D glasses technologies are designed to comfortably slot over existing specs. It's not really a big deal in practice.

    3. Re:Might be interested in it without glasses by insufflate10mg · · Score: 1

      However, you are alone with having to bitch about something you apparently have never experienced, because nowadays the majority of glasses for 3D systems are either designed to fit comfortably over your existing spectacles and/or clip on to them.

    4. Re:Might be interested in it without glasses by strack · · Score: 1

      some sort of polarised flip-down clipon covers for our normal glasses would be ideal for 3d movies, and some sort of flip-down shutter lcds for 3d lcd displays would be good as well,

    5. Re:Might be interested in it without glasses by xiang+shui · · Score: 1

      I can haz contax?

  7. hand-held porn device by vacarul · · Score: 1

    very nice, for a hand-held device; not very practical for living-room. You have to sit directly in front of it to see in 3D.

  8. Sounds good.... by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    But on a device that small, not so great. It sounds like the overlay TFA mentions is like the static 3-D images that have been around forever. If so, it wouldn't work on a large screen across the room, or if you weren't right in front of it.

    As to "no glasses needed", most folks over 40 are going to need glasses to see anything that small whether 3D or 2D.

    I want the polaroid technology, the glasses are light and cheap, require no batteries or electronics, with realistic colors. It would be hard to do with a plasma or LCD, but I think it could be done.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
    1. Re:Sounds good.... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      "I want the polaroid technology, the glasses are light and cheap, require no batteries or electronics, with realistic colors. It would be hard to do with a plasma or LCD, but I think it could be done."

      Go ahead and build yourself one. Just get a couple of data projectors, a silver screen and some filters: http://www.geowall.org/.

      It's not hard to do with an LCD or plasma display either. Effectively an LCD display is already half of a polarized 3D display. TV manufacturers are already trying to convince us we all need one. The question is, does anybody?

  9. It's a handheld by tepples · · Score: 1

    It's a handheld device, not a TV-sized device. You don't need nearly as a big of a viewing angle for a handheld.

  10. Lenticular or parallax? by autostereoscopic · · Score: 1

    Which technology is it? The only two "no-glasses" technologies so far are lenticular and parallax.

    1. Re:Lenticular or parallax? by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      From the link pasted in another post, it looks like inverse lenticular. Instead of bumps on the front of the display, it's peaks on a layer inside the panel. It still produces the same kind of refraction layer in the same shape as lenticular, but it's backwards. Lay a flat sheet over the top of a lenticular lens sheet and fill in all the gaps between them and you have what they're using.

      But I still don't understand how they can claim to be doing it by sacrificing temporal resolution rather than spatial resolution. The captions on the picture were in Japanese.

  11. TI-9000+ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Their next graphing calculator is going to make some awesome graphs!

  12. So nice of them... by Snarf+You · · Score: 1

    I'm so glad they included a 2D picture of the 3D-ness in action.

    The greasy fingerprints were a nice touch too.

    1. Re:So nice of them... by autostereoscopic · · Score: 1

      the least they could have done was a "wiggle" pic :)

    2. Re:So nice of them... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Is it just me, or does the stuff on the screen look more 3D than the physical device itself? I think they need a bit better lighting in their photos. If you've got enough other depth cues, your brain will make the image 3D without needing stereoscopy. If you haven't, adding stereoscopy just gives me a headache.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  13. A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by Animaether · · Score: 5, Informative

    The viewing angle isn't 5 degrees, though.. it's a good bit larger than that.

    The major problem is that the overlay (lenticular lenses) don't direct individual images -to your eyes- - such systems would be vastly more expensive and have whole other issues - they simply direct underlying pixels into different directions. If your left eye happens to be in the area where the left image is being directed, and your right eye in the area where the right image is being directed.. congratulations!
    Now move your head an inch to the left/right. Now your right eye is seeing the left image and your left eye is seeing the right image. ouch.
    Try half an inch.. each eye gets a portion of both images. ungh.
    In other words.. there's sweet spots to sit in, and if you don't sit in one of those sweet spots, you're going to get conflicting sensory input.

    So 1 user at a time isn't strictly true - if the person next to you sits in one of the other sweet spots, they'll be fine as well.

    Half your resolution lost, however (they have to either alternate rows or columns.. 1920x1080 becoming 1920x540 or 960x1080). The human visual system can fill in the blanks from the other eye's perception, but that's just literally plugging holes.

    There's far more disadvantages, including 2D quality (another display handles that partially by activating a liquid much like an LCD liquid in order to somewhat destroy the lenticular effect), but basically... Lenticular 3D is still crap.

    Those who don't want to 'look ridiculous with one of those stupid glasses' on, though, should get Lenticular systems; it's their best bet for viewing stereographic 3D without glasses *right now* until we can perfect the whole realtime holographic plate thing and get some decent color reproduction off of those as well... -and- have it be affordable.
    ( barring any even more zany systems such as helical 3D displays which are more intended for volumetric displays than stereographic 3D etc. etc. )

  14. Multiple viewers? by BoppreH · · Score: 1

    You seem to have to be exactly in line with the device, so I guess there can be only one watching it at a time? (acrobatics doesn't count)

    1. Re:Multiple viewers? by Gandhi+of+War · · Score: 1

      ...But do you normally sit around your hand-held device with a group of friends?
      Maybe to watch a short clip, but not a movie. Which is practically the only media with 3D viewing.

  15. Been there..done that. by EasyTarget · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There were 5 reasonably large (22''?) screens using this tech, or similar, in the metro station in Amsterdam CS over the holiday period. Just showing adverts, but rather impressive despite that.
    There were definite 'sweet spots' for the 3d effect, and the whole image jumped if you changed the viewing angle by more than a few degrees; but it cheered me up because I saw the future of the flat-panel monitor being demo'd ;-), just add compiz.

    --
    "Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
    1. Re:Been there..done that. by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      Which is the problem. Without glasses, there will always necessarily be a "sweet spot." Even if you could build advanced features like retina tracking, they would only work for a single individual at a time, unless you could speed up the framerate to a multiple of the number of viewers. The only way for multiple people to watch a single display in 3D is using glasses.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    2. Re:Been there..done that. by EasyTarget · · Score: 1

      There were multiple sweet spots, separated by maybe two to four degrees of viewing angle, people standing side-by-side could all get the 3d effect. And even outside of the sweet spots you still got a reasonable level of effect. Maybe you need to actually see this in operation to appreciate how well it worked.

      And anyway, the overwhelming majority of all monitor use is solo (at least for normal people and environments); there are very few people who will find this such a big problem that they refuse the technology.

      Believe me, it -is- coming.

      --
      "Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
  16. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Re:No glasses? Use contact lenses or .... by SargentDU · · Score: 1

    Use contact lenses or have eye surgery to correct your vision. An easy fix!

  19. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by ricotest · · Score: 1

    The nVidia 3D vision's only real weakness is that it darkens the screen because of the LCD shutters. Otherwise, it's exactly the same picture quality at native resolution, and I've found it to be fully worth the money.

  20. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by gd2shoe · · Score: 1

    I doubt that's the solution their using (unless you know for sure). The problem is, the distance between the eyes varies by person. It's impossible to calibrate when manufactured to work for everyone.

    Besides, the article says that they half the refresh rate here, not the resolution. Sounds different, but might be related.

    --
    I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
  21. Re:brightness by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your eye responds to images logarithmically, so if you get a bright flash then a dead time, you still see that bright flash for a short period. (Not meaning burn-in.)

    One of the techniques for overdriving an LED is to pulse it. A regular LED will die very quickly if you throw 300 mA through it, but if you drive it with a pulse train where the average doesn't exceed the max current for the device, it can sustain a brightness almost equal to the 300 mA level.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  22. What no pirate comments? by carl0ski · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'll say it. This is what the movie industry needs to deal with those pesky pirates. What wooden legged, one eyed pirate is going to steal a 3d film that requires two good eyes :)

    1. Re:What no pirate comments? by Thaelon · · Score: 1

      Ones that also have 120hz displays with special film from 3M.

      Coming soon to an Amazon/Newegg/Tigerdirect/Dell/Apple near you.

      Cause you bet your ass display manufacturers will be jumping all over this once it's mature, and 3M will happily take currency in exchange for this film.

      --

      Question everything

    2. Re:What no pirate comments? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      I'll let you in on a secret. Most pirates only wear an eye patch for show. When they're at home with their friends, they'll take the eye patch off.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    3. Re:What no pirate comments? by game+kid · · Score: 1

      That's such a ninja tactic.

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  23. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by noidentity · · Score: 1

    Half your resolution lost, however. The human visual system can fill in the blanks from the other eye's perception, but that's just literally plugging holes.

    Wow, I didn't know I could literally plug holes just by partially blocking one eye's vision. I'll have to remember that next time I have some hold plugging to do; could save a lot of time.

  24. Re:brightness by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

    It is my personal experience that "flicker" glasses do, in fact, result in less brightness when viewing a display. I don't doubt what you are saying bout LED brightness, but I'm also not sure that it applies here.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  25. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by insufflate10mg · · Score: 1

    ...and to make up for losing half of your framerate, they double the original framerate to 60hz.

  26. Could be the 3M film used with a switching LED by doug20r · · Score: 1

    light source as reported here: http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/3m-announces-autostereoscopic-3d-gaming-for-mobiles-641343 Perhaps the 3M Scotch Optical Lighting Film combined with a lenticular film? http://www.3m.com/product/information/Optical-Lighting-Film.html Unless the LED light source direction can be changed then the geometry is fixed and very sensitive to the viewing position and viewing distance.

  27. Doomed by Raconteur · · Score: 1

    No pun intended, but any shutter-style technique will fail. Too many people suffer ill effects -- headache, nausea, dizziness, etc. The same can happen with polarization techniques but to a far lesser degree.

  28. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

    You’re mixing up terms there.

    stereographic 3D

    This would mean: two volumes (you know a volume has 3 dimensions).
    “3D display” is correct for the helical and some holographic systems.

    Everything else is still just a 2D plane acting as a screen, in 3D space (which is why you can’t focus on blurry areas, or rotate them at will, while watching). So it’s still essentially 2D. Just stereo instead of mono. (It’s an unfortunate thing, that “stereo” is mostly reserved for audio.)

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  29. Re:3D still requires stereoscopic vision by vlm · · Score: 1

    Anything that is designed for 3D looks like crap if you don't view it using both eyes.

    Anything that is designed for 3D is just crap with a gimmick, just like high def.

    Same old boring formulaic garbage, now in HiDef and 3D! Same tired old cliche sitcom jokes, now in 5.1 surround!

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  30. Re:brightness by noidentity · · Score: 1

    Besides, newer LCDs are using pulsed LEDs to eliminate sample-and-hold blur (as distinct from blur due to the LCD's slow response). You want flicker like CRTs used to do, at least if you want people like me to replace our CRT TVs with LCDs.

  31. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by Thagg · · Score: 1

    It's not a typical lenticular display, exactly.

    The real innovation here is the 3M material, not the TI chips driving the display. The material requires that the image be illuminated alternately fro the right and left edges of the screen, the material deflects that light into the right and left eyes respectively. Unlike lenticular displays, there is only one viewing direction that works, but it won't diminish the spatial resolution of the display (only the temporal one.) It will work great for something like a game-boy or an iPhone. Even something as small as an iPad, though, might have problems because the difference in eye-to-screen angle from one side of the display to the other.

    This slide tells you everything you need to know about the 3M film.

    --
    I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
  32. Re:brightness by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 1

    I have a Plasma TV because the PQ on LCD, even the 240Hz LCD TVs, is fucking shitty.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  33. Been done...like years ago by Itninja · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to play a PC game called Magic Carpet. It had a mode where all the game graphics were rendered in a 'magic eye' type mode. Once you got your eyes tweaked just right, it was all 3D and no glasses were required. Of course, it also looked like a box of crayons exploded.....

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    1. Re:Been done...like years ago by idji · · Score: 1

      Magic Carpet had 2 stereo modes. the red&blue with glasses AND Autostereogram mode, where you have to cross your eyes and look into a pixel explosion until the image slowly resolves.

  34. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1

    Until NVIDIA randomly stops supporting the drivers. I remember a while back when their stereo drivers and GPU drivers were separate downloads and had to be kept in sync, and they just stopped releasing stereo drivers when newer GPU drivers came out. Is this still the case?

  35. content delivery would be better tech by Dan667 · · Score: 1

    I cannot see how 3D will be any more than a gimmick like it was in the 70s without some huge leap in technology, which has not occurred. There is a huge change in the way content is being delivered to people's homes with internet only programming and it would seem there would be a whole lot more opportunities in trying to make it easier for people to view it on their TV along with regular cable and broadcast programming.

  36. Re:3D still requires stereoscopic vision by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    Go back to sleep, Grandpa.

  37. Re:brightness by noidentity · · Score: 1

    The 240 Hz uses some kind motion interpolation crap. What the need is an LCD that flashes the backlight for a very short time each 1/60 second, roughly equivalent to how a TV does. It's not the frame rate, it's the length of the flash. At some point, only older folks will even know what a good CRT looks like, and how little motion blur it has. You'll have to pry my CRT TV from my cold, dead hands. And that's not even getting into the crappy image you get from an analog video source due to digital upscaling, ugh.

  38. Re:brightness by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 1

    Hey, my old TV is one of the Sony 32" WEGA models. I spent a looong time trying to find an HD model that didn't suck.

    Take a look at Panasonic's plasma line. It's actually watchable. Of course, the signal providers compress it to the point where there's blur everywhere, but with a good feed it's a good TV.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  39. Re:brightness by russotto · · Score: 1

    At some point, only older folks will even know what a good CRT looks like, and how little motion blur it has.

    You're confusing motion blur (which is in the source material, a function of the shutter speed and the motion of the subject with respect to the camera) with telecine/interlace artifacts. A 120Hz CRT given a progressive image (either 30fps or 24fps "progressive telecine") can reproduce the original material with no telecine artifacts and no judder (which exists on CRTs as well). Some of them can do good job doing inverse telecine as well, but there are limitations there.

  40. Re:3D still requires stereoscopic vision by CorporateSuit · · Score: 1

    Just as color TV shows no interest in catering to the colorblind, you must accept that there will be popular technologies that do not cater to you.

    --
    I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
  41. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by ricotest · · Score: 1

    They are separate downloads, but I don't think they have to be kept in sync. In any case, new 3D drivers continue to be released to patch games like Left 4 Dead 2.

    I think nVidia are going to push this, it sells their overpriced shutter glasses and 120hz TVs from their partners, and it even encourages people to upgrade their GPU (3D naturally requires double the framerate). They've put a lot of effort into backwards compatibility and working with developers to get native 3D support in newer games.

  42. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1
    I just had a quick look at the NVIDIA website and it does say they need to be kept in sync:

    Note: You can only install this driver if you have the installed the latest GeForce Graphics drivers v196.21.

    I guess they started focusing on releasing new drivers since the 3D craze started up again. It also only seems to be supported on 8 series and above graphics cards, whereas they had support for the LCD shutter glasses (including brands other than NVIDIA) with older video cards a while ago.

    See this thread as an example of NVIDIA dropping support for the older hardware.

  43. Re:brightness by noidentity · · Score: 1

    Hey, my old TV is one of the Sony 32" WEGA models. I spent a looong time trying to find an HD model that didn't suck.

    Funny you mention that. Someone was offering one of those for free recently. I was willing to put up with it being 150 lbs, but then I read that analog inputs get upscaled digitally, so they look like crap, so I decided against it. I don't have anything with digital output, and I also play game consoles which need to not look like crap.

    What Sony models around 30" support progressive, but aren't digital? I've alreaedy got a 27" that supports component (but not progressive), also gotten for free. People are getting rid of them like crazy, and I'm partial to Sony for some reason.

  44. Re:brightness by noidentity · · Score: 1

    I'm talking about blur due to motion. It's not due to interlace or the film-to-digital process. I'm saying that the focus on LCD response time is only half the problem; the other half is the sample-and-hold the backlight being on constantly causes. The blur this creates only exists if your eyes are moving to follow a moving object on screen. If you kept your gaze on a fixed point while the object moved, the sample-and-hold blur wouldn't occur.

  45. Re:No glasses? Use contact lenses or .... by vikstar · · Score: 1

    Dude, good idea, I see a market developing for circular polarized contact lenses... I'll even be their first customer (after the rabbit trials of course).

    --
    The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  46. auto-stereo CRTs at SIGGRAPH by peter303 · · Score: 1

    They use the tiny vertical lens prisms to deliver four different angle-views depending where your eyes are. This very similar to the 3-D or blinking image plastic pictures you get in novelty shop or crackerjack box. The lateral resolution is reduced by the number of lens angles in the system (typically four). If you move you head a lot you lose the effect temporarily. And it doesnt work when you are laying down.

    This kind of table in a system might have issues delivering enough angles and screen-width together on a tablet screen. And if you rotate the screen just a little bit, you'd lose the effect.

  47. Real 3-D is in the brain.... by jameskojiro · · Score: 1

    If you could hook an interface into each optic nerve to overlay images over a person field of vision it could be a whole lot more convincing.

    And it wouldn't cause people's eye to bug out. Mark my works, real 3-D display will only be acheived by tapping into the brain and bypassing the eye.

    --
    Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
    1. Re:Real 3-D is in the brain.... by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 1

      If you could hook an interface into each optic nerve to overlay images over a person field of vision it could be a whole lot more convincing.

      And it wouldn't cause people's eye to bug out. Mark my works, real 3-D display will only be acheived by tapping into the brain and bypassing the eye.

      Actually, I'm thinking that elements within our vast tracts of dormant DNA will switch on, allowing people to see and process information from multiple moments across "time" rather than just one frame at a time, as it were. Imagine; being able to see and comprehend the rear side of an object at the same time as the front.

      I came back from a meditation once being able to do this for a fraction of a second. Freaked me right out.

      The future is coming, and it's not about plugs in the head. (We can hope, anyway!)

      -FL

  48. Better than the previous models by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just couldn't do the alternate winking fast enough to make them work.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  49. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by ShooterNeo · · Score: 1

    Tell me more about helical 3d displays. I tried googling for it, and ironically this very slashdot post was the second hit. A lot of links to CT scanner stuff, but nothing about how an display actually works.

  50. Re:No glasses? Use contact lenses or .... by vcgodinich · · Score: 1
    I just had a mental image of a rabbit running straight into a screen thinking there was space (and a carrot) inside it.

    Scientists with white lab coats all toasting champagne in the background.

  51. finally a replacement gimmick for Nintendo by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

    The DS is old and two screen gimmick is old, it's time for a 3D display gimmick in a hand-held video game device. I bet this will be one (of possibly multiple) things Nintendo is going to latch onto and turn into a new handheld game console.

    If they were already developing a new game console, I suspect they will abort the development and shift into this, it seems like the obvious next step for Nintendo.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  52. Sparkle Motion? by dthardcore · · Score: 1

    I don't know if anyone noticed this when looking at the pictures for the MWC but was the dance group for Samsung actually called “Sparkle Motion” , or was this just a “Donnie Darko” reference by the author?

    Also did anyone else notice the “Garmin” car looked an awful lot like Steve Urkel's first car, his “Beamer”, on “Family Matters”?

  53. I need a proof by BESTouff · · Score: 1

    I'll believe it when I see a photo.

    1. Re:I need a proof by Lazypete · · Score: 1

      A photo of what? the 3D image? brrzz bip bip -- rebooting --

  54. Re:A: Crap. Lenticular 3D. by ricotest · · Score: 1

    Curious, I didn't know nVidia supported other shutter glass brands in the past. I thought they had written the drivers and the 2D -> 3D conversion specifically for their 3D Vision shutter glasses.

    Previous glasses presumably didn't use 120hz monitors? Or did they only support specific games, rather than patching all DirectX games at the driver level? Either way, it's disappointing that nVidia have abandoned early adopters of desktop 3D.

  55. 60 fps instead of the usual 30? by mrjb · · Score: 1

    Let me check. Yup- still running at the usual 75fps.

    --
    Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
  56. Quake 2 mod by DrYak · · Score: 1

    And here's a mod which does the exactly the same in Quake 2 too.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Quake 2 mod by logixoul · · Score: 1

      Oops, that was me.

  57. Re:Tablet 3D & 3D in general by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure why anyone would care if what they were doing on a tablet was in 3D. I just can't imagine who is going to buy this.

    Despite being loved by movie studios, I doubt 3D is going to catch on anyway.

    I watched a few cartoons in 3D: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The new Christmas Carol one, and the GForce 3D, and I was all gung ho about 3D, but when I saw Avatar, I realized why 3D just will never catch on:

    The first ten minutes or so of Avatar made me sick, so much so, that if it had continued for the whole movie, I would have left the theatre. The rest of the movie was fine, and did not make me sick, and I realised why: In the beginning they are using the camera focus to focus in on close up objects. They do this all the time in 2D movies, like when the main character walks into the room, and the camera focuses in on the gun on the floor. It lets the audience know what the character is thinking to know what the character thought was important about the visual they were presented with and which we are seeing through their eyes.

    But this just doesn't work in 3D because when your eyes are presented with a 3D image they assume that they can focus in on anything because it's *really there*. When the camera focuses in on a screw floating up close, and my eyes are trying to focus on the actor's face behind the screw, but it won't focus no matter what my eyes do, it makes me ill, and oddly pissed off. When I finally submit to the cameraman's tyranny ( and it feels like that in 3D, but not in 2D ) about what I should focus on, the focus has changed again, and I'm about to puke. Now I'm supposed to be focusing in on... What the hell AM I supposed to focus on? ok, lemme deliberately scan this image for something that's not blurry, DAMMIT I'm taking these glasses off. Shit now it's all blurry! Oh, now the scene is changing! Sigh..

    The rest of Avatar did not have this problem, perhaps because the camera's focus was set to infinity, or perhaps because when the focus was something other than infinity, there was some unambiguously 'most interesting' thing in the scene which I naturally focused on anyway and which happened to be in focus because the cameraperson thought it was the most interesting thing too, like a face etc.

    I have a theory that the beginning of Avatar was there to make people who would have criticised it for having uninteresting cinematography shut the f--- up by making them viscerally HATE camera trickery right up front. Then people are grateful for infinite focus.

    Still, I think 3D is limited in ways 2D is not. I suppose each medium has it's strengths and weaknesses. It just seems to me that 3D is going to be perfect for the worst of what is being made now, and that it means we'll be seeing more of it until people get completely sick of it and quit going to the movies at all.

    --
    ...
  58. LOL by Lazypete · · Score: 1

    In other words... they put the glasses on the screen.. it makes me think of the little toy they gave out in cereal boxes where you could see spider-man jumping when you would watch the plastic thingy under different angles...

  59. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  60. Re: 'Helical display' - Volumetric display by Animaether · · Score: 1

    Sorry - it's a type of volumetric display where a surface (an inclined disc, or a helix, etc.) is spinning rapidly and projected onto at the right point in time to essentially project a 3D volume.

    e.g.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KaQmn2VTzs - Actuality Systems Perspecta Volumetric 3D Display

  61. Re:A: Crap. Worse than Lenticular 3D! by Animaether · · Score: 1

    I stand corrected - it's worse! ;)

    There's always applications for this and lenticular displays, but in general.. brrr.

    nokarma