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Apple Patents Glasses-Free 3D Projector
angry tapir writes "Apple has been awarded a US patent for a display system that would allow multiple viewers to see a high-quality 3D image projected on a screen without the need for special glasses, regardless of where they are sitting. Entertainment is far from the only field in which 3D can enhance the viewing experience: others include medical diagnostics, flight simulation, air traffic control, battlefield simulation, weather diagnostics, advertising and education, according to Apple's US patent 7,843,449 for a 3D display system."
could this actually be innovative technology from Apple?
i'm kind of impressed.
According to a better article Apple applied for the patent in 2006 but has yet to actually build any products that use the idea. Conveniently others have done the work and build products (google news search). This looks like some patent trolling from Apple.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
"Dude, you know what would be really awesome?"
"What?"
"If there was a display system that would allow multiple viewers to see a high-quality 3D image projected on a screen without the need for special glasses, regardless of where they are sitting."
"Dude... that would be totally awesome."
"We should totally invent that someday"
"Lets patent it just in case someone really does it!"
"Yeah!"
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
At least quote the interesting part:
Apple's patent describes using a special reflective screen with a rippled texture to create an autostereoscopic projection system, meaning one in which different images are projected to each eye without the need for special glasses. The system tracks the viewer's eyes and calculates their position in space. It then projects each pixel of the stereoscopic images to a precise spot on one of the screen's ripples, reflecting it into one or other of the viewer's eyes. If Apple can do this for one pair eyes, it suggests, it can project multiple images to different points on the ripples for multiple users at the same time.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
I'm wondering if this will have productive applications that couldn't also double as video games, i.e. flight simulators and combat programs. Could this be (excuse the bad pun) a new "dimension" in interface design for those of us that use computers from day to day?
If it is, my money says the Linux crowd will employ it first, Apple will make it sexy, and Windows will blatantly copy it. In that order.
We hope you love the third dimension as much as we do.
Just avoid looking at it that way.
Get a (insert competitor here) if you want porn in 3D
etc...
-Lod
......II ffoorr oonnee wweellccoommee oouurr nneeww 33DD oovveerrlloorrddss
Their method needs to track the location of the viewers' eyes, so in 3D Apple, TV watches you.
For those of who didn't RTFA, it looks like it tracks faces and adjusts the projected images accordingly. Let's hope Apple has a slightly better debut than HP's face-tracking software.
P.S. Come on, /. Why the heck did I have to type out the whole link. No paste for Apple computers?
If this was for a specific method or idea, we'll I'd expect to see a working display now. Unfortunately the patent is full of all kinds of obtuse language (they often are to sneak them by the examiners) so it is hard to see what they are saying but it does not look like a "Here's a specific way to make a no glasses 3D display," it looks more like a general "Well you might have a display with some angles of reflection and you might send light at them at certain angles to make 3D," kind of thing.
So certainly does smell of patent trolling. In Apple's case I would imagine the idea isn't a "Make everyone pay us royalties," thing I would imagine it is a "Force people to sell only to us." Someone develops a 3D display that needs no glasses and fits the loose patent definitions. Apple goes after them and says "We'll sue the crap out of you if you sell to anyone but us!" Apple then can roll out the "Only 3D computer/tablet/phone/fridge magnet in the world!" and claim it as "innovation."
Same kind of deal as with their mag safe connector. That one Apple invented, far as I know, but they won't license it to anyone, not to other computer makers, not even for people to make accessories for the Mac (and have sued people for it). They want to be able to claim it as a "special" feature, not because they put a bunch of R&D in and want to make money licensing a new technology to the world.
So that's my bet. They hope someone else will develop a 3D display (as a practical matter Apple has no display development and manufacturing arm, they buy their panels from LG.displays, and just make the final monitor like Dell and others do) and then be able to grab it as their exclusive via their patent.
I really favour a "Use it or lose it," provision for patents. You should have to either develop the technology, or license it to someone else in a non-trivial amount of time or the patent goes away. None of this "I'm patenting an idea so when someone else does the hard work it is mine," bullshit. You have a legit invention you want to make money off of? I'm all good with that. You want someone else to do the hard work of the inventing and creation? Screw you.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm sure there's a way for Apple to leverage their past experience and expertise with Reality Distortion Fields.
See the idea of a patent wasn't ever really that you'd keep an invention all for yourself. It was that you'd license the technology for your invention to others, so you made money for the work and creativity of creating it, and everyone benefits. Patent trolls often needn't buy patents, they just make their own. They come up with stupid patents and then sue people for licensing fees. The problem is not that they have bought or sold a patent, it is that their patent is bullshit.
A "no licensing" thing for patents would be bad because it could reduce competition and even prevent products from coming to market. So say I work on some amazing new display technology and patent it. Wonderful stuff, going to change how things are done. However after that, I decide that I'm just not willing to go in to production of it. Too much money to start up, etc, etc, I'm just not interested. If I can't sell or license the tech, it then languishes until my patent expires. However if I can license it, no problem. I invent it and then license it out to existing display companies. I'm compensated for my work inventing it, they bring it to the mass market.
That is the reason for patents, the reason to not just get rid of them. They can be real important in two situations:
1) A person or small company makes a big invention. Patents keep big companies form stealing it from them and profiting off the work of others. Like if a 5 man company invented an amazing new wireless communications device that is cheap to make and effective. However since they are small, they produce them for $50 each. Motorola, being huge, can do it for $20 each. With no patents Motorola just takes their work and goes for it, and they get crushed being unable to compete.
2) A development that takes massive amounts of money. There is tech that takes many millions, even billions occasionally in research. A company will pour a ton of money and years of work in to something because it is worth it. But it is only worth it if they can make that R&D back. Suppose a company invents a new battery with 100x the capacity of current lithium batteries that is cheap to produce. They spend $250 million doing it, and in quantity the batteries cost only $1 per cell to make. Ok well they need to sell those for like $3-4 per cell or so, maybe more, to recoup their $250 million. Remember until they've cleared that, they are making zero dollars total on the product. However a competitor? Well they could sell the cells for $2, maybe even $1.50 each. They have only the production cost, so as long as they cover that the rest is unit profit. Without patents, they could do that.
The problem with patents currently isn't that they exist or can be licensed. It is that they are too broad, granted for too many things, and many of them are way too obvious. Parents are supposed to be for new, non-obvious things that took a lot of effort and/or creativity to make, not for any and everything. They are important to encouraging and supporting R&D, they just are too easy to abuse as it stands.
Ah crap, if this patent trolling actually works, Apple isn't going to let me project anything that they don't approve
Okay, the subject is a bit, shall we say, Area 51-ish.
But, seriously, Google gets all of this praise for their 20% personal project time allowance. I wonder if Apple does the same thing, but just doesn't ack it?
--Jim (me)
My brother was on a business trip in China a few months ago, and while strolling along through the airport like any other business traveler, he had a moment almost comparable to the "3D Jaws" scene in the Back-To-The-Future II? movie. He suddenly noticed a floating thing just to the side of his head, as if a big bug was about to crash into his face. He reflexively turned around and saw a 3D projection of some demonstration animation, and was completely dumbfounded. He says he stuck his arm out and was trying to grab the image. He realized afterward that he probably looked like a fool playing with thin air.
As he described it, we were both puzzled by how it worked without special glasses. It wasn't a fast rotating laser projection plate, used in some medical monitors, because he could put his hand "through" some of the projected items. Plate rotation technology can't do that.
Table-ized A.I.
porn is 3d's killer app, and apple will ban it.
Don't expect this to come to your local cinema any time soon.
To project a movie with 2K horizontal resolution per eye on a 15m screen you'd need ripples to be no more than 15mm wide. You'd have to focus each pixel somewhere along a quarter section of that, 3.75mm. Assume 20 people seated every 1m, with each persons' eyes separated by about 65mm, that means to bounce a pixel off the ripple at a specific eye you'd need to divide that 3.75mm into 308 subdivisions of about 12 microns each.
This is over 2000 ppi resolution, projected across a 15m screen by a projector over 30m away. If the imaging device were to do that directly it'd have to have a resolution of 1.25M pixels horizontally, but you'd probably have a parallax barrier to direct the light. If you had something capable of head-tracking each person on each row and adjusting views individually, each of the parallax barrier sets (you'd need one set per viewer, along with individual optics to go with it) would need to be capable of nanometre-precise positioning. It might be possible to use a single, extra-fine set of tens of thousands of individually-mobile, variable-width parallax barriers, but we'd probably start hitting quantum effects at this point :-)
Alternatively, if people held their heads very still, you could use a nano-scaled lenticular prism with variable-length ripples on your screen and precalculated, radial, fixed seating positions, but I suspect they'd just opt for the glasses instead.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The proposed method tracks the location of the observer's eyes and projects the images straight into their eyes. I'll take a pass, thank you.
As I read the patent claims, it appears that in order to require no eyeglasses and to allow the observer to be located anywhere relative to the screen, the 3D effect will only work with one observer. No claims allow multiple, position-independent viewers. That makes sense from a physics and optics point of view, but it is disappointing.
Just another wall street gang of douchebags.
1) Eliminate my moral system, since I believe parent trolling is wrong. It is more or less fraud in my book.
2) Get startup funding. Filing patents is not free. Not expensive for a company to do, but a lot for an individual.
3) Either become a lawyer or find one who was willing to work with me (probably more than one) to handle all the harassment/lawsuits/etc.
None of those interest me, in particular the morals part. I can think of a lot of activities that I could do, some of them quite well, that I wouldn't because I find them to be immoral.
Yeah, so Nintendo demoed this already at E3 last year, but I'm sure like everything else, all the fanbois will forget that other people already came up with the cool tech, and Apple is yet again just ripping it off. Somehow, Apple will once again be touted as the most innovative rainbow ponies and gumdrops company ever (I'm sure of it).
The whole point of patenting things (aside from trolling, which is actually contrary to the point, but anyway) is to get to market first because the PTO gives you a temporary monopoly (you're expected to exploit said monopoly, as a subsidy for the effort of invention). Ergo, Apple filing a patent and then not getting to market promptly is kind of silly.
Not necessarily. They may have feared that a competitor would file a similar patent first. Even if it takes 5 years to get the invention to market they would still get 15 years of patent protection, as opposed to zero if they were not the first to file.
There is also the likelihood of needing the full 20 years of protection, odds are someone will invent a competing technology that is clear of Apple's patent.
You're our only hope...
Now to get good 3d television and porn without those stupid glasses you will have to overpay for something you can't watch in a room that has natural light, as the glare would be insane (being an apple product) and will cost 15x as much as the equivolent would from any other company (being an apple product).
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Or I'll nail it to the couch.
And here is a description of the product from 1981
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Park
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I thought patents were for "inventions", ie. something you have actually made.
I've been reading the patent and it's nothing but a vague idea on how to achieve it, not about how an actual device works. Even point 5 could be the idea for the Kinect:
"5. The method as claimed in claim 1 further comprising tracking predetermined observer characteristics in a virtual volume to provide feedback for interactive, observer-actuated control inputs."
The whole idea is pretty obvious if you think about it. A rippled reflective surface, with a projector system that works out where each eye is and projects each pixel to the exact spot on the surface that will reflect to that eye.
For one observer, that's easy. Problem is, for many observers, each pixel-area on the surface would have to have that many ripples on it (x2), each precisely angled. But I can imagine a cinema, which has fixed seating, with a preset screen for that purpose.
Interesting idea, however obvious. Someone should patent the idea of the fixed-viewing screen, quick, because Apple's idea is all about tracking movement, dynamic ripples, etc. A fixed one should get past the patent office. Apparently even if you haven't actually invented it yet.