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MIT Developed A Movie Screen That Brings Glasses-Free 3D To All Seats (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: MIT has developed a glasses-less 3D display for movie theaters. The Nintendo 3DS is one of a handful of devices to feature glasses-less 3D, but it is designed for a single users where the user is looking at the display head-on at a relatively specific angle. It's not something made for a movie theater with hundreds of seats, each of which would have a different viewing angle. What's neat about MIT's 3D display is that it doesn't require glasses and it lets anyone see the 3D effect in a movie theater, no matter where they are sitting. The MIT Computers Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) created the prototype display called 'Cinema 3D' that uses a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors to create a set number of parallax barriers that can address every viewing angle in the theater based on seat locations. It works in a movie theater because the seats are in fixed locations, and people don't tend to move around, change seats or alter their viewing angle too much. What's also neat about the Cinema 3D is that is preserves resolution, whereas other glasses-less 3D displays carry cots in terms of image resolution. The prototype is about the size of a letter-sized notepad, and it needs 50 sets of mirrors and lenses. It should be ready for market once researchers scale it up to a commercially viable product.
whereas other glasses-less 3D displays carry cots in terms of image resolution.
So that begs the question: what kind of bedding can we expect from this glasses-less 3D display?
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I have yet to see a movie where I thought the 3D enhancements made the movie superior over a conventional screen. Regarding Nintendo's 3DS, I noticed that my daughters disable the 3D feature because they find it distracting. Is anyone pining for a movie to come out in 3D?
Not to be confused with Cinema 4D, a 3D modeling program.
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Sorry, but theaters are obsolete, and gimmicks like 3D are only going to slightly delay the inevitable. Why would I want to waste my time and money watching a movie at a theater when I can just watch it at home and get many benefits: no screaming kids, no people talking on their cellphones, a rewind button so I can go back if I didn't understand a line of dialog, a pause button so I can go to the bathroom, no sticky floors, the best-positioned seat instead of one way off to the side, whatever food I want instead of some crappy overpriced concessions, whatever kind of seat I want (such as a recliner), and the ability to watch the movie at whatever time I want?
Glasses-free 3D has potential in a number of applications and it's surprising to me how little penetration it has in the market at large. Just as adding color to a display is a means of providing more information, adding depth to a display adds information. Just as we don't typically grade a movie or an application on how effectively its color has been used, once the novelty of 3D has worn off and it's become just another tool in the box we'll start to see what sort of impact it really has. Now we seem to be limited to the 3DS, expensive Ultra-D displays, and soon glasses-free cinemas. What about the 3D phones and tablets? (Yes, I know about add-ons like EyeFly3D, but they're still pretty niche at the moment.)
people don't tend to move around, change seats or alter their viewing angle too much
All it would take is moving to the left or right a couple inches and you're on your way to a headache.
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I haven't really noticed any cots in the resolution of glasses-less 3D displays. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough.... Or maybe I'm not watching movies in an army tent.
It should be ready for market once researchers scale it up to a commercially viable product.
Well no shit.
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As has already been said, I've yet to watch a movie with 3D and thought, 2D just wouldn't have cut it. This whole 3D thing is kind of a dead horse and I'm getting really tired of people kicking it. Secondly, you have to know that they will also build this into the next "gotta-have-it" television/monitor. Where does it end? It's high-def 1080p. No it's curved! Better yet, it's back lit. No, 4k! Oh 4K in 3D!! You know, any more I just want to watch a show/movie that the story doesn't suck. I want the story to draw me in so I am mentally engaged with it. NOT, "I'm watching the equivalent of paint drying". They might have used a really fancy paint sprayer, but it's still paint drying.... (Damn! I must be getting old)
Not to mention that CSAIL is Computer-blank-Science and AI Lab, not Computers Science.
People either hate(3d) or are indifferent to it... and it's not because of the glasses.
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It's the forced stereoscopy.... when you project different images into each eye, unless you are sitting only at certain spots in the movie theater, the angle that your eyes will have to converge to fuse the two images into a single 3d image in your visual cortex is unnatural with respect the distance that the visual differences between the two objects conveys to your brain about the apparently distance of what you are seeing.
Holograms would not have this effect, since where you are focusing on when you view a hologram is consistent with where the 3d image actually is supposed to be. The image appears as fully 3 dimensional as would looking at real physical objects on the other side of a pane of clear glass, or looking at things in a mirror.
But I imagine we're still some years away from real holographic movies being a thing.
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I think this will be a hard sell for movie theaters. Many spent a lot of money on the polarized 3D tech, and that's pretty much just a really expensive projection solution. Some viewers (like me) love 3D, and will pay a premium. But some do not, and cannot watch 3D because they get headaches. Mostly when you see a movie with these folks you just see the 2D one, but in some cases they will just go ahead and rig up special glasses (two left or two right lenses).
With some solution like this, they will definitely be ill unless they wear like an eyepatch. That's absolutely silly.
Are there a bunch of people for whom the 3D polarized glasses are specifically an issue? Those deliver a very compelling 3D experience to anyone.
I think this tech would be way cooler on a monitor or television, I dunno.
This is a fundamental problem I have with 3D films. The focal point is always where the director decided it should be so if you try to look at something off to the side of the screen, the 3D illusion falls apart.
Talk about beating a dead horse. Seriously.
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A 2D movie is $12, 3D is $15.75 and $21 for IMAX-3D. And that's with a standard screens. Once you replace the screen with a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors to create a set number of parallax barriers...
Get ready for the $40 ticket.
First all the viewers must sit quite still and not move outside a narrow band in their seats. Even after that each seat gets a slice projected to it. Though the projected image fills your field of vision, it is a narrow slice and the brightness perceived will be less. Anyway the effect will be more like the 3D image on printed magazine covers like Nat Geo. With color bleeding fringing and 3D in some small central area and quite blurry in the periphery.
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We want to keep our spellings, but at the same time we have to go metric at some time. We have a choice between spending a lot to convert now, or spending an exorbitant amount to convert later.
Not so simple. All real property is recorded in the individual county court houses in inch/feet/miles. Legal nightmare to convert the title to everything. Seriously. When you look closely and see surveys routinely saying, "more or less" then there will be a squabble that will put several multiples of the nations domestic output into scumbag lawyers pockets.
Now if everything is digitized then maybe a bot can go through the database and straighten things out. Maybe...