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3-D LCD screens
KoNfUzEd writes
"EETimes has this artcile about how 2 artists have possibly solved, cheaply, how to display 3D images without glasses and with almost no additional cost to existing LCD screens. "
I'm pretty sure we mentioned this before, but this is a nice
followup piece. I think this would be great. But
I think I have a 3d fettish.
I WANT ONE! It sounds like they've also succeeded in coming up with a method of displaying images that doesn't require Windows 95. I like the thought of being able to hook my Mac or even my Linux box up to one of those displays.
So what if you have to maintain your head in one spot, that will probably change as the technology improves. My original laptop was a Kaypro 2000, you had a very small window in which you could read the very small, squished display. This sounds a lot easier to view than that ever was.
They sould start filming StarTrek Voyager in 3D,
The 3D holographics TV sets would be in
great demand.
"These two people" would have been an equally servicable phrase if you didn't take the time to actually read the article - one should never make assumptions about gender. :D
HalfLife. Yeah, BABY! Just get me a linux version!
or do markets drive down cost?
for instance, a braille display device, or
even some sort of high resolution pad that could
change addresssable points on its surface to be
'up' or 'down' would be pretty simple to build
and if mass produced could be very cheap... but
even a 40 cell braille display with 8 dots per cell can cost several thousand dollars.
what do you think
Nevermind the fact that this adds 3-D at the momeny, I just want LCDs to come down to reasonable prices for larger displays! I'm so sick and tired of this CRT, I can clearly see the flicker even at 75hz, and at 1152x864 it emits a very high pitched whine. I don't want to do a lower resolution, and any higher requires 60hz.. (and I thought 75hz was bad.. heh)
Lets not call hoax that quick, for the moment I have more credibility than mythical japanese scientists.
One can advance an art and even secure a patent on something that is not essentially new, if the new claims are sufficiently useful and inobvious. I have not read the patent, so I am relying on what (often technically ignorant) journalists say.
From what is said, it appears I described this technique in 1985, while I was a research scientist for IBM. I published it in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin as "Improved Electronic Stereo 3D Display", document YO885-0689. The idea is that matrix displays have geometrically fixed pixel positions, in contrast to the driftable pixel positions of once all-but-ubiquitous raster-scan displays like the CRT, so one can exploit the guaranteed spatial coherence between the programmable image array and a suitably segmented field lens. The cited article describes a Fresnel lens, which is used as a conventional projection display field element, a standard method of imaging the lamp onto the pupil aperture of the observer. (The eye retina is focused on the display surface, not its own pupil, and does not image the lamp.) The interleaved "HOE" prism-lens array serves to split the lamp image in two, so that only odd pixel lines contribute to the lamp image in one eye pupil, and even lines to the other.
As my work was openly published many years ago, the method it describes is not patentable. Prior to this latest report, I noted that Sanyo had implemented a prototype of the method, which was reported on in "PC Magazine" (May 16, 1995, page 29). I hope IBM is pleased with its typically "brilliant" decision not to bear the cost of patenting the idea, much less fund a simple demo, while it had the chance. (My manager's crippled visual system was basically blind to stereopsis based 3D perception and so he decided 3D displays were "not important".) I guess financing a massive Gestapo effective at ranging across a continent instead is a better investment to some.
Ron Feigenblatt (cuncie@geocities.com)
Nobody seems to mention CRT's. Is this an LCD only technology? If so, why?
Calm down there, buddy.
They meant five dollars OVER the cost of
a normal LCD display, and that is the production cost (as the previous replier said), not the retail price. Trust me, you won't be able to walk into Wal-Mart in a year and get one of these doodads for five bucks.
>>Obviously the coolest applications are for games, but I can even see this going into medical fields, etc!
Oh please...games will be far from the best application of a technology like this.
Why do you want to make light come out at two different angles? Would you care to be a bit more descriptive about how this technology works? According to the article it is using a "convention LCD module", modified (for $5 only price difference.) The article's description of the technique is vague at best. It would be nice if you could explain it a bit more clearly for people like me?
This would be interesting thing to put into a car.
Have no windows, but instead some flat-pannel displays all aound. Of course, only the driver would be able to see what was going on outside sine the things are directional.
I think you're taking a far too dim view of human nature to say it'll be used mostly for games. What it'll really be used for is pornography!
Perhaps Cmdr. Taco needs to post a YABOR
(yet another batch of repeats)
http://www.slashdot.org/art icles/99/02/04/1058224.shtml
The idea itself is also not exactly new, and there are already a number of displays working on similar principles, although the approach described in the article may be a little cheaper and easier to implement.
The future of games and many 3D applications will likely be with cheap high-quality head-mounted displays. Those displays really do allow you to around and have the environment do the right thing; the fact that they also give you stereopsis is almost secondary.
With the new micro LCDs, head mounted displays should be no more cumbersome than the glasses most of us wear every day anyway. Another approach will be direct retinal displays. Really high resolution rendering will also depend on eye tracking, because rendering a whole visual field at foveal resolutions is much too expensive.
Obviously the coolest applications are for games, but I can even see this going into medical fields, etc!
Oh please...games will be far from the best application of a technology like this.
Tell me where he said "games will be the BEST application for this? He said coolest which I tend to agree with. no one ever said it would be the best.
Best != coolest
You won't get the pixels in exactly the same spot every time, (you don't get that now) but I don't see why you couldn't use two electron guns side by side within the same tube.
Wouldn't that product the same effect? Assuming you get photons that glow for a short enough period of time. (double refresh rates, from dual guns)
Depending on how you look at it, yes. You could use infared camera, or something, and not have dirt, rain, slush, etc.. obscure your view. would be better for night driving, as well.. (no more assholes with their bright lights on -- it would automagically adjust)
You could put sensors on the signs, or along the road that would do various things on your display.. rather than only out your window and possibly have trees, cars, or whatever to block your view.
I think it'd be pretty cool to have a display to look through. Of course, keep the window around for backup reasons.
: The 3D trick mentioned in this article will
:)
: reduce the horizontal resolution of your
: monitor by half.
Errr, vertical resolution, I believe.
Unless your eys are positioned kinda funny?
To reinforce the original positive response,
this is great stuff. A stereo display for
+$5 construction at an effective 800 x 300
resolution is not to be pissed on, and the
use of a flat holographic lens/filter is
literally inspired lateral thinking.
Now, mount one of these on a position sensing
cantilever arm with handgrips around the sides,
attach to an appropriately programmed computer,
and you have the Ur-Home-VR workbench, a mobile
window into your own personal cyber-room.
This is cool. Really.
CRT's are very heavy and bulky, so LCD screens will hopefully take over the desktop computer in 5 years (or less, technology estimates are always wrong). No one wants to design a technology that relies on another tech on its way to the graveyard.
>Devices like that are very useful for certain scientific and visualization applications [...]
I disagree. If you're doing work like that you'll want to spend the extra money for a better system. This is too viewpoint-dependent to spend a significant time working with, a slight move of your head and the perspective gets screwed. Better to use LCD shutter glasses, along with a system that guarantees the frame-switching will always be done. (You need to guarantee that the right image is displayed every shutter switch, difficult without a real-time OS or some sort of hardware to do it.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Personally I would say that's two good reasons... ;-)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The unfortunate thing is the fact that such "gender neutral" phrases still have a default setting. And it is not NULL. It is, in the majority of cases, male. And for people to whom it does not have the additional setting of male, the effect can be quite jarring and distract from the composition of your text. Personally, I have a preference towards hideous abuse of the plural.
"They found that it did not help them to use gender neutral terms with default settings."
Unfortunately, sometimes this requires using the plural with singular grammar, but it's the closest to neutrality our current version of the english language currently supports.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
and that is the sense in which I meant it. I apologize for any ambiguity, even though it could only be interpreted as such through undue paranoia.
How can I get Apple to put these on their next series of PowerBooks that are coming out in fall?
I would LOVE to play Quake with this!!! Can you imagine how cool this would be??!?!?!
And all this for FIVE stinkin' BUCKS!!!! This is simply too cool. Damn, I dont' care if the 3D is somewhat limited, for five dollars, it is unbelievably cool!
Not to mention how cool it would be for something like a GameBoy! Pocket 3D! Excellent!
Obviously the coolest applications are for games, but I can even see this going into medical fields, etc!
WOW WOW WOW!!
Yeah, I realize that I won't be getting an LCD monitor for 5 bucks. I'm saying that for only 5 bucks, you get holographic technology. I understand that LCDs cost much more than five dollars.
The future of games and many 3D applications will likely be with cheap high-quality head-mounted displays. Those displays really do allow you to around and have the environment do the right thing; the fact that they also give you stereopsis is almost secondary.
Yeah, and remember that one day, computers may weigh less than 2 tons.
The reason American television scans at 60 Hz vertical (and European TV at 50, where the power line frequency is 50 Hz) is to avoid having the TV picture "beat" against the 60 Hz pulsation of AC powered lighting(or vice versa), so at 75 Hz you're seeing a 15 Hz flicker and a 25 Hz flicker at 85 Hz and at 60 Hz a 0 Hz flicker; the flicker is there, but it's standing still.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Oh please, there's got to be a better use for this than staring at Jeri Ryan's breasts.
I work daily in 3D, by viewing two identical molecules side by side with one being rotated slightly along the y axis by a few degrees. It would be nice to have the ability to pop the monitor into 3D mode. Then guests could experience the stoke I have when I view molecules in 3D.
Computational chemists mouths will water when they hear of this information.
Chalk one up for Apple, these two people really did think different.
-b
Your explanation is correct as far as it goes, but there is one more detail. With the LCD screen they are able to redirect the light before it passes through the pixel elements, and it passes through without changing direction. In a CRT display the light is produced diffusely by the pixels, so it would be quite a challenge to collimate it and redirect it.
--Artemisia
At least I'm in good company. Jeff Minter has monocular vision also...
RinkRat
Nevermind sending an evaluation version to Silicon Graphics...I want ID to get one!
Juiced? Or Not?
As a former optical engineer (if there was ever such a thing), I have to point out a few facts to my fellow readers.
This tech. is not holographic. Holographic image
contains all 3D information of its object, which means when your head shifts, you will be able to see the left side, front and right side of the object in image, continously. Instead of this article claims, only your head is in dead center will you see a 3D illusion.
The 3D trick mentioned in this article will reduce the horizontal resolution of your monitor by half. When you set your LCD to be 1280x1024, you will only see image resolution of 640x1024. Because 2 vertical lines is need to represent 1 "3-D" line.
In order to achieve holographic, the resolution of the image has to be close to the wavelength of visible light, ( 1 micrometer). No LCD display to date can come near to that yet.
So hold your horses, we are not in 2500 A.D. yet.
But it sure makes a good sales pitch, doesn't it?
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
Essentially, the technology is extremely simple. It redirects the odd scanlines to your left eye and the even scanlines to your right eye, allowing your two eyes to view slightly different images at the same time (the sole requirement for being able to display images "in 3d"). Since this is done with a permanent lens, the lens must line up with the pixels on the screen EXACTLY. On an LCD display, the pixels never move, so this is easy to do. On a CRT display, the pixels are not always in the same spots, so creating such a lens would be much more difficult. It's really a simple concept, and I'm surprised no one thought of it before. Regardless, I can't wait for the day I can play Quake 3 in 3d.
This could be an incredibly cool application of holographic displays, but why was this not obvious to someone earlier? They're performing operations similar to what other 3D displays do - interlacing two images, here over different sets of horizontally striped holographic optical elements (HOEs) pointed in slightly different directions. It also has to be viewed "more or less directly in front of the screen." So no one can watch...
What's with these artists? I hear it was an artist that taught the navy how to cast acrylic in 6ft bubbles for undersea exploration...
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