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NTT DoCoMo's Prototype 3D Display To Be Used For Games. This article is about a month old, but it's worth pointing out that NTT DoCoMo is yet another of many that are developing 3D LCD displays using a lenticular lens. If these holograms from XYZ imaging look as good in real life as they do on the web they're sure to be a hit with the public. Many consumers would love to have a full color 3D hologram hanging on their wall, but due to cost the more immediate application for this technology is likely advertising. Seeing one of these in a shop would definitely catch my attention. Gizmodo recently reviewed the iZ3D Three-Dimensional Gaming Monitor with an interesting result. The reviewer was unable to see the 3D effect most of the time. The reviewer's girlfriend however, was able to see the images in 3D so the monitor was definitely working. The iZ3D requires the user to wear polarized glasses which is a proven technology, but this review underscores the potential difficulty manufacturer's might face in taking three-dimensional displays mass market. During Siggraph 2006 Microsoft announced Photosynth, a tool in development at their Live Labs. Photosynth has some ambitious goals including finding similar photos, seeing where pictures were taken in relation to one another, and constructing a virtual 3D scene from a groups of photos. The ability to construct a virtual 3D scene is what attracted a lot of press, but unfortunately the first public release of Photosynth won't include this feature. This is due to the large amount of processing necessary to create the virtual scene. Microsoft's web site describes the scene creation process. The quick summary is they use computer vision techniques to identify features of each photograph and then try to find other photos with the same features. So for this to work you'll need a lot of photos of a single area. Viewing 3D holograms that float in mid-air without the need for special viewing equipment like glasses is a dream shared by many. A London based company called Phoebe Ltd. claims to have achieved this dream and they are in the process of commercializing their technology.
Phoebe is targeting an array of markets ranging from defense to cell phones with units that range in size from mobile phone to 6 meters square. We will keep an eye on Phoebe and keep you informed of further developments. At Siggraph 2006 StereoVision Imaging, Inc. was showing off some stereoscopic binoculars. These nifty binocs are called the 3D VuCam and they function as a digital camera that captures a stereo pair of images. Some specs include 8x magnification and a 3.1 Megapixel resolution, priced near $2000. 3-D Scanner Wins 2006 IEEE Presidents' Scholarship.
An impressive feat for anyone, let alone a 2nd year high school student. Dolby to Bring 3D Imaging to More Theaters Everywhere.
The BumpTop desktop interface from the University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project has some intriguing aspects. It's a three dimensional computer interface with physics. Windows Vista will be 3D underneath, but it won't work like BumpTop. BumpTop allows you to stack icons, flip through them, and toss them about in any manner you please. It's designed to simulate the way people "organize" their desks in the real world. Check out the video to see how it works for yourself. Note that BumpTop is a research project so you can't yet download and install it. Archipelis has an ambitious goal, to infer a three dimensional object from a two dimensional shape. Its goal is to make modeling organic objects in 3D easy and fast. A short animation can explain the concept better than words and there are a few animations on Archipelis' main page.
You may have heard that Google recently bought @Last Software, the creators of SketchUp. Well, today Google announced a free version of SketchUp. If you need to export to file formats used by other programs you'll still need to buy SketchUp, but if you only want to create some cool models the free version should suit you nicely. When many people think of 3D displays they think of Princess Leia's message in Star Wars. In a Flash demo at their site Provision Interactive claims this three dimensional projector has arrived. Here's a quote from their web site.
Fakespace Offers Beacon 8MP with 8.85 Megapixel Resolution While this is really just very high resolution projector that will only be bought by a few companies or research institutions the article makes a good comparison between the two stereoscopic methods the projector supports. With the Beacon mode you must wear LCD shutter glasses that are usually relatively expensive and bulking compared to simple polarized glasses. However, there is a possibility for crosstalk between the left and right images with polarization. Since the projector supports both you can take your pick. Many news sites are reporting about some interesting 3D display research. Here's a snip from DailyTech.
Stereoscopic High-Def Videocam
Hitachi demoed a small 3D LCD Display at CES 2006 and Anandtech was there to take pictures. Mechanical Engineering Magazine recently ran an interesting article titled "Design with Depth". It gives a good depiction of how mechanical design is limited by two dimensional displays and how three dimensional displays can help. Profiled companies include LightSpace and Actuality. Display polarization seems to be gaining popularity. The other day we reported about Polaris and next up is IBM. Like Polaris, IBM's methed requires the viewer to wear polarized glasses. The lenses are clear so colors will be crisper than the old style red and blue glasses. IBM's approach is different in that it works with DLP displays instead of LCDs. This should mean it will be easier to manufacture large displays for home theaters. The News.com article has a video that shows the display in action. Of course you won't actually see the 3D effect in the video. Previously we've seen a lot of manufacturers announce glasses free 3D displays and most of them have used lenticular techniques which limits the horizontal resolution. Polaris Sensor Technologies Inc. is different. They stack two LCDs and use polarization to direct the appropriate image to each eye. The downside is the need for polarized glasses, but given a comfortable pair the high quality might be worth the cost. Their web site briefly explains the various 3D display technologies in use today giving some pros and cons for each approach. It's a good refresher even if you are somewhat familiar each technique. Polaris has been added to 3dcgi's 3D Display page. There's a new online magazine for 3D digital artists called 3DCreative. It's published monthly and cost money to download, however there is a Lite version that's free to download. The Lite version is well done. It shows every page of the magazine although not every page is big enough to read. Check it out here. As the premiere conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques Siggraph 2005 drew a large number of attendees (29,122) but not much in the way of mainstream press coverage. But never fear, 3dcgi has rounded up some articles covering various aspects of the conference ranging from papers to the emerging technologies pavilion. The articles are listed in the order in which they were found. EE Times - Emerging tech lights up Siggraph. This will be old news to some, but it was never reported here. In late 2004 eDimensional announced their 3D glasses now support LCD displays. Previously the lack of a CRT like refresh made it difficult for shutter glasses to present stereoscopic images to LCD users. If you have an LCD and would like to play games in stereoscopic 3D this is great news. Gamasutra and many other news outlets are reporting that Natural Motion has released a free learning edition version of their Endorphin animation software. If you yearn for something different than keyframe or motion capture based animation Endorphin might be what you're looking for.
A new article from Tom's Hardware Guide titled 3D Stereo Technology: Is it Ready for Prime Time? discusses many of the 3D display technologies on the market. The article starts with explaining how depth perception works and goes on to discuss technologies like anaglyph, head mounted displays, LCD shutter glasses, autostereoscopic displays. The more interesting part of the article for returning 3dcgi readers is the part about German display manufacturer A.C.T. Kern. It explains some of the technology behind their Free2C displays. Free2C technology is licensed from the German Fraunhofer Institute. IO2Technology has an interesting free-space display called Heliodisplay. The image floats in mid-air above the display unit, doesn't require glasses to view it, and can even be touched. The image is projected in two dimensional space, but supposedly the images appear to be three dimensional when viewed from more than a few feet away. The videos available on the web site seem to corroborate this statement.
The Heliodisplay technology is patent pending so IO2's web site doesn't contain much technical information. The displayed images are up to 22" diagonal and all the video sources you'd expect are supported. Touching the image provides no physical feedback, but a finger can be used as cursor, turning the Heliodisplay into a virtual touchscreen. Portable stereoscopic imaging on the go. That's what you get with the DepthQ Stereoscopic Video Projector by Lightspeed Design. At 6.8lbs this projector is light enough to travel with but it seems like it would be more fun with games and movies. High def resolution would be ideal, but the DepthQ's native resolution of 800x600 isn't bad considering the $3495 asking price. To view this 3D video you'll need active LCD shutter glasses like those from eDimensional. Toshiba announced it will throw its hat into the ring and start selling 3D displays. Commercialization is still a couple years away though. Their entry will be of the flatbed variety. Think tabletop. A new article from the IEEE's Spectrum magazine, called 3-Deep, does a terrific job summarizing the state of the glasses free 3D display market. Profiled technologies include swept volume displays like the Perspecta from Actuality and stacked LCD technology. Intel claims its new "computational nanovision" software technology can increase an image's resolution by at least two times. According to a news story at Tom's Hardware the software extracts details from multiple images and creates a single "super resolution" image. The technology can also be used for 3D surface recontruction. Computational nanovision sounds very similar to some NASA technology we reported on over a year ago. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens is getting a makeover and the new attraction is a virtual reality room or CAVE. Visitors will be provided with stereo glasses in order to see the 3D imagery. Read more about it at The New York Times. Registration may be required. The Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand has created an augmented reality book based on a story by New Zealand author Gavin Bishop. To experience the story the reader looks at the book through special glasses which makes the images from the page appear in three dimensional space above the page. The characters then act out the page's story. Read more about the interactive book at Technology Review. At a recent convention a group of Hollywood icons including George Lucas and James Cameron extolled the virtues of three dimensional movies. Cameron says all his future movies will be shot in 3D and Lucas wants to release all six Star Wars movies in 3D. The Star Wars flicks would be converted from 2D to 3D using technology from In-Three Inc. Here are two articles about the convention. ABC News. Guardian Unlimited. If you'd like to build some geometric intelligence into your 3D application consider integrating the MORE SDK from Next Dimension Imaging. The SDK analyses a triangle based model and breaks it down into parts. It can then determine each part's dimensions or allow editing of just that part of the model. Another use of the SDK is searching for a part. For example, searching for a handle might result in a match with a teapot or coffee cup. Novint has announced a 3D Touch Device for consumers. This haptic device resembles the FreeForm from SensAble Technologies although it looks a little cooler. The key here is that the product, called the Falcon, is targeted at consumers. Here's a quote from Novint's web site.
If you want to show off your realtime programming skills and win some cash in the process you might be interested in competing in The Imagine Cup.
Swiss Ranger's SR-2 camera uses the time-of-flight principle and a real time (30 Hz) infrared array sensor to capture a three dimensional representation of the scene, called a depth image. The camera is small, about the length of a pen, and it can capture gray scale images in addition to the depth images.
The image shown here is an example of the reconstruction of a depth image into it's three dimensional form. Click the image to see a larger version. Slashdot is hosting a reader review of a new book called 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice. Here's a snippet from the review.
2-D Holograms Make 3-D Color Display. This short article from Technology Review describes a three dimensional color display that uses 6 two dimensional holograms to generate the 3D effect. SenseGraphics has announced their open source haptic API is available for beta testing. The API uses OpenGL for graphics rendering and allows developers to add force feedback to their applications.
Update: Information about SenseGraphics' Mobile Immersive Workbench has been added to the Display section. A press release from 3Dsolar introduces their new three dimensional projector. Think Princess Leia's message from the original Star Wars movie. The product sounds cool, but without much detail on the web site it's hard to assess the true validity of the product. 3Dsolar plans to give a demo to Nvidia on October 25th so we'll keep you posted. Most Siggraph articles covered the press releases and the news, but Gamasutra's Siggraph 2004 wrap up does a good job covering the papers. It breaks them down into categories and describes some of the more interesting papers. Free registration is required to view the article. This week Engadget published a how-to for making 3D photos. They also show you where to get the free software you'll need. Check out the article. How-To Tuesday: Make 3-D photos. More from Engadget. NEC has developed a 3D display for cell phones that has a whopping 232ppi pixel density in 3D mode. This detail also sounds interesting.
Embedded Entertainment with Smart Projectors describes projection technology that can be used on any surface. A real time per-pixel color correction algorithm removes the background from the image. The color correction algorithm runs on graphics hardware that supports pixel shaders. If you have the bandwidth to download the 22 MB video check it out. Researchers at the University of Buffalo have developed a virtual clay sculpting system that creates a computer model as you sculpt real clay.
While there is no product available for sale the technology is far enough along that the developers have filed for a provisional patent. Update: In an EE Times article Virtual reality lab director Thenkurussi Kesavadas said "We are also planning to make it wireless."
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