3-D Monitors From Actual Depth

Klenex writes "True 3-D Visual Effects w/o the use of annoying '3-d' glasses or stereograms. Actual Depth "The Actual Depth monitor is actually two LCD displays stacked on top of each other. The LCD on top displays white transparently, so you can see through to the display beneath it, which is opaque." You need a dual head card or a 2nd video card to drive each display but this seems incredibly cool and it will work with any OS which supports dual monitors w/o any other hardware. Here's TechTV's scoop on the new technology. They even have a link to contact them about a demo in your area. I'd love to see one of these in action even though chances are I would never be able to afford one. Prices start around 6 grand, quite steep."

Two layers?

[lxmeister]

Two layers doesn't seem very deep. Wouldn't it take a few more to create something resembling 3 dimensions?

Re:Two layers?

[Foss]

It's the white transparency on the first layer that'll sort this out. If something is supposed to look closer to you, it'll be made lighter by the nearer screen. If it's further away it'll be darker.

Only 2 levels of depth?

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to forget that with 3D glasses, you're not limited by the depth of the apparatus, you can render things at infinity, and even things in front of the screen!

Furthermore, with 3D glasses you get to see everything even if you're not exactly in front of the screen (think 'living room' with 10 people watching the same screen, some people will have tilted views). If your 3D TV is shaped like a hollow box, then the sides of the box will hide parts of the image for some people.

The only technology that could compete with 3D-glasses would be a transparent hollow box, or think R2D2 projection hologram. You still lose the range of depth you can get with 3D glasses (so you lose panoramas), but you gain a "stand in your room" effect which could be pretty cool in some cases.

3d-glasses, like rechargeable batteries, a great simple technology that somehow gets dismissed.

Its called an overlay plane ....

[Merlin42]

Instead of spending 6k on a a spiffed out display device spend 500-1000 on a very nice profesional graphics card(heck i think some of the cheaper Matrox cards have this) that supports an overlay plane. CAD software has been making use of these for years. In fact some SGI's support makeing everything in the overlay plane 'superbright' so that labels stand out. And with the overlay plane you are not stuck with white as your only 'chroma key' color choice.

Kevin