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Displays

More 3D Displays to Come 122

Posted by michael from the invest-in-dramamine dept.
Anonymous Writer writes "The first laptop using an autostereo display to show images in 3D without special glasses was the Sharp Mebius PC-RD3D in Japan, later released in the US as the Sharp Actius RD3D. NEC has a line of computers with autostereo displays as well. They are the NEC Valuestar T VT900/8D desktop, the LaVie S LS900/9E laptop, and LaVie RX LR700/8E laptop. The line uses NEC's SoundVu technology that uses the display as a speaker! Autostereo displays are becoming more popular according to Martyn Williams and Tom Krazit from the IDG News Service. In their article in PC World, they claim laptops are just the start of it. A new satellite service by Mobile Broadcasting will be broadcasting 3D content to handheld devices in Japan some time soon. Another player in this market is Dynamic Digital Depth (mentioned in a previous post of mine), whose content services convert 2D video to 3D for display in this medium. Sanyo may be releasing 50-inch Plasma Displays that can display 3D. MIT's Media Laboratory is developing a more advanced 3D display, calling it a full resolution autostereoscopic display, that would allow a viewer to walk around and not lose the 3D effect, which current autostereo displays can't do."
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More 3D Displays to Come More

More 3D Displays to Come

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  • This will revolutionize the way pr0n is viewed!

    • Re:I'm so excited! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:14PM (#9414239)
      If only the images could be made solid and warm to the touch!

    • Re:I'm so excited! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know that 3D pr0n is on the way using dual dv cams and dual webcams.

      Realtime-3d.com [realtime-3d.com] makes the driver for the stereo multiplexing. They are even building 3d models in realtime so you could shift your viewing angle without moving the cameras.

      In terms of autostereo displays, I've used a couple and they are very restrictive. DTI makes one for about $1300. You can't move much though.

      For my money, I'm waiting for OLED displays. They'll have faster refresh rates than CRTs (supposedly) so they'll be abl

  • Tux would like to know... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if the 3d display makes him look fat

  • 3D RasMol? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by clustercrasher ( 675663 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:17PM (#9414259)
    Anyone planning to hook this into RasMol or PyMol? I would love to be able to look at my protein structures in 3D.

    http://pymol.sourceforge.net/

    • Re:3D RasMol? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @03:34PM (#9415034)
      Check this [actuality-systems.com] out if you want a 3D display for protein structures.

    • Re:3D RasMol? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The drivers for nVidia cards have built-in stereo 3d support for anaglyph (red/blue) and page flip modes. I've herd if you turn the drivers onto page flip mode they work with these fancy new 3d monitors, basically flipping from left to right eye images with every other frame. This is why alot of the laptops coming with these fancy monitors include an nvidia card, as ATI has absolutely no stereographic 3d support.

      The nvidia 3d drivers work fine with most all 3d (opengl or directx) games and applications. I'

    • Re:3D RasMol? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ashot ( 599110 )
      ICM [molsoft.com] has built in support for a 3d solution using special glasses and special software to interlace the image, its pretty cool. Beyond that though, ICM has to be the least appreciated and most full featured molecular biology software package out there, and the viewer (ICM-Lite) is free to download.

  • Are there any brick and mortar stores (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Throtex ( 708974 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:19PM (#9414263)
    ... that carry these 3D display laptops? I'd like to actually see the damned things before I buy one, you know!

    And wow, 1.3 hours of battery life. Looks like I'd need to get a really long extension cord to retain portability. :)

  • 3D Displays (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AnomalyConcept ( 656699 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:20PM (#9414265)
    This would be extremely useful, especially in the CAD community. While I only know a little about the area of CAD and manufacturing, this combined with the inkjet plastics printing (I forget the term for it) or rapid prototyping machines would be really neat. Imagine designing something, and being able to view it in 3D from all angles (instead of a render), and then sending it to be printed off. I've never seen one of these 3D displays before; how are the objects rendered? How much processing power is needed to create such a display, especially from a 3D model? I'm sure it needs to be rendered first, but what about a flat-shading 3D program like Autodesk Inventor? 3D displays would be neat for new GUIs. Instead of having a flat 3D desktop, you could have a true 3D desktop. That would be interesting to see...
    • The rendering is probably not at all different from your current '3d goggles' type rendering which basicly any video card on the market can do. It renders two frames, one intended for each, and somehow informs the goggles which one to show to which eye. The problem often is the reduced refresh rate, since you're now drawing 2 distinct pictures (one for each eye) on a single display device.

    • Re:3D Displays (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @03:37PM (#9415067) Homepage Journal
      "This would be extremely useful, especially in the CAD community. While I only know a little about the area of CAD and manufacturing, this combined with the inkjet plastics printing (I forget the term for it) or rapid prototyping machines would be really neat. Imagine designing something, and being able to view it in 3D from all angles (instead of a render), and then sending it to be printed off."

      Figured since I'm a 3D artist, you wouldn't mind if I chimed in. Would a stereoscopic display help me? If the display is convincing enough, yes! Right now, while I'm modelling, I'm constantly rotating the model around, sometimes just slightly, just to get a sense of the parallax. This gives me a clue as to what vertices are where. A stereo display could potentially relieve me from needing to rotate it as much. If that's true, I could get more detail on the screen without worrying about the vid card not being powerful enough for what I'm doing.

      I wish I could tell you for a fact that it would or wouldn't work, but I've yet to experience stereoscopic work-flow. I am rather curious, though.
      • I'm a programmer interested in 3D. I've been trying to get the time to build a 3D design program; basically, if you use Direct3D to do all your rednering (and you're a full screen app), then the nVidia drivers will do stereo for you; all you need is a $30 pair of shutterglasses (and an nVidia card, of course) and you're good to go...
    • Check out these items for CAD...
    • I have seen one of these displays (the Sharp laptop) at a tech show a while ago. Its the same old technology that is on the 3d stickers/posters and all kinds of stuff. A transparent surface with narrow vertical grooves covers the image, splitting the image into two slightly different directions. Here are the problems:

      1. Your head has to be in EXACTLY the right place for it to work. If you move your head at all the image goes from true 3D to blurry to reverse 3D. There is a very small "sweet spot" where the
    • How much processing power is needed to create such a display, especially from a 3D model?

      Well, nVidia has a plug in to their drivers allowing you to do stereo rendering in the card...

      I use it with my shutter glasses all the time. Every 3D game is compatible. It's good stuff.
    • Most systems render twice - at a viewing angle for each eye. Many 3D software (SGI-GL, OpenGL) has had this capability for 20 years.

  • NXT, not NEC (Score:5, Informative)

    by Boneburner ( 697565 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:28PM (#9414312)
    I don't want to be an smartass... but the SoundVu technology is not property of NEC, it was developed by NXT... just a word...

  • 3D autostereoscopic displays from MIT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:35PM (#9414349) Homepage
    I'm trying to wrap my mind around what exactly that convoluted mess of an MIT press release [mit.edu] is trying to say. If I understand correctly, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, the system tracks the heads of the people surrounding the display, then projects left-eye right-eye information through an adjustable polarized filter and lense system so that the viewable angle only includes the intended eye. The reason they need such a high refresh-rate is because they want a system that would work with 4 people... 4 people = 8 eyes = 8 times the updates.

    In essence, that's very cool. Why couldn't they just say that?

  • This doesn't work with Linux? From what I read, they are assuming I run Windows ;)
  • I am in the market for a monitor(well, actually a TV/Monitor combo) so I headed on over to Sanyo's site. any company that makes a Hello Kitty toaster [sanyo.com] has to be an awesome company. I would order one cept I don't have $40 to burn :(

  • Small viewing angle (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@nOSPam.gmail.com> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:52PM (#9414450) Homepage
    I imagine that the effective viewing angle on these planar 3D displays is very restrictive; move a couple inches to either side and all you'll end up seeing is the half-resolution image meant for one eye.

    The "3D displays to come" that hold the most promise, however, will require that you wear (non-dorky) viewing glasses. These normal looking glasses will use a safe Retinal Scanning [mvis.com] laser to directly overlay 3D imagery onto your field of view. Of course, we won't see this tech in BestBuy until the Law of Accelerating Returns [kurzweilai.net] has run the course of a few more years.

    It's not too hard to think of several killer apps for augmented vision that make all other conventional displays pale in comparison. Even a wall-sized OLED display would take 2nd.

    --

    • Re:Small viewing angle (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      Actually, the LCD versions have several viewing angles... move an inch to the side and you're out of phase, move another inch and you're back in phase. It's not perfect, but it works.

      Still, the reason that 3D displays are not currently popular is simply that people won't wear glasses. The SEGA Mastersystem had an excellent 3D effect from a simple pair of shuttered glasses. These are cheap and affordable, the type Kasperov used in his last (completely gimmocky) match against a computer. The 3D effect th
    • I doubt that retinal scanners will ever be a popular technology. First off you have to wear some sort of doohicky which blocks normal vision and is uncomfortable and jsut plain dorky.
      Next, you have a laser drawing on your eye.

      The one I used was mono-chrome, and the experience was a lot like looking through a keyhole at a crappy LED display. I used it for about a minute tops, and immediately after taking it off, I experienced a terrible headache and massive disorientation. I was disoriented for about hal

  • Does anything actaully use this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:52PM (#9414452)
    Does/will any software actaully use this?

    It would be very cool for CAD, but this is going to take up to much processor for real-time gaming rendering, isn't it?
    • Didn't you see the "Sun Java Desktop" demos? Imagine, not only can you flip windows so you can see their blank grey undersides, you will be able to see this blank grayness in 3 dimensions!

      More seriously, Sun does seem to think that a 3D desktop will be useful. I doubt it but then, one would need some hands-on with the implementation to judge.

    • Re:Does anything actaully use this? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jackbird ( 721605 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:20PM (#9414577)
      CAD usually end up hitting system resources much harder than games, since games are designed to only render datasets that will provide acceptable performance on the target hardware, while CAD programs, by their very nature, can attempt to render models of arbitrary complexity. Furthermore, with an arbitrary CAD model, you can't get performance boosts from precalculated optimizations like BSP trees.

      Also, speaking as someone who spends much of the workday turning 2D CAD files into 3D models, I don't think a 3D display would really be that useful in CAD, except maybe for client presentations. For starters, leveraging a 3D display to full usefulness would require a good 3D input device, and those just haven't arrived.

      Furthermore, given the limited number of scanlines, It would seem you'd be restricted to a fairly low number of pixels (depth-xels?) of Z resolution, which could quickly become a problem with fine detail.

      • The only way I've found to get a true color 3D image is to put both images side by side, then look at their center cross eyed. Is there a better way?

        Well, most stereo display technologies seperate the image into left-eye and right-eye views. These displays use vertical lines for each view, so your y resolution is cut in half. Shutter Glasses use page flipping for each view, so your refresh rate is cut in half.

        The z dimension is assembled by the brain itself, and doesn't have a resolution per se. My ex
    • The Stereoscopic Player (at http://mitglied.lycos.de/stereo3d/) and the StereoMovie Player (at http://www3.zero.ad.jp/esuto/stvply/indexe.htm) both support lots of 3D output formats, including most (if not all of the autostereoscopic ones this article is about).

      Now interesting content is another question altogether...

    • The Sharp Actius RD3D can be used with games [com.com]. It comes bundled with James Bond 007: Nightfire, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003, and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2.

      As for other uses, Dynamic Digital Depth [ddd.com] has photo viewer, movie player, molecular viewer, and PowerPoint plugin that are bundled [ddd.com] with the Actius RD3D as well. They can also be used with other autostereo displays.

  • Reminds me of Looking Glass (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XyborX ( 632875 ) <xyborx@noSPam.xyborx.dk> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:57PM (#9414468) Homepage
    Wow.. Imagine this combined with Suns Project Looking Glass [sun.com]..

    1. Perfect the technology
    2. Lower the cost so consumers can afford it
    3. "My laptop is more awesome than yours!"
    4. Profit!

  • actually, since the first 3-d laptop was announced (Score:3, Insightful)

    by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:59PM (#9414490) Homepage Journal
    I've been wondering, how long until we have digital cameras that have dual element ccd's

    digital sterescopic imagery... for said laptops...

    I'd love to take some 3-d pictures of my son for example.. esp if I could rotate the shots a few degrees....

    • Build your own rig (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MacFury ( 659201 ) <me@nOsPAM.johnkramlich.com> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:17PM (#9414562) Homepage
      Two of my friends have Canon Digital Rebels. We built a small rig using wood and machine screws that allows us to position the cameras side by side, lenses pointing slightly inward.

      It gives us some pretty cool stereo graphic images. The only way I've found to get a true color 3D image is to put both images side by side, then look at their center cross eyed. Is there a better way?

      • You could put both pictures in an animated gif like shown here:
        http://www.well.com/user/jimg/stereo/stereo _hearth .html

        I believe there are some stereoscopic glasses you can use to view the two images as one 3D picture.
        • Or, do what the old-school stereoscopes (i think) did. basically, place a thin piece of cardboard perpendicular to the photos, and let it rest between your eyes, touching your nose. Now, since each eye only sees the intended image, it'll look somewhat 3-d, though you'll have to play with the distance to get it right.
      • You can build or buy a stereoscope. See this link [stereoviews.com] for some sample antique stereoscopes. The concept is that you have a card that is about 10 inches from your eyes. On the card is the two pictures, one for each eye. Then the stereoscope separates your vision so that each eye sees a different image. This is the 19th century version of the Viewmaster [fisher-price.com].

        The antiques might work well if you print your images side-by-side.

      • Here is a good setup to view stereo pairs: http://www.crystalcanyons.net/Pages/TechNotes/Dual MonitorDigitalViewing.shtm It works with two monitors with a mirror placed between them. The mirror is placed in front of one of your eyes to redirect the image from the second monitor into that eye. It allows natural viewing of the 3d image without eyestrain. It seems that you are only looking at one monitor
      • The only way I've found to get a true color 3D image is to put both images side by side, then look at their center cross eyed. Is there a better way?

        Yeah, get an nvidia graphics card and a $30 pair of LCD shutterglasses.

        Format the image as a .jps and it'll show up. I have software to do the conversion, as well as repair slight imaging defects, if you want it. (James dot McCracken At Stratapult dot Com)

        Oh, and pointing the lenses inward is called "toe-in" and is not suggested for good stereo imagery.

        T
    • Would someone explain to me how this is a troll? Are you assuming that the poster in question wants to take pornographic pictures of his son? That is not even implied in his post. What if he wants to take pictures of his son in a little-league baseball game? What if he wants to examine his batting stance from multiple angles?

      Silly moderators. This is a perfectly innocent post. Please do not punish the fellow for being curious about 3-d photography. Not everyone who takes pictures of their own children
    • Canon was going to produce a 3D lens [tvcameramen.com] for their XL1 DV cam, but they canned the idea.
    • The two American rovers plus the ESA Orbitor have dual CCD systems for 3D. JPL periodicall released stereo panoramas. The ESA results are spectacular compared to the older altimeter-based 3D renderings.

  • Without autostereo? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikael ( 484 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:00PM (#9414493)
    The first laptop using an autostereo display to show images in 3D without special glasses was the Sharp Mebius PC-RD3D in Japan, later released in the US as the Sharp Actius RD3D

    Is the version without this feature, the Sharp Actius R2D2?
  • I would really love to hear a first-hand account from slashdotters who have actually seen these in person, at trade shows or whatnot. Popular media/press releases rob me of my soul.
    • I saw one at a government trade show last year. Everything else in the place was dull as dishwater, but when I saw that display I was frozen in my tracks. I can't remember the model, but I can vouch for the effect. No glasses, surprisingly wide viewing angle, and a real feeling of 3d. Very slick.
  • I've never seen such a set of unbelievable foul modding down of genuine posts!

    I mean the arsehole is not being unfair (for that you need inteligence) - he is just thick, a simpleton, on auto-mode: barely reading the posts and clicking-in the radio-buttons.

    This modding system would work if we had slick/cool/wise people doing it - but not by idiots like these.

    NB: I am *NOT* saying this for myself - but seeing interesting remarks modded down stupidly (from people that have way more to offer than our
  • ...I am very encouraged with the new LCD autostereo displays.

    3D photo imaging never seems to become mainstream, and not having to wear viewing glasses may help its acceptance, at least in some areas (visualization, gaming).

    And there's nothing like the natural appearance of a good 3D Photo.

  • SeeReal and other stereo monitor companies (Score:3, Informative)

    by maddugan ( 549314 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @03:51PM (#9415149) Homepage Journal
    SeeReal [seereal.com] and other stereo monitor manufactures use a similar technique as the Sharp laptop, but the go one step further and track the viewers position and shift the internal LCD to face the viewer. This improves the small view angle, but make the monitor thicker and wider to accommodate the clearance required for the shifting.

  • I wonder about people without stereoscopic vision (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kaladorn ( 514293 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @04:02PM (#9415228) Homepage Journal
    There are a number of us out there (yes me...), I think around 1-3%, who have effectively no 3D (stereoscopic) vision. In my case, I can detect a profound shift from eye to eye. When I tested on the fancy opthomalogical(sp?) machine where you try to line up 4 lines into a + sign (roughly), I could only ever see two at a time, which two depending on which eye I 'looked' through. In university geology courses, I could never use a stereoscope to examine stereoscopic pictures (trying to estimate a slide-mass was really fun....).

    So, I wonder which, if any, of these 3D technologies will work for people with these kinds of problems? Or, will we just become another group of 'informationally handicapped' people? (Which would suck, since I'm a programmer!)

    • Well, I'm not an expert, but I believe you would see the images on the display like you see the rest of the world. That is ultimately the goal of 3d technology.

      In the cases mentioned, the display sends slightly different perspective views to both eyes. You should still be able to see one or the other, even if you can't see both at once.

      In the case of the "walkaround" 3d display mentioned in one of the links, the display should still track your position correctly and send you the right perspective, so that
      • I'm sort of an expert, in that I have had dual mono-scopic vision for almost 40 years now.

        People without stereoscopic vision who are that way because of large deviations in the angle at which their eyes point will get no 3-D from any form of 3D technology.

        Why, well I have 6 degree vertical separation between my eyes, so when both my eyes are open simultaneously my brain has to ignore one of the images to cope.

        So it will continue to ignore one of the stereo images even if produced artificially.
        • That's amazing. I would have thought the brain pliable enough to adjust to the vertical separation when calculating disparity between the right and left images. Kind of like that experiment where they made someone wear glasses the flipped their vision upside down. After a couple of days, they could see normally b/c the brain adjusted and re-righted the images.
          • I would have thought the brain pliable enough to adjust to the vertical separation when calculating disparity between the right and left images.
            It is to a point.... 6 degrees is too far vertical. After a couple of days, If the 3D image was vertically corrected by 6 degrees AND I looked at it for 3 days then I'd be in for a treat.
    • Actually, a good 3d viewer for you may be simpler. Use an eye tracking system, and have an ordinary monitor display an oblect at a different position depending on your eye position.

      This will only work for dynamically created 3d content, like 3d games. No way to do this with photos or videos.
    • Its a bit late, but a short reply:

      My world is 2D as well, and I tried several 3D displays a couple of year ago, nothing worked still 2D.

      In Sydney I had the first 3D experience in my life: in the powerhousemuseum.com they have a 3D display where you look into the corner of a room, two walls are projections and you have shutter glasses. Really cool, nearly missed my flight back home.

      Second time was on the cebit back home. The Frauenhofer Institute have a display which is autostereoscopic, using a single la
  • Wake me up when they invent the holodeck!

    (Of course, by then there'll be some new *AA trying to crack down on 'illegal 3-D celebrity body scans' to take all the fun out of it...)

  • Well it's cool that AutoStereoScopic displays are here now. When can I bury my head in an ASS?
  • ...solution currently requires head trackers. You don't want to go there, trust me.

  • RD3D? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ozbird ( 127571 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @08:31PM (#9416598)
    I'm not sure about that model, but here's a picture [kozmiclazershow.com] of the R3D3 display in action.

  • That's pretty sad. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @08:58PM (#9416701) Journal
    When the MIT Media Lab puts up a webpage about a display, and it's all text, you know there's some suck built right in.
  • I just want LCD monitors to come down in price already! I don't want to pay $600 for a 17" LCD monitor when I can pick up a 21" regular monitor for around $250.

  • stereo + haptics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rexguo ( 555504 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @09:25PM (#9416793) Homepage

    That is great and all, but I believe the problem with all that, is that you -still- can't intereact with the 3D object you're seeing, at the place where it -appears-. That is, you're seeing the object in front of you, but your hand is like 30cm away on the mouse (or whatever 3D input device) trying to manipulate it. That's one thing we solved at ReachIn [reachin.se] (a company where I used to work for) by projecting the stereo image onto a mirror, and have a 3-DOF force-feedback device installed under the mirror, so that the hand can be -at the same place as the object-!

  • I think they're all barking up the wrong tree.

    This 3D thing is not about making something in 2D 'appear' to be 3D, but about really making it 3D.

    I mean holograms and stuff, but far beyond.

    I mean when you want to save a file, you literally reach out and grab it in your fist and drop it in a folder and whoosh there it goes in the folder and its saved.

    When you want to open a file, you literally pry a folder open with your fingers and then select from the contents within.

    You could also use the 'office cabi

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