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Displays Hardware

3D Flat Panel With No Glasses 150

Posted by timothy from the my-flat-panel-has-no-glasses dept.
m4c north writes "From Japan Today: 'Toshiba Corp said Friday it has developed a brand-new flat-display that allows viewers to see three-dimensional images without using special glasses. The display is expected to be applied to arcade games, virtual menus at restaurants and simulations of buildings and landscapes. The company said it aims to commercialize the display within two years.' JCN Network offers a few more details than Japan Today's rather short summary. And Toshiba's [toshiba.co.jp] press release has some simple figures. Maybe pinball will make a comeback!"
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3D Flat Panel With No Glasses More

3D Flat Panel With No Glasses

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  • COOL! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Formz ( 870969 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:45PM (#12256696)
    Can we view pictures on our 2D monitors?

  • 3D Display (Score:5, Funny)

    by kabz ( 770151 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:45PM (#12256697) Homepage Journal
    I dunno about pinball, but we could have some rocking porn.

  • Is this new? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tolan-b ( 230077 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:46PM (#12256706)
    I thought there'd been monitors out that do this for a while? Wasn't there a laptop with this tech?

    • Re:Is this new? (Score:3, Informative)

      by kabz ( 770151 )
      Yep, this has already been done, http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/pc_notebooks/ actius/rd/3d/ [sharpsystems.com]

      More to the point, are there any applications that make sensible use of this ?

      • Re:Is this new? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NeoThermic ( 732100 )
        Any that require 3D models to show what is required. CAD/CAM applications, any one doing 3D rendering, showcases for new homes, medical software (teaching that is), etc.

        The "average" user won't, however, have any use for this until computer games start using it, but then again, thats the whole reason why we have faster computers now isn't it?

        NeoThermic

        • I''ve been trying to find out if it is possible to get the Sharp Actius AL3DU [sharpsystems.com] laptop to run 3DS Max [discreet.com] in autostereo mode together with a plugin [sensable.com] for a 3D haptic input device called the SensAble PHANTOM Omni [sensable.com]. It also might be cool to add the 3Dconnexion SpacePilot [3dconnexion.com] input device for navigation.

          I think this would be the ultimate interface for 3D design. Has anyone had any experience with this? I've been emailing all the companies involved and have gotten responses saying that there are problems with this setup

      • It shouldn't be long before nVidia modifies its current Stereo Display drivers, that require glasses, to work with this tech.

        I've used the LCD shutter glasses before, and they are awesome, although they are quite bulky.
    • yeah, one of the companies (I forget which, they had several laptops on display) at LWE was showing one off. It was somewhat of a pain to use though, because you had to position yourself in a certain spot for optimal viewing (although there was a bit of leeway, really)

    • Re:Is this new? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mikael ( 484 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:35PM (#12256993)
      Yes, there is. But the article is describing a 24" flatbed display system that would sit on your desk or lap and is viewable from all directions within +/-30 degrees from perpendicular and distances over 30 cm. Apparently, the rendering software generates 12 to 16 different stereoscopic images which are combined to generate the different views for each eye. However, the resolution is rather low at 480x300 pixels.

      Each pixel has a microlense that only allows light from that pixel to be viewed from a particular direction - it's the natural extension of the laptop screen system.
    • The answer is yes there have been monitors that can do this for a while. www.sharpsystems.com

      Notebooks
      PCRD3D
      PCAL3D

      Monitor
      LL-151-3D

      The technology is good now, but it is just the first run. There are more products in the works that are much better than these.

      As far as technology taking advantage of the monitors, all that is required is an nVidia graphics card and the up to date drivers that make nVidia compatible with 3d glasses. It will display Direct3d programs in 3d to the best of my knowledge and ther

  • Sharp? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kyle90 ( 827345 ) <kyle90@gmail.com> on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:47PM (#12256712) Homepage Journal
    Isn't Sharp already selling 3D LCD screens?

    • Re:Sharp? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by SeiRyu ( 774810 )
      Current sharp monitor monitor does this by displaying differing images to right and left eyes. This quickly makes the eyes tired, and is not suitable for long-term use. The technology by Toshiba is done through reflecting images to the small concavities in the surface of the monitor, so causes little to no strain on the eyes. Currently it has 30-45 degrees of viewing range but it's said that the same technology can be used to achieve 360 degrees of viewing range. -Yuki
      • "This quickly makes the eyes tired, and is not suitable for long-term use"

        What? Can you explain why this would make the eyes tired? My guess would be that it cuts the refresh rate in 2, hence your eyes hurt from the low refresh.. no?

  • Funny glasses (Score:4, Funny)

    by wingsofchai ( 817999 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:49PM (#12256723)
    But I liked those red and blue glasses! They made me look cool...

  • Wow, I can't wait... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Captain Rotundo ( 165816 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:50PM (#12256729) Homepage
    Until I have one, so I can keep reading this story but only IN 3-D!

  • Been done (Score:5, Informative)

    by keyframe ( 796422 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:51PM (#12256736)
    Sharp has had 3D Displays [sharpsystems.com] that don't require glasses for some time now.
    • Has anyone seen these screens in person? I'm wondering what the Image quality is like on these and if the 3d effect is really convincing. The pictures on the web site look nice, but I was wondering if anyone has seen one of these in person?

      • i've seen some (Score:4, Informative)

        by mjbkinx ( 800231 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:02PM (#12257530)
        Has anyone seen these screens in person?

        not these, but i've seen a model from these guys [seereal.com] on a fair in helsinki in late 1999. i always thought it would be nice to have a 3d display that worked without glasses, and all of a sudden i found myself standing right in front of one. it was quite impressive, good image quality and yes, a convincing effect. only when i moved my head it took a very short moment to retrack my eyes and readjust the prisms (there are prisms in front of each vertical pixel row. they direct the light so that one eye sees the even and the other the odd numbered pixel columns). the guy peresenting it told me they had played quake III on it :)
        i came across their displays again on cebit a few years later, there also were some by the fraunhofer institute [fraunhofer.de] (the ones i've seen are probably not on the page, they had one or two that tracked your eyes and adjusted to your position, and one that only worked at a specific position, iirc).

        anyway, while searching for the seereal link above, i came across this [stereo3d.com] list of 3d displays, there even are price quotes for a few.

  • Usefulness? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NightWulf ( 672561 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @03:51PM (#12256739)
    These faux 3D moniters sound nice and all, but I can't really see the big use of it. In specialized ways like the examples stated they sound good, but for games and regular applications it's probably useless. We're not talking holograms here, it's just basically what you see on a cheezy 3D film just without the glasses. I'm more intrested in the day when digital paper is cheap and effective. Imagine layering a room with this, and getting images on all 6 sides, and playign things such as an FPS, or RPG. Even adapting movies and such would be quite useful.
    • having a better sense of depth would be the best thing to ever happen to racing and flying games. immersive 3d would be great, but this is not at all useless.
    • We're not talking holograms here

      When reading a press release like this, it seems to be a common slip of the imagination to first assume a projected hologram instead of just a clever 2D trick.

      It's not the reader's fault sometimes though. Marketing departments need to stop calling this kind of technology a "3D display" becuase it is not. They are a 2D display which do some fancy tricks to create the illusion of 3D within it's display perimiter.

      And we are misled even further by bad examples. The images a

    • Imagine layering a room with this, and getting images on all 6 sides

      It's not exactly what you describe, but there's the VT-CAVE [vt.edu]. It needs LCD shutter glasses and displays on the front, right, and left walls, and on the floor.

    • We're not talking holograms here, it's just basically what you see on a cheezy 3D film just without the glasses.

      Cheezy 3D film? It sounds like your last experience with 3D technology was somewhere in the mid-nineties. You know, when the first VR helmets with 320x200 displays appeared or something.

      Have you seen a 3D film recently? If not, I suggest Polar Express at your nearest IMAX. That might provide you with some clue about how 3D can look.
  • Will the next generation of Game consoles be able to make use of this technology? Seems like the uber-realistic shooter could be nigh.
    • Perhaps as an option, but the strength of game consoles is that you don't also need to invest in a new (and bloody expensive) screen, so it won't be standard.
  • of course you can still see 2-d pictures. the display ALLOWS you to view in 3d. boy will this be weird. just imagine all the abuses of this...

  • Not the same as Sharp (Score:5, Informative)

    by eXzite ( 839737 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:01PM (#12256797)
    If you RTFA, it becomes evident that this display technology isn't the same as Sharp's 3D LCD. Sharp's display requires you to be in center of the display, and at a certain distance, and the 3D effect works by projecting steroscopic images at each eye. They direct two different screen images essentially, but it's still the same old trick, just without glasses, instead, a diffusion filter angles the output to each eye.

    From this article, it seems as if each pixel is a microlens that redirects the display to your two eyes on a per-lightwave basis. This obviously allows a much wider viewing angle, and for multiple viewers, while still creating the illusion of depth.

  • New? (Score:2)

    by EEBaum ( 520514 )
    Saw one of these at E3 two years ago, though I forget who made it.

    Granted, it kinda made my head hurt to look at, but regardless, you could see 3D images on a screen outside the booth.
    • Are you sure you're not think of Sharp's technology? It's quite different than this one. Toshiba's looks far superior, we'll see.
      • It could be. It was a while ago and E3 has a way of, well, overstimulating me until I forget who made what.

  • Screenshots? (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobertKozak ( 613503 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:06PM (#12256829) Homepage

    Anyone have a link to the screen shots? I really would love to see how good the 3d effect is.

    Robert

  • Vision impairments (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:06PM (#12256834)
    I have 20/400 vision in my left eye. Because of that, I perceive almost everything with my right eye. As a kid, this made taskes such as hitting a baseball or catching a football exceedingly difficult because I have piss-poor depth perception. It almost made those red & blue "3D" movies pointless for me. Will this mean that I can't read any informational displays that use this type of tech in the future?
    • I have a simmilar problem, strabismus (a.k.a. lazy eye/cross-eye/etc.).

      I always found moving side-to-side helped in judging distnaces, shape, etc. So I would imagine that you can do the same thing with this screen.

    • Another poster suggested moving side to side.... but besides that, it's not like you *have* to use the technology from the screens. Actually, I'm not sure about the details of this particular screen, but I would imagine it would have to be enabled in software before it did anything - a configuration setting for pieces of software which support it. So leave the setting off, I guess, and you're no worse off than you are now...
    • Depth perception, the ability to perceive realtive distances, exists to some extent as a monocular function. You can move your head side to side to gain parallax for instance, distant objects are bluer, closer objects overlap distant ones.
      Stereopsis, which is the phenomenon upon which this screen and 3D movies is based requires 2 eyes. Two input streams have different angles and the effect of 3 dimensions is created in the brain as a cyclopean view. A person with one eye would not see the stream addresse
    • I have 20/400 vision in my left eye. Because of that, I perceive almost everything with my right eye.

      Why don't you correct your bad eye? 20/400 isn't that bad, -4 diopters. I'm wearing -3.75 contacts right now and I"m fully corrected to 20/15.

      You can do exercises to train your brain to use the bad eye's input again. Talk to a good optometrist who works with vision disorders.

      And be glad you're not color blind if you're working with informational displays.
  • My company was given a demo of a similar product only from another vendor. It was a pretty interesting demonstration consisting of video and real time 3D animations. The only problem I could see with their implementation was that it had "sweet spots", four if I recall correctly, and unless you were viewing the display from an one of the correct angles it didn't look quite right. One thing that was pretty impressive was that using a custom driver that they made, it would be technically possible to alter a
  • This monitor, along with the Sharp one, would accompany well with Longhorn, which IIRC will include 3D desktops. So, it would be one step past that.

    Like always, we need the actual software and applications to actually utilize new hardware.

  • 3D virtual restaurant menus? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:13PM (#12256879)
    That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The only restaurant that could afford this would be a very high-end one and they're not going to disrupt their elegant atmosphere with a bunch of 3D LCDs.

    Maybe Planet Hollywood would go for this. That way they can show what a $15 hamburger looks like in 3D.
  • This technogy reminds me of some higher-ups in a war huddled around one, planning there next move... Or some Vulcans and Humans planning some exploration....

  • How does this work? (Score:4, Informative)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:13PM (#12256881) Homepage
    However, mainstream 3-D technology is limited in terms of the viewing angle at which it can display 3-D images, and the images are also tiring to view.

    Toshiba's new displays employ an integral imaging system that reproduces light beams similar of those produced by a real object, not its visual representation.

    But that's all they say. How does this work? Are they somehow able to emit light waves going out at every point from a flat surface, so that you see a 3D object with correct perspective no matter which direction you look at it from? I guess that isn't that unrealistic; I mean, mirrors do exactly that. But how does it work?

    Is this for real or are they just being overenthusiastic in their own press releases?

    • Re:How does this work? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mikael ( 484 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:49PM (#12257055)
      How does this work? Are they somehow able to emit light waves going out at every point from a flat surface, so that you see a 3D object with correct perspective no matter which direction you look at it from? I guess that isn't that unrealistic; I mean, mirrors do exactly that. But how does it work?
      Take a standard 1600x1200 display, place a microlense over each pixel so that the light is only visible from one of sixteen directions (imagine 16 point distributed over a hemisphere). Now wherever a person stands, each eye will only
      see a particular image.

      Middleware software is used to convert existing images to work with this system. A 3D application would have to render 12-16 different views of the scene for this to work.
      • Am I correct in assuming this will also mean you lose 12-16 times your resolution, since each pixel can only be projected in one direction?

        i.e. your glorious 1600*1200 display turns into a 400*300 display?

      • Now wherever a person stands, each eye will only see a particular image.

        This is a key point. There is a huge distinctrion between 3D displays that create two images, one for each eye, and rely on stereoscopic vision; and multiple-viewpoint displays.

        Its a little appreciated fact that many people don't have stereoscopic vision at all, even if they have two functioning eyes. These people still see 3D (e.g., can drive safely). How? The same reason you can see 3D at long ranges (miles and miles), where stereo
        • Even people with normal stereoscopic vision can have problems with this.

          I took a helicopter up to a glacier in Alaska once. It's so vast and has so little foreground that you can't judge distance.

          I asked the tour guide, since we had an hour up there if I could walk the quarter mile or so over to a waterfall that was several hundred feet high.

          He explained to me that it was five miles away and a quarter mile high. There was absolutely no way for me to judge the distance properly so my brain basically mad

  • Popup ads (Score:4, Funny)

    by MiKM ( 752717 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:21PM (#12256924)
    This will pop-up ads to a whole new dimension.

  • Pinball Blues (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mrshowtime ( 562809 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:24PM (#12256939)
    Well, there already was a company that up until last year was making vitual pinball machine games with a large flat panel monitor mounted vertically. It failed and now the company has retrofitted the machines to play other games. The only way pinball would work, outside a real pinball machine, is to have spot on physics and force feedback to match and to be almost holographic. Pinball is a visceral experience, you hit the ball and it goes where you hit it. No computers to cheat you of that.
  • My eyes don't like to look at the same thing at once, which is how depth is perceived. Is this another nifty 3D product that I won't be able to use?

    (Yes, I have lived my life without 3D movies, funky optical illusions, or Virtual Boy)

    • Re:And for those of us lacking depth perception? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think you meant to say: "For those of us who cannot see 3D in real life, will this product magically allow us to see 3D on a computer screen?"

      The answer is no. Nothing to see here. Move along.
  • I'd love to see this used in conjunction with this http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/ 15/220204&tid=126&tid=227&tid=97 (Minority Report UI For The Military)

    There could be a gesture which brings the "window" you're moving around closer towards you on the Z-axis (like a beckoning gesture) and one to move the windows further away on the Z-Axis. (Like a pointing gesture.)

  • Regret (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:24PM (#12256945)
    There will come a day when you witness a 3D goatse, and then you will surely regret this.
  • I have just skimmed over the article. 3D LCD's have been out for a while. I have read a large 3 Page article on it in new scientist a while back. If my memory serves, as mentioned above. Current 3d screenes only work so long as u are virtually straight ahead of the screen. As it relies on 2 filters to filter one screen from each eye. They had developed 3d screens using 4 LCD's and several filters to allow viewing from as large a range as normal LCD screens. But much more costly. (obviously)

    The current

  • Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmccarty ( 152630 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @04:31PM (#12256973)
    From the it's-been-just-two-years-away-for-the-last-10-year s dept.
  • I saw pseudo 3d lcds at the CeBit (can't remember who produced them) and they looked like, you know, ugly.
    If you weren't in the sweet spot all you could see was a distorted image in different colours, and even if you found the optimal position the colours were wrong. I wouldn't want to have one of those.
    It has to be terribly un-ergonomic not to be able to move your head.

  • Virtual Window Panes aren't gonna happen (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Digital Window Panes would be optimal but very expensive (from an information perspective). If you want to replace a non-directional pixel by a virtual voxel of window...

    Lets do an back of envelope calculation, they are so fun...

    Lets suppose a 90 degree viewing angle (both horizontal and vertical) with 1' degree quantization. Thats 29 thousand times as much information as a 2d display with similar resolution and color depth. Compression of the video signal from the source to TV would be absolutely ma

    • No, I don't know why you're an anonymous coward. Posts such as this are encouraging fact that there's some people who at least think on this forum. As for your data needed to transfer, I don't think that's needed. A good solution would be to use an extra Z-axis, which would only increase the data (assuming 32-bit color scheme), adding a 2 byte long z axis will only increase the data from 4 bytes per pixel to 6 bytes. The viewing angle could be calculated using a hard coded chip inside the monitor to ca
      • P.S. Get an account so I can mod you up for this kind of post.

        The point in moderation is to enhance the visiblity of the good posts, and lower the visibility of the bad posts. There is no reason that moderation should be different for an Anonymous Coward than for a registered poster. The only reason to make a distinction is if you think that Karma is some sort of game.
  • 10 or more views?? it's going to look like those lenticular "3D" playing cards.. you know the ones.. where the wrong angle results in you seeing a combo of more than the recommended number of frames.

  • How about a Sony Playstation 3D? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Saturday April 16, 2005 @05:27PM (#12257277) Homepage Journal
    Practical 3D-display technology has been just around the corner for years. Trouble is it always falls short with tradeoffs in brightness, resolution, or head placement. When going to a 3D movie shown with polarized glasses or LCD shutter glasses you still have to keep your head perfectly level or the image will split diagonally in two.

    This will probably be much the same, another attempt that falls just short. I predict 3D will take off big time when very small, very light weight, very high resolution headsets arrive, whether LCD or scanning micro-laser or whatever.

    Despite my pessimism I think we should plan for a 3D future now. I doubt the HD-DVD people or Blu-Ray camp will see this post, but they should build in 3D compliance now. Since digital compression is about encoding similarities between frames, it should work well to compress two nearly identical images to one probably only adding a 10 percent overhead for a film shot in 3D. All players should be able to read a 3D title, ignoring the 3D enhancement data on standard players. Blu-Ray especially would have both the capacity and bandwidth to pull this off, in fact imagine the Marketing coo a Playstation 3D would be. I'll bet you wouldn't have to change most off the shelf 3D games to be true 3D in true stereovision if the hardware is done right. Existing titles transformed to a more immersive experience overnight.

    • 3D for games is the next killer entertainment application. Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve.

      But here is an idea: instead of doing 3d on a 2d surface, why don't we have 3d pixel cubes? a true 3d display would be a cube that contains little 3d boxes arranged in 3 dimensions. Each box could contain some sort of substance that, when electricity is applied to it, becomes opaque with a colour; otherwise, it is blank and transparent. Electric lines will be thin and therefore nearly invisible.

      The 3d cube
      • Yeah, because a machine with a 640x480x480 voxel display only needs to have 640*480*480*4 bytes of storage for its framebuffer.

        That's only 562 megabytes or so, after all. Ok, you say, that's about the average main memory a machine these days has. We can work with that. But:

        Updated at 60 fps, this requires a memory bandwidth of 60*562 MB = 33 gigabytes/sec.

        DDR 4000 RAM currently has a bandwidth of 4000 MB/s. PCI-X slots are at best in the same range.

        I'm just saying, think about this a little first.
        • Well, one can start with a smaller screen: how about 320x240x240x1 byte? a 256 colour 3d display will be a huge improvement over the current 2d displays. And that is a mere 18 MB.

          Let's not forget that the whole thing can be done in parallel: the 240 screens along the z-dimension can have independent buses; let's say one bus per 8 screens. That would be 30 separate lanes. It's not that much, especially with today's technology.

          Come on, don't be pessimistic. We've got to push for new directions. There might
    • I'll bet a PS 3D would be as successful as that other 3D machine, the Virtual Boy...oh wait...

      • Well that was a crappy implementation of 3D, crude compared to 2D graphics of its day. I am not suggesting Sony force 3D Stereo on everyone, the processing power for the graphics sub processing would be just about doubled. I am suggesting a high-end machine variant that plays 3D titles in true Stereovision with little or no modification to an existing game title. Instead of generating one camera angle, it would be generating two slightly offset camera views either side of the point called for in the game
        • How would that affect games though that depend on depth perception in the game to judge things? Like FPS's. Imagine the distortion you'd see when moving the crosshairs. And I know you could use it on other games, but I'm willing to bet you anything the biggest video game demand will come from FPS for this type of technology.

  • Hello, the Sega game I played in 1992 called and wants it's technology [klov.com] back.
    • BTW, I am very depressed that nothing as visually impressive as Time Traveler [klov.com] has been released in the last 10 years. The thing looked 3D from like 170 degrees. I actually had to stick my hand out to see if it would go through the holograms.

      When I first saw this game, I thought that technology was taking a great leap and that the near future held great things... I can't believe that there hasn't been any mainstream use since then. :(

  • Just bring back old-tech 3D... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `oarigogirdor'> on Saturday April 16, 2005 @05:48PM (#12257442) Homepage
    Remember the flickering 3D glasses for Sega's old Master System? They were pretty good. It'd be great if a modern game console had something like that.
  • This looks very much like the old (1993) David Beavers' "Magic Stage" - a 3D projection of a real-time computer generated image using laser pointers. Light is light, regardless of the source. In the Beavers' project, he was not limited to a few inches above the projection platform and he integrated it with "Poser" so the 3D images could be manipulated by actors. Last I heard, his project was taken in my David Copperfield and nobody else really uses it. Kind of sad because it looked very interesting when

  • How it works (Score:2, Funny)

    by m00j ( 801234 )
    You just have to wink each eye in rapid succession to get the 3d effect, the panel is a regular one! They have quite clearly patented the idea of winking rapidly.
  • A 3D-like sensation can be acheived using panning around the scenery. This is probably far cheaper and far easier on the eyes for extended play. The brain uses motion parallax to estimate distances. It provides just about the same info as stereo vision, just not quite as fast. Thus, you get 80% of the effect/sensation with 20% of the cost and eye-strain.

    (Google "Mars Pathfinder Stereo Wiggle")

  • Lensing Is Awful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) * on Saturday April 16, 2005 @07:12PM (#12257895) Homepage
    You would have a hard time finding someone who wants autostereoscopy to look good than me. I've bought three different sets of LCD shutter glasses, installed and tweaked ungodly numbers of drivers, and partially went to SIGGRAPH simply to see the state of the art in the technology.

    As of September, 2004, it's all awful. I've seen the Sharp Laptop. I've seen the X3D display. I've seen every attempt to create 3D without glasses, and they're all embarassingly bad. One inch of depth does not 3D make, especially not at the cost of visually hideous artifacts (half the horizontal resolution means you end up looking at these double width, very blocky pixels). There was one exception, which used several stacked layers to simulate 3D without attempting to use lensing. The depth was still awful but it didn't hurt at all to look at. Of course, you'd never notice any depth from a distance.

    Of course, it's not just lensing that's problematic. I got strapped into not one but two HMD-based systems -- one, a swimming simulator [doxpara.com], the other a fairly cool cockpit simulation with per-finger force feedback gloves. Both systems looked cool from the outside, but having played with this stuff off and on since the days of Amiga-based Arcade VR (what *was* the name of that system?) I can tell you it hasn't gotten much better. I wanted it to be immersive, but...no.

    Really, the only display tech that really blew me away used dual rear projectors that fed back into one another to achieve alignment, then emitted polarized light onto a single screen. With very light and simple glasses, the effect was utterly seamless.

    I vaguely remember the spinning display approach also worked.

    --Dan

    • Really, the only display tech that really blew me away used dual rear projectors that fed back into one another to achieve alignment, then emitted polarized light onto a single screen. With very light and simple glasses, the effect was utterly seamless.

      I vaguely remember the spinning display approach also worked.

      I found some info on the web about 3D projectors [vrex.com] for use with polarised glasses as well as a spinning display [actuality-systems.com] a while back. Are these the ones you are talking about? This [stereo3d.com] website has a lot of inf

    • What exactly is it that you don't like about it: the sense of immersion, the resolution, the sense of depth, or something else entirely? I'm asking because I'm looking for a screen like this for a project at work, where the customer needs great depth perception but doesn't care as much about immersion.

      • Johann,

        Why don't you check out Actuality's [actuality-systems.com]products? The display isn't gigantic, but I remember it being pretty convincing.

        Just go ahead and look at an LCD approach. You'll agree. Ew.

        OK, I think I tracked down the polarized-light approach to 3D that was unambiguously fantastic. See here [prosystems.nl].

        --Dan

    • Re:Lensing Is Awful (Score:3, Informative)

      by cr0sh ( 43134 )
      since the days of Amiga-based Arcade VR (what *was* the name of that system?)

      The name of the original system was "Virtuality", at the time the company was named "W Industries, Ltd" and based in the UK. The original system used an Amiga 3000 with custom video graphics cards (one for each eye) and IIRC, a SCSI CD-ROM drive. The HMD used small (1 inch or so diagonal) color CRTs, which were optically folded into the eyes (periscope style). The tracking was done via a Polhemus mag tracking system.

      These early ma

      • Whoa. Thanks for the info, it's quite appreciated. VR and AI have gone down similar roads, haven't they...

        I wouldn't be too down on the Raytheon code; while the mocap guys have certainly been using high resolution, high frame rate cameras to get detailed positioning out of point clouds, they're focused on driving skeletons, not interfaces. From a programmatic point of view, your standard position tracking code wass probably so tied into mocap work that a scratch implementation, built for UI research, wa
  • Obviously this is a hoax, objects can't be flat and 3D at the same time!
  • The monitor lies flat on a surface and the image is project upwards...that IS NEW!.

  • 3d (Score:2, Interesting)

    by radu124 ( 871406 )
    best experience I had was with polarized light systems, but I don't really have access to those. Shutter glasses aren't great, they really kill the 3d effect, I don't know why. What anyone can afford is red-blue glasses, that is if you don't mind looking at the stuff in "black-and-white" (your brain really gets used to it and the color's dont matter so much). In the old times I made a really simple DOS game using this. You also used to have driver support for that and I remember playing quake, but I remembe

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