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Displays

One Screen, Multiple Views 43

First time accepted submitter e-sas writes "Researchers from the University of Bristol have built a new type of display which allows both a shared view and a personalised view to users at the same time. Through the two view-zones, PiVOT provides multiple personalized views where each personalized view is only visible to the user it belongs to while presenting an unaffected and unobstructed shared view to all users. They conceive PiVOT as a tabletop system aimed at supporting mixed-focus collaborative tasks where there is a main task requiring the focus of all individuals of the group but also concurrent smaller personal tasks needing access to information that is not usually shared e.g. a war-room setup. Imagine you and your friends playing multiplayer Starcraft on one big screen instead of individual computer screens!"
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One Screen, Multiple Views

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    The summary makes zero sense, and looking through the article, it's equally as confusing.
    From what I could gather from the video, it's just a tablet of sorts that shows different images depending on your angle.
    I'm still not even sure of that though, anyone here want to translate it to idiot speak for me?
    • by Kenoli ( 934612 )

      It's a nonsense device. The summary is also awful. Multiple users playing Starcraft on one screen? Nobody would ever want to do that, especially not at the crazy viewing angles the device uses.

    • You pretty much got it.

      Further, by placing an opaque "marker" on the screen to see your "personal view" you've just obscured part of other people's "public view," meaning you're still blocking the screen. I declare this "technically interesting but otherwise inane" technology.
  • by locopuyo ( 1433631 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @12:45PM (#41754527) Homepage
    The technology is pretty cool and there are some uses for it but I think in most cases it would just be better to have multiple screens.
    The only times I really see much use for is slide show type presentations. The presenter has some extra notes he can read while the audience just sees the slides.
  • Real use. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @12:45PM (#41754531)

    You play games, your boss see work.

  • old news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @12:47PM (#41754551)

    my (next) car already has this: a split screen view [thecarconnection.com] so the driver can see the satnav while the passenger can watch movies or TV (with headphone support to avoid distraction)

    • by epp_b ( 944299 )
      I was going to say roughly the same thing. I recall seeing exactly this on an episode of Top Gear.
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @12:49PM (#41754585) Homepage

    They put a reflective film on a LCD monitor and aimed a projector at it. [bris.ac.uk] If you're almost perpendicular to the display, you see the projected image; otherwise you see the LCD image. The setup is that the display sits flat on a table and the projector is overhead, pointing down. If you lean over the display, the image changes. The room lighting has to be dim for this to work.

    It's cute, but the applications are limited.

    If you really wanted many people to see different things on the same screen, the various tricks used for 3D (shutter glasses, polarization) would be more effective.

    • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      "If you really wanted many people to see different things on the same screen, the various tricks used for 3D (shutter glasses, polarization) would be more effective"

      I really should have followed up on patenting that when I thought of it in 1996; Initial patent search didn't come up with obvious prior art, but being unemployed at the time I didn't have money to pay a patent attorney, and no clue how to go about getting VC funding. I also dropped it because of the Pokemon seizures, I figured shutter glasses m

    • by gnoshi ( 314933 )

      If you really wanted many people to see different things on the same screen, the various tricks used for 3D (shutter glasses, polarization) would be more effective.

      LG and Samsung agree with you [channelnews.com.au].

      There are problems with shutter-glasses though (aside from the headaches, diziness, etc some experience). The more people viewing, the more images you need to be switching through, so the smaller the segment of time you can display the imagine to each user.
      i.e.
      2 people: each gets 50% timeshare of display
      3 people: 33% timeshare
      4 people: 25% timeshare. I imagine the display is looking getting pretty dim by this point.

      With polarisation, you (to my understanding) simply can't pres

  • "Imagine you and your friends playing multiplayer Starcraft on one big screen instead of individual computer screens!"

    You'll still need an internet connection though...

  • by Nadaka ( 224565 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @12:55PM (#41754665)

    Imagine that while your wife is watching some chick flic, you can be watching a chick-on-chick flic on the same screen.

  • This would make pR0n more of a social activity.

  • What's up with that square object they need to put on top of it and move around to see some small personalized part? It doesn't seem practical if you need to place something on top of it just to view something...

  • This would also be fantastic for Artemis! Captain gets his big viewscreen, but the crew can look at the same screen and get the info they need to do their job!

  • I saw systems doing separate views using a lenticular lens screen (like you see on 3D advertisements) to show different views to different users back in the mid 90's in a university research lab. They claimed it was new, who knows. I saw it again in the early 2000's, again claimed to be new. I've seen it claimed as new twice in a particular large company's R&D division, and these guys are solving the problem in a clunky way. Maybe their lousy solution is new, but the solution space itself sure isn't.

    If

    • I saw systems doing separate views using a lenticular lens screen (like you see on 3D advertisements) to show different views to different users back in the mid 90's in a university research lab. They claimed it was new, who knows. I saw it again in the early 2000's, again claimed to be new. I've seen it claimed as new twice in a particular large company's R&D division, and these guys are solving the problem in a clunky way. Maybe their lousy solution is new, but the solution space itself sure isn't.

      If it was actually a useful solution, it would've entered production any time in the last 18 years since I first saw it.

      Sony's "two people playing on a single monitor" capability in their new monitor for the PS3 is the closest I've seen, but it requires active shutter glasses.

      Japan had them in the 90s.
      They advertised it as being for dads who wanted to watch baseball but couldn't because their shitty families always wanted to watch shitty crap.

      So the family is watching the tv from the center of the (tiny) living room, and dad's off in the corner with a beer, watching a baseball game on the same screen.

  • I saw a demo where two people where playing full screen on a tv by calibrating 3d glasses properly. That was convenient for an FPS deathmatch.

  • When you can buy 1080p monitors for as little as $100, is it worth it? I paid $360ish for my 120hz 3D Vision monitor. I could of bought 3 monitors instead with that price. Sometimes I wonder if I should of.

    Sounds like a gimmick to me, sort of like 3D movies. Yet they keep beating that dead horse.

  • With two separate views and a touchscreen interface it is only a matter of time before people start smacking each other's hands and fighting for screen real estate. It would be so much easier to simply use two monitors. They aren't that damned expensive.
  • Come on, Landrovers had this on their dash for years, where the driver sees a GPS while passenger sees a movie, on the same middle screen. Way to slashdvertise something...

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