Saturday, February 26, 2011

3D in your hand

Nytimes had an article a while back about stereoscopic displays in mobile devices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/technology/04novel.html?scp=1&sq=autostereoscopic&st=cse

A little bit of history is in order. If you read Lipton's widely read history of stereoscopy, you'll know that autostereoscopy (or 3D without glasses) was well known in the early days of 3D. The Soviets in fact had built an autostereoscopic cinema theater.

What killed autostereoscopy was that, with a fixed display, there were "sweet spots" or regions where you could see 3D. No one else could fuse the stereo pair. For example, the Soviet 3D cinema theater had a single row of seats straight down the middle!

The genius of recent mobile displays, is that they solve this problem by putting a display in the hand of each and every person in the audience. There is an approximate 3D sweet spot, about a half a foot away from the mobile device. Even if its a bit off, the human has control of the device and moves it about so that autostereoscopy works. This is why you don't need any complicated software. Just the same tech from the 1930s but with modern mobile devices.

Seems to work amazingly. The Economist calls it magical:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/01/video_games_0

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