TechWatch

Ever wondered how you can watch 3D content on a 2D set? Dr Geoff Ogram explains ‘freeviewing’ and the difference between cross eye and parallel viewing.

Do you remember those Magic Eye pictures? By adjusting the way you looked at the specially encoded pictures, a 3D image would emerge. It is a way of seeinmg a 3D image on a regular 2D medium without having to wear glasses. When viewing 3D video on YouTube, one of the options is no-glasses where the viewer can switch between cross-eyed and parallel to see a 3D effect without glasses using the similar viewing method to Magic Eye.

A startup uses 3-D cameras to keep track of hands and fingers, enabling more complex gesture control.

Microsoft's Kinect, a 3-D camera and software for gaming, has made a big impact since its launch in 2010. Eight million devices were sold in the product's first two months on the market as people clamored to play video games with their entire bodies in lieu of handheld controllers. But while Kinect is great for full-body gaming, it isn't useful as an interface for personal computing, in part because its algorithms can't quickly and accurately detect hand and finger movements.

Now a San Francisco-based startup called 3Gear has developed a gesture interface that can track fast-moving fingers. Today the company will release an early version of its software to programmers. The setup requires two 3-D cameras positioned above the user to the right and left.

The company’s CTO, Richard A. Muller, is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and he created the ‘Soliddd equation” after years of research. From what 3D Focus has seen, this lenticular based system vastly improves on what is available now with sharp pictures, huge depth and wider viewing zones. This is due to a greater understanding of the optics according to Neal Weinstock, the Chief Executive Officer.

“We soon discovered the other lenses in the world had been highly inaccurate. Nobody realised just how good autostereo displays can be and so people were not trying to manufacture as accurately as they should be doing.” he told us.

The system offers a 10 degree viewing angle repeated several times across the overall viewing cone. Neal tells us that they have the capability to offer more views than others. Most offer eight or nine views but Soliddd’s close up lens typically has 60 views. These extra views can be used for both movement and depth simultaneously.

Watching 3-D movies generally means suffering through two things: crappy plotlines that favor spectacle over substance and the need to wear some annoying, dorky glasses. Scientists may have solved one of these frustrations. (You might be able to guess which.)

Researchers in South Korea have created a new method that would allow moviegoers to simply sit down and start watching a 3-D movie with no extra gear necessary. The research was published today in Optics Express.

The new method would allow movie theaters to keep their projectors where they’ve always been, behind the audience, and uses fairly simple optical technology. A special array sits in front of the projector and polarizes its light. A filter covering the screen then obscures different vertical regions of the screen, like the slats of venetian blinds. Each of your eyes, sitting at a slightly different angle, has some of the screen blocked and some of the screen visible. The movie has the right-eye and left-eye images interleaved in vertical columns with one another. The trick then is to have the light visible to your left eye contain the left-eye pixels and vice versa for the right eye.