3D TV For The Masses? 116
scubacuda writes: "Technology Review has an article on new software that could make 3D television a reality. Previously encumbered by an expensive process that takes up to nine cameras per scene, a company called DDD now takes existing 2D film and creates a "depth map" for each frame. A TV that can handle this sort of software rendering currently costs $25K, but DDD estimates that in a few years, a 3D TV could only cost only 20% more than its 2D counterpart."
Make Billions... (Score:2, Funny)
THREE NIL (Score:1)
Re:Make Billions... (Score:2)
Of course, when people start using these nifty cameras [slashdot.org] that can record video depth as well, the additional cost for new 3D productions will be trivial.
Re:Make Billions... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Make Billions... (Score:2)
(at least with VCRs you were buying it to record TV first, and watch porn second).
Re:Make Billions... (Score:1)
I'll wait till they invent smellTV for that... mmmm Jameson's underwear...
There's already 3D Movies! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:There's already 3D Movies! (Score:1)
The difference is that this system extract real 3d DATA which could then be further manipulated.
For more discussion on this topic please see the original
Newsflash: Internet grinds to a halt (Score:1)
All at a time when cable companies are trying to wind back bandwidth useage.
Fun.
Re:Newsflash: Internet grinds to a halt (Score:1)
We really only add about 4 percent of info to the original 2D image
so these movies are just as easy to steal/share/download as any other.
Don't get caught stealing the $25K television though.
Re:Fuck TV (Score:1)
Should make the future of 3d modelling more fun... (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine being able to import such images. It would require either work to edit the 3-d shape so it had a "back" & smooth the shape a little, or else software to interpolate multiple images from different angles into one high resolution 3-d shape - but the opportunity to get a wide variety of shapes to start the process of modelling would be of great benefit to many artists and designers.
Of course, the flip side to all this would be that individuals and organizations may start copyrighting shapes in addition to images. The first court cases over something "shaped like" a copyrighted object will be very interesting.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
Re:Should make the future of 3d modelling more fun (Score:2)
1st post = funny
2nd post = offtopic
1st post == 2nd post => funny == offtopic
Re:Should make the future of 3d modelling more fun (Score:1)
Companies already do this. Things like case design of "deluxe" arcade cabinets are often copyrighted to prevent other manufacturers from making ripoffs. For example, Konami holds a copyright on the DDR cabinet - not that it's helped in dealing with the ripoffs from Korea/China/places with a lack of copyright law.
Manual though, (Score:1)
My GAWD! (Score:4, Funny)
Sorta adds a new dimension that TV will poke your eye out, or was that the red rider bb gun?
Or, you could wear goggles (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, they're using MPEG format. That may mean nothing, or it may mean that they're tied to the MPAA somehow, so encouraging people to watch movies on their computers may not be their business plan. I'm just spouting, I know nothing about "DDD".
In fact, since it looks like HDTV is not going to be a vehicle for DRM, the movie/TV industry could try to develop and deploy some 3D display standard that shut out computers (using patents on the underlying technology), and move all new content into it. Frightening possibility.
Re:Or, you could wear goggles (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/01/23225
now with these it will probably reduce a lot the price for the monitors, and for goggles too, but more important if what was said in the discussion is true even the price for the cameras will go down by quite a lot, if so then using even 9 cams to get a perfet 3D video stream will be fine
lets dream of a projeting column which you just have to look at at the right angle and you get 3D display of whatever you want video,images,your desktop(which is like hard drive, the more space you have the more space you need)...
well lets stop dreaming?
Re:Or, you could wear goggles (Score:2)
I already wear a pair of glasses. I don't wish to slap another one on top of them, or get polarized lenses.
Nothing left fot the imagination? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now it seems that this is not very far away! It maked me wonder what will happen to the human mind. It is common knowledge that reading books stimulates one's imagination a lot more than watching today's TVs or movies, for example. What will happen when we leave our children to enter "holodeck-fairy-tale-land".
It seems man will start to become distant from nature. Is this a good or a bad thing? What are the consequences for a kid growing up in this new virtual "environment"?
I definately the advantages to a hologram world, like visiting places you could not otherwise visit, and experience new things, but maybe this process has to be carefully thought out.
I guess the a Matrix world is closer then I imagined...
Re:Nothing left fot the imagination? (Score:1)
I am not sure there is much intellectual stimulation going on in the process of reading depth into a 2-D scene, at least not the same way there is in imagining the scene in the first place. But then, IANAN.
(I am not a neurologist)
-------
We all live under Monkey Law [monkeylaw.org].
Re:Nothing left fot the imagination? (Score:1)
Is this a joke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hehe.. ok. I'll put this in the pile with all of the other schemes that are "only 5 years away".
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:1)
Hehe.. ok. I'll put this in the pile with all of the other schemes that are "only 5 years away".
Feh, TCI was promising that tv on demand was only five years away back in 1991.
Weird how it took cable modems, DSL, and the rise of P2P networks to even get anything near tv on demand, hehe.
(for those of you not in the know, TCI is now outa biz and was eaten up by AT&T, which some say itself is quickly going down the tube)
Re: We need PCs that look like homers TV. (Score:2)
If TV where just an LCD display connected to a Analog2Digital interface for the good old signals and then a new digital interface that can ask what the TV resolution/depth is and then just send the data to it.
I'm not fully informed, but it all seems to be a problem. How can the computer industry display whatever at whatever resolution (projecting DVDs, Divx, VideoCD, etc. for example) without all that stupid HDTV non-sense? We just need a computerTV. Hey, sounds nice: CTV!
Just dunble a transmeta chip, a cheapo mother an LCD and bundle a TV-in card, saver and you got something that will last more than HDTV and take advange of a lot more features than any TV.
Automated depth mapping for stills? Yeah right (Score:1)
Don't believe the sales pitch. At the moment, automated depth mapping techniques are primitive and unreliable.
http://www.ddd.com/technology/tech_main_frm.htm
"Stage 3:
Refining
The DDC data generated by Stage 2 may be refined manually, finalizing the optimal basis for a 3D equivalent of the original 2D content."
Or in other words:
"we do stereo conversion the same way everyone does and has done since it all began - by hand"
This isn't news.
but... (Score:3, Funny)
I want it to get more 2-D !!!
:)
3D works really poorly on TV-sized screens (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with 3D TV, apart from all the viewing paraphenalia, is that it's not wide enough. Even in Imax 3D, with a field of view approaching 80 degrees, directors have problems composing shots that fit in the "viewable pyramid" formed by the viewer's nose and the four corners of the screen. (It's fairly well established that anything in 3D projection that clips this pyramid destroys the illusion of 3D, because one eye view clips before the other, causing the audience to be subconsiously disturbed in their viewing). In any case, the 3D effect only operates within this pyramid.
This company has been pumped on and off for some time on various message boards that cover 3D - especially Imax boards. AFAIC, maybe their technology will do well on good 3D presentation systems, but TV-sized screens just won't cut it - all the tests I've seen of 3D on a TV are pretty much limited to novelty value.
/stillconfused
Re:3D works really poorly on TV-sized screens (Score:2)
Re:3D works really poorly on TV-sized screens (Score:1)
Bad news those who can't deal with 3D.... (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems corporate america, and the bearded linux hippie game developers don't really care about the 17-20 percent of us who suffer badly. Somehow, this lack of concern feels familiar. I guess that's because I'm also a member of that other minority, left-handers, who are constantly ignored by most joystick and mouse manufacturers.
The real worry is that the 3D mania will spread not just throughout TV programming and movies, but to other software, and we'll start seeing 3D databases (in fact, they already exist), disk defragmenters and even operating systems. I hope it doesn't go so far.
I know many Slashdot readers love the 3D trend. As a (semi-dormant) programmer, I can't help but admire the realism of modern 3D graphics in movies, on TV, and in game engines. But I hope that developers wake up to the fact that they're making a sizeable slice of their potential customers sick to their stomachs.
How about the 8% of white males who are colorblind (Score:3, Informative)
Web designers are also bad. You know how often I've seen red text in front of a greenish background? Or cyan in front of white?
Even people like me who didn't realize that they had any color defiency until they started using computer and playing video games run into trouble when color is used to convey important information in the digital world.
3D is the same way. There are a sizable percentage of people who are "monocular" and thus are unable to use goggle or lenticular based 3D solutions.
Thats why we should all use:
www.actuality-systems.com [actuality-systems.com]
Re:Bad news those who can't deal with 3D.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad news those who can't deal with 3D.... (Score:2)
- the feeling of uncontrolled motion not controlled?
- the rapid switching between camera angles?
- the focusing on a scene with an unnatural perspective relative to the real world?
- incorrect depth information for your viewing angle and location?
- the lack of depth and limited luminescence and color?
Regardless, 3d displays should amplify these effect significantly in all cases except the last. In particular, because of the new depth, won't this make a large difference on how far/close you should sit to the screen, and won't the effect differ for people depending on the distance between their eyes? And what about viewing the screen from an angle? If you aren't sitting in the sweet spot, the image could be warped or scaled to comic or sickening levels even for normal folks. Which is fine if you're watching alone and organize the furniture around the TV, assuming you're some anti-social videophile.
Anyone remember the 3D games for the master system (Score:1)
It just turns out that my hunch of soon was more along the lines of game release date "soon".
So... (Score:1)
Somehow I don't think that we can pull off something that big in a few years, when adding a few extra lines of resolution is taking so long. What has it been, over 15 years now that HDTV is a couple years off?
Viewing angle (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: short answer (Score:2)
bump in the night (Score:2)
I've seen this... its not that cool... (Score:5, Informative)
I was not that impressed. Basically you see a large moving stereogram but the stereo separation is no where near as good as your average ViewMaster. Most of the time it doesn't look 3D at all. And your depth of field is very limited when it is 3D.
I talked to them for a while about how their technology works. Basically, they attempt to interpolate around the edges of objects in the foreground. Sometimes they can't and that limits how close to the viewer an object can appear. For example, imagine a camera moving by a tree only a few feet in front of it and with a complex landscape in the background. Around the edges of the tree there should be new landscape that one eye would see and the other would not. There is no way to recover this image data because in the original film it was blocked by the tree. Thin objects, like wires or poles or window frames are also especially difficult. Most of the time it requires an artist to do some hand tuning of the images.
I don't see what is special about their technique. Even if they do have some novel ideas for getting 3D out of 2D, I don't see how the data would be useful considering how bad 3D lenticular displays look - eg. limited depth of field, incorrect focal length for objects at different depths, very limited viewing angle.
Now I can finally watch Church Windows! (Score:1)
3D TV for the elite? (Score:1)
Personally, I'm more in the "3d TV
Re:3D TV for the elite? (Score:1)
One angle + heightmap means inflexible view angle (Score:1)
Anyway, if you take one camera angle and add to it a heightmap, You will have a 3d view, but only from one angle. You can't rotate the scene or anything like that. Well, you can, but there is no mechanism encoding what, for instance, is on the back of an object. You could do a limited level of rotation on the scene, and it would do neat perspective effects (objects closer to camera would move more than those farther back), however if you rotated around the scene 180 degrees.... yeah you see what I mean.
It would look pretty damn cool looking from the front, however.
Re:One angle + heightmap means inflexible view ang (Score:1)
It would look pretty damn cool looking from the front, however.
Actualy this will all be taken care of one day by AI that will be able to interpolate the details in real time.
Until then. . . .
Yah I have seen demonstrations of various '3d from 2d' technologies, and they all do have this problem.
They do look exceedingly cool from that one view angle though.
It actualy is a 3d surface, just a very hollow one.
Re:One angle + heightmap means inflexible view ang (Score:1)
The point is, can you take a pre-existing bitmap (i.e. one 2D frame) and change it into the two (slightly different) bitmaps - one left eye and one right eye - needed for a 3D presentation system. There is no other view ever needed because no self-respecting movie-maker would ever let you look at a scene from anywhere else except exactly where it was intended to be seen from!
Note that:
1) you can take as long as you want to figure it out, 'cause it's all happening offline.
2) essentially, you're trying to create something from nothing - or at most just some hints.
3) however, you can use earlier or later frames to help. For example, if the camera is moving left, the previous frame makes an excellent right eye view, and the subsequent one can be used for the right eye!
/stillconfused
Binocular stereo barely matters (Score:3, Interesting)
The main optical depth cues are relative motion, depth of focus, and binocular stereo. If you can provide all three, it looks real, but if you can only provide one, it looks fake. The spherical-mirror illusion, even with projected 2D images, looks more real than binocular stereo. High-end flight simulators have displays that are focused at infinity, which gives you the feeling of looking out at the world, not at a screen. (Low-cost focused-at-infinity displays would be great for gaming, if the optics weren't too bulky.)
Scaling of binocular 3D, where there's far more separation than the usual eye width, is a dramatic effect which is cool for about a minute, then is a pain. This is why the concept died in moviemaking.
Re:Binocular stereo barely matters (Score:1)
Binocular vision is - in all but a few special cases - insignificant beyond 10-20m. The reason flight simulators don't deal with this is that anything that's so close will be hit by the plane in about 0.1 seconds anyway, so who cares. In entertainment (and in real life, for that matter) anything important is almost always within that distance.
That being said, the depth cues you mention are important, but there are lots of others too. The order of precedence / importance varies depending on the distance of the object, the viewer, the setting, the ambient lighting etc.
If (and it's a big if) there are no contradictory references visible (such as frame borders), 2D (monocular) viewing effectively recreates all the cues except for two: stereo and depth of focus (of the eyeball, not the camera). 3D presentation adds the stereo vision and leaves only the depth of focus.
Strange you say "the concept died in moviemaking" in light of the very successful NASA / Imax 3D film recently released about the building of the space station, which was shot using a special, purpose-built, light-weight camera that takes two 65mm frames simultaneously.
Re:Binocular stereo barely matters (Score:1)
Not Gonna Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
I say this because 2D and 3D images are really very similar unless you move your head around, and most people don't want to move their heads around. When people sit down to watch TV, they generally want to just sit there and do nothing.
Re:Not Gonna Happen (Score:2)
Bladerunner anyone? (Score:1)
O well..not that there's much interesting on on TV these days anyway..2d or 3d
Yeah, that's great, but what about the GAMES? (Score:1)
Fags, that's who.
"Solidized" won't be any better than "colorized." (Score:3, Insightful)
Colorized movies look impressive for about five minutes, then you gradually become aware of a sense of dissatisfaction. Your brain knows you're not getting much color information. These "solidized" movies will just as unsatisfying.
In my humble opinion, of course... and not having seen any of the actual product.
Not great for visualizing people (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe this effect goes away after a while, and someone with experience watching people as 3d holograms for days at a time (if anyone like that exists) can comment.
web site put me off (Score:2)
Memorable Quote (Score:2)
Re:Memorable Quote (Score:2)
She's the director of technology, not of marketing. It's astute that she's thinking out of the box of mere engineering, and acknowledging the huge hurdles beyond the technical challenges.
Besides, sometimes learning to ask the right questions is half the trick...
Re:Memorable Quote (Score:2)
Re:Memorable Quote (Score:2)
You should learn when a cliche is around because it's useful and true, and when it's around just because it's around, and not become prejudice based on that.
So let me get this straight.... (Score:3, Funny)
3D is not the end-all (Score:3, Informative)
What they need to be aiming for is immersion.
Immersion is the experience of being inside an environment rather than being an external viewer.
You can get the immersive effect in 2D, and in fact this has been done with great effect by Disney on some of their rides.
What factors influence the experience of immersion? Foremost is a wide viewing angle; this is where most 3D simulators fail. You must see 'reality' everywhere, not floating in box in front of your face. Also very important is proper audio cueing, as much of a human's experience of spatial orientation is from subtle echoes and pitch changes. Other things that I think add more to the experience than 3D is view tracking, an engaging plot line and breeze control. Also, odor control, as in it cant be stinky
Re:3D is not the end-all (Score:2)
When people think 3D they think stereoscopic - whichwe've had since 1915 [earthlink.net], believe it or not. However it's never been more than a gimmick because it really doesn't add much to the experience.
The above poster is correct with regard to wide viewing angle. In the book The Visionary Position [amazon.com] they talk about the first immersive VR system completed in 1982:
Pretty cool sounding stuff. However, all the video improvements I've seen aim at higher resolution and stereoscopic display... things that hardly matter at all for "getting into" an image.
Then there's the fact that none of this improves storytelling, which is still the most important aspect of a good TV/film experience.
It could certainly help with interactive things like games.
Re:3D is not the end-all (Score:2)
So we need more curved displays and not just bigger. The bigger and bigger you make a flat surface, the more you have to step away from it, hurting again the experience.
Maybe a large screen whose film KNOWs you'll be looking at the center mostly, so that the edges do not carry vital visual information, just "periferical info". If it thinks the screen is small and that you are seing ALL of it at a time, then they tend to use all the space available and you can't dive in (get close and use it as secondary info).
And targeted sounds (headphones) accounting for how far and to the edges of the screen you are, + extra bass non headphones speakers (for enviroment trembling and body feeling of that tremble) is the way to go. They need to "tune" the sound so that it's physically right.
The day realize you don't believe in reality because it could be a movie is the day we can claim to have done the right thing (well, i may be a disaster in reality
Who actually... (Score:1)
Hrmm.. 3D from 2d source. (Score:1)
If it's not shot from a 3d camera, well, it's just not real 3d. There are a couple of companies out there pimping technology that relies on the difference in time it takes for lighter and darker shaded images to be interpreted by the brain, but these methods only work well on video with a good deal of horizontal movement. You can demonstrate this effect when you wear sunglasses and try to climb stairs. If you divide your field of vision between the lighter and darker areas and try to descend a set of stairs, the difference between when the and darker parts of the signal are interpreted can cause subtle but noticable vertigo.
I can't wait for 3d tv, but I've got to doubt any technology that works from an existing 2d source. -dameron
holy cow. (Score:1)
i can barely handle double Ds on tv.
girls with 3D. how do they _walk_?
no, seriously. it's amazing they got rid of the 9-camera system. i expect high-boobz0r-content-pr0n made for tv to become much more affordable in the coming years. i imagine that you'd need a new tv, like one with a 256:9 aspect just to fit those triple-Ds in any scene.
only 20% more $ doesn't matter if.. (Score:1)
No I didn't read the article. That's what you're here for.
why this may not be a joke & who will pay for (Score:1)
This is pointless (Score:1)
That happens *every time* I look at the TV. What possible value is gained by this? We already perceive 3-dimensionality from a 2-d source through the normal cues (lighting, foreshortening, parallax etc.) and our brains do a good job of solving it, considering that it is an ill-posed problem requiring a domain of knowledge.
Taking a 2-d image, making it into two images, one for each eye, won't do anything other than move the preliminary processing outside the head. I doubt that any computer can match the human visual system, either.
3D, when it is successful, will be VERY dfferent (Score:1)
This is somewhat off-topic, but it comes to mind every time someone mentions "3D-TV" - especially a proposal like this, where the marketing message is basically "convert your film/videotape to 3D!"
The problem, as I see it, is that we have developed a specific visual language for film over the last 100 years. Think of the last movie you saw, with its jump-cuts, zooms, pans whatever. Now think of the last 3D movie - or if not that, how holograms are used in Star Wars. The camera either doesn't move at all, or moves freely, like a flight sim. It doesn't jump around, and you tend to stay inside the same scene. While it's a very good point (as already mentioned) that 3D environments can cause simulator sickness (and not even those - my ex-wife used to get vertigo even watching long camera dolly shots in action films) think about how much more disorienting standard film techniques will be when applied to 3D movies.
That implies to me that when 3D does actually work for mass entertainment as a replacement for film and television they will be both immersive (the holograms are around you, rather than stuck in a corner of your room) and considerably slower-paced than modern cinema.
Just build a holodeck and be done with it! (Score:1)
Batman Anyone? (Score:1)
Re:I have an even better idea! (Score:2)
The only thing I can think of that would cause that would be if the camera were flipping frames between two different but close angles.
ERGO, even frames = Left view & odd frames = right view.
If done fast enough, the effect will not be too disconcerting. If the contrast is also slightly shifted it helps on the 3D cues. The trick is to vary only the contrast along with the left / right eye views between frames. If you vary the hue or brightness the result will be vibrance shifts with are bothersome. The contrast shift results in a depth trick which helps the 3D.
Watch Tony Robins ads in 3D... Urgh. Puh-leez. (Score:2)
And besides, there's no need for 3D since, with the problems of IP ownership, all we'll have to watch from now on are reruns. Its just changes of medium for the same content. They're making live-action movies of cartoons based on comic book characters and showing these on TV. No original thought is allowed to intrude.
500 chanels, all showing YESTERDAY. The content as the matrix for the ads. Valenti's victory.
That's a powerful disincentive for any change in the delivery medium.
Think on that next time you're at the mall listening to music written before you were born being played, badly, over the PA system, paid for by the mall owners. (The MP3 format doesn't have enough audio quality? For this?)
Ted Kazinski was wrong in what he did but right in his reasoning behind it. To paraphrase Tim Leary: "Turn off. Unplug. Drop out."
HDTV, DTV (Score:2)
HDTV supposely has been available too.
So why is it I have known ppl to buy new TV sets, but nobody seems to have bought, nor wanted to buy, an HDTV set.
Good luck trying to claim this will be mainstream in 5 yrs.
used to be legal here (Score:2)
When will all this happen? (Score:1)
Worse than stereographic, at the same bandwidth (Score:1)
A depth-map isn't good enough for real 3D. When something is close, one eye sees things behind it which the other eye can't see. That's how stereographic 3D images work, and that's how your brain needs the data presented. Because of this, any manufactured depth perception based only on a depth-map will necessarily be a poor trade-off between depth and quality.
The processing which would be required to present this "depth" data in a viewable form would be considerable as well.
Since a depth-map is going to require just as many pixels (perhaps with a lesser bit-depth) as a full image, why not just transmet full stereoscopic images instead? They'd require only slightly more bandwidth and almost no additional processing, and they'd result in a real 3D image.