3D

This ZDNet's Emerging Technology Trends Blog article reports MIT researchers have designed a new kind of microscope which creates 3D images of living cells. From the article: "This microscope uses a method similar to the X-ray CT scans doctors use to see inside the body. One researcher said that their “technique allows you to study cells in their native state with no preparation at all.” And he adds that “for the first time the functional activities of living cells can be studied in their native state.” I have to admit that their results are spectacular.

This ZDNet's Emerging Technology Trends Blog article reports computer scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) have developed a media player for interactive 3D-environments. From the article: "‘Our system allows us to actively involve the viewers — they can walk through rooms and select objects, for instance,’ says one researcher. This is possible because each element — a person, a video clip or a sound — can be integrated into the display. And if you’re a — filmed — spectator, your image also can be interactively inserted into the viewer.

This ACM SIGGRAPH article takes a look at new technologies for stereoscopic 3D movies/games and informs us on how to use them right. From the article: "A new format for stereoscopic 3D movies has recently been introduced to theaters, raising the image and color quality to higher levels. Unlike the old red / blue anaglyph, format the new technology uses polarized lenses, a metalized screen and polarized glasses to allow the viewer to see sharp, full color, separate images with their left and right eyes. In addition a new type of personal video display has been introduced to the DVD and computer market in the last few years. Video Eyewear use two tiny LCDs to provide separate images for each eye, and are worn like a pair of glasses.

Author: Kenneth Wittlief

EON Reality Introduces EON Human Breakthrough 3D technology teleports people from photographs to virtual reality

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Beijing, – EON Reality Inc., the world’s leading interactive 3D software provider, today announced at the Intel Developer Forum its new EON Human technology that enables anyone to teleport real images of people into virtual reality. EON Human automatically generates 3D Face & Body online from a single picture. The technology allows people to preserve themselves for eternity in 3D on the Web.

“With EON Human, anyone can capture their best memories and do more than make them more accessible and easier to share, this technology takes you, and your memories and will make them an interactive experience,” said Dan Lejerskar, chairman, EON Reality, adding “for some it will provide them the ability to improve their looks without plastic surgery or capture a great image and transform it to real depth.”

This ZDNet article talks about the 3D HD DLP television that Samsung was showing off at its gadgetfest in NYC last week. From the article: "What do you get when you mix Digital Light Projection (DLP), Hi-Definition TV, and 3-Dimensional (3D) stereoscopic technology? You get the 3D HD DLP television that Samsung was showing off at its gadgetfest in NYC last week. While at that gadgetfest, I spotted some cool consumer technology and couldn’t leave the building without finding out more.

This TV, which uses DLP-based rear projection and ranging in price from $1499 to $4500 (depending on which size TV you go for), caught my eye (literally and figuratively for a couple of reasons).

This Guardian Unlimited article takes a look at autostereoscopic display solutions. From the article: "Perfect 3D television and movies without those horrible glasses? They're closer than you think. I'm sitting in Paris and some butterflies are fluttering towards me. Loads of them, perfectly clearly. I could allow one to land on my hand, or catch one of the rose petals being blown towards me - except I can't, because they're not real. They're images on a TV in high definition - and in perfect 3D. They look life-sized and real, and I'm not wearing any silly spectacles other than the ones I wear all the time.

People have been working on convincing 3D without the glasses for a long time and the demo is breathtaking. It's on a prototype Philips TV, which won't be available for a while; it would cost £10,000 at the moment, but that's expected to be vastly lower when it reaches the mass market. Philips isn't the only company investigating the possibilities; Luxembourg-based SeeReal has also made technological developments in the area with its Viewing Window Technology, aiming to reduce the amount of pixels you need before 3D works.

Orange has emerged as an unexpected early player in the market, and I'm watching the demo in its offices. It believes 3D TV will be key to the services it will be able to deliver to people's homes once its 100Mbps fibre-optic internet service being trialled in Paris takes off; hence its interest. The display moves to a beer advert that looks as though you could lift it off the screen, and then there's a demo of a computer game in genuine 3D with bullets flying at you. Four professionally cynical journalists are silenced for once. Later Orange takes a 3D photo of us and shows it to us on a handheld camera, with the hint that phones will do this one day.

This Technology Review article reports Michael Bove from the MIT Media Lab is developing a compact optical setup, called Mark III, that produces 3-D video that could make holography much less expensive. From the article: "In a dark room down the hall from Michael Bove's office at MIT's Media Lab is an apparatus with a white screen the size of a CD jewel box. When Bove sits in a chair opposite the machine and flips a switch, an image of a human rib cage seems to leap out a few inches beyond the screen. The image is produced by the Mark II, a 14-year-old holographic-video system that takes up most of the room. But its vividness is one of the inspirations for Bove's own project: to bring 3-D video displays to consumer and medical markets.

This Virtalis press release reports up to 425 students will be able to simultaneously receive teaching using 3D resources thanks to the installation of a huge Virtalis StereoWorks system in the new Charles Darwin Lecture Theatre at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). From the press release: "Craig Hickson, head of the Business Support Centre in the department of Information Systems Services at UCLan, explained: “Our existing 3D cube could only hold 10-15 people, yet we believe that since the advent of 3D films and 3D gaming, the concept of 3D is really taking off across both the commercial and academic sectors.

Once upon a time, 3D for the Web promised to be as easy as building a Web page. Unfortunately, 3D -- even simple 3D -- is more complex than displaying scrolling text and pictures. Each VRML vendor implemented a different subset of the spec, and it never gained traction. And so 3D on the Web faded away. Or did it? It turns out that VRML lives on in its XML flavor, X3D, which has grown to encompass VRML's siblings H-Anim (Humanoid Animation) and GeoVRML. Can 3D on the Web finally be used for more than virtual shopping malls? The latest installment of this mini-series on XML media shows that it can. This article focuses on a couple of uses that X3D is ready for now, and takes a look at where it might go in the future.