3D without glasses

Have you ever watched 3D movie in theaters with glasses? Would it be great to be able to watch it at your home without glasses? The answer is YES, you can. And do you know that you can also watch it from your iPhone? Is it cool? In today's multimedia pioneering class, guest speaker James Hurley from SpatialView showed us their amazing 3D technology to make your dreams come true.

There are few products that James showed us in our class. Wazabee 3Dee is a 19 inch 3D LCD display, it plays some of the popular games on the market, such as "World of Warcraft" and "Call of Duty" in 3D.

Wazabee 3DeeFlctor is a 13.3 inch removable screen attachment for laptop. It has been named in top 10 hottest products of 2009 by the New York Post.

As for mobile, the company provides 3DeeShell, it is a protector case with lenses specific for iPhone which enables watching clips and playing games in 3D in the palm of your hand without the need for special glasses or an external display. In the class, James showed the 3D movie trailer of "Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)" using his iPhone, it looks real and I really like it.


How did they do it? James told us that they are using the technology called "autostereoscopy". pretty long word! Currently most common solutions are using lenticular lenses or parallax barrier. Basically each eye sees the screen at a slightly different angle, the barrier allows only specific image to be seen at specific angles.

Now comes the most important question as a flash developer, how do we create content? James explained that they provide plug-ins for tools such as Adobe Flash, Adobe After effect, 3DMax and Maya. In flash, we just go through standard flow to create content, at the end, we just need to set few variables, in the pop up windows, choose "require for 3D". You can download the 30 days trail from their site for free.

About the price, the LCD monitor is about $1000, the screen attachment is about $200 to $300, and the iphone shell is about$40 to $50 which is not so expensive to get. and it will be out spring this year. You should definitely get one. I might get the screen attachment for my laptop to play 3D game. And I high recommend Sheridan get the 3D monitor for each one of us in the IMM program.

To get more information about their 3D products, you can watch the interview with the CEO from geekbrief.tv in MacWorld 2009.

Actually, James is from the we developer background, he is currently on the 3D mobile development, he's quite enjoying it, shall we join their teem too? It sounds a really promising market to me.

From the research I have done, there are a great number of movies, advertisement and sports event being shot in 3D now. I believe that in the near future, the 3D movies which now only played in theaters will be transferred to DVD, so I can view them at home, yeah!

Links:

Spatial View company site
3D movie
3D game
3D term in wikipedia
New York time Article
Interview in MacWorld 2009

GestureTek visit

Last Friday, our class of sheridan IMM program had a great visit to GestureTek in Toronto. The president Vincent John Vincent show us around the amazing gesture control systems in which you can do interactivity using hand, body movement instead of mouse, keyboard, joystick or touch pad.

Vincent is also the co-founder of the company. He is a really smart guy who pioneered the idea that video camera with perfect interface computer interaction twenty year's ago, now GestureTek is the world's leader in computer vision technology. Their system can work with any devices: pc, public displays, kiosk, even mobile phones. And it works with any surface: panels, floors, tables, screen, even bar and counter space. Their interactive solutions for controlling computers, interacting with multimedia displays and playing games in a 3D virtual world have won international awards.

During the visit, Vincent showed us some of their systems: Illuminate, GestPoint(holoFrame, holoPoint, AirPoint), GestureXtreme, GestureFX, ScreenXtreme. Illuminate brought "Minority Report Style" interactivity to the real life. And their newest portable air point system makes the setup really easy, it can handle any lighting condition, control any display size from any distance. All you have to do is placing your finger above the control unit and the system will track your finger position.

What I like most is the ScreenXtreme, it creates the 3d virtual world by transporting your real time image to digital display, sign or advertisement, you can see yourself in screen interacting dynamically with on screen characters, your body motion control the program. It's really a powerful entertainment tool.


By the way, the system also works with mobile phone, their patented, award-winning EyeMobile Engine® is the world’s first motion-controlled user interface for mobile gaming and applications. I think it will be the future mobile device user interface.

Overall, I enjoyed the visit a lot, it really is a memorable experience. Those cutting edge innovations are unforgettable. I believe in the near future, you will see more and more of those systems on malls, hotels, hospitals, everywhere.