The Advent of 3D Video Technology

It’s been around for years, in English movies as well as some Hindi ones, but now there is going to be a resurrection of the nerds in silly glasses, and little kids doing ‘ooh!!!’ and little older kids saying “WTF!!!”. I am talking about 3D video technology, more technically known as stereoscopic vision. There is a boom predicted this year for 3D cinema and games, what with about 40 films already in production, and biggies like Sony, LG, Philips, Panasonic and the like all adding that elusive Z axis in their products and marketing. This objective of this article is to throw some light on the technology, and basically just being prepared for it when it hits big, as it is really going to be the future of television.

So what is 3D?
This is for the totally uninitiated: to view in 3D you invariably need special glasses to wear on your eyes. There are some TVs slated to offer 3D without the need for these glasses. But they are still raw in RnD, and they have an inherent problem with viewing angles to actually view 3D. So forget those for now, let’s get back to the regular 3D with glasses.

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What are these glasses? In their most simplest form (the color filter ones), each lens is a chromatically opposite color, usually red and cyan, and they really do not need to be extremely Hi-fi or immaculate, in fact next page we will do a small DIY on how to make your own glasses.

Theaters that release 3D movies give them to each customer before the show. Even planetariums etc. are all required to give you a small pair when they are showing you a 3D show. Of course there are brands that are already sporting special 3D glasses designs, like Sony who are flaunting Polarized glasses, and another technology which uses LCD shutters on their glasses.

We have the glasses on, so now what? Basically this contraption allows us to view specially created 3D content for a more realistic, three dimensional experience. Imagine the camera fixed and a football coming towards it. In 3D one will actually feel the ball’s trajectory and it will appear nearer to you by the second. In a game if someone shoots a cannon at you, it will actually feel like it whizzes past you, (hopefully you can dodge it). So in a nutshell, it adds the 3rd dimension, or depth. Check this pic with glasses on. It’s made by our very own editor Gagan.

The Gyaan
Before you move on to making your own 3D glasses and accessing 3D content, it’s prudent to understand how the 3D image itself works. IF you look at a 3D image without glasses on, it will plainly look weird, the reason being they are actually 2 images super imposed on each other. Why, because in real life, our eyes see two separate images, one by the left and one by the right, as our eyes are about 2.5 inches apart remember?

For that matter, even our two ears listen to sounds separately, and that is exactly how our eyes and ears can position the source, and gauge how far it is etc. This is the basic concept behind anything stereo. It is this intermixing of two images by the brain (that marvel of an organ) that creates the perception of depth in our vision. Thus in essence, production guys make the 2 sides of the image separate, and with the glasses on, we can see the content in actual 3D.

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The easiest way to get your own 3D glasses is actually to have cardboard cutouts, and use cellophane. It is no doubt crude, but initially to get the 3D experience one can try this age old method, plus there’s the advantage of looking like Emperor Cleon’s imperial guard of Trantor.

Color filter glasses
The oldest form of 3D glasses, you can actually make these on your own. Click the pic below, sourced from here. Print it out. Now we have few choices. The straight up way is to stick the whole thing on cardboard sheet first, easily available in any stationery store. Then take a thick pair of scissors and cut out the borders on the image, including the lens part.

Next we need to take the eye pieces out and stick small patches of red and green cellophane respectively on the left and right eyepiece, from the inside. Then finally glue the other two folds in on the sides. Besides cardboard one can visit a hardware store and get 4 mm thick plastic sheets, but you will need a heavier cutter for that, and glue will need to be araldite or something stronger.

Polarized Glasses and LCD shutter glasses
These are not so easy to make at home, and trying out is not recommended. Polarized glasses are adopted by movie studios, and mainly require the video to be polarized and superimposed by two projectors. Then the polarized glasses can separate between the two and view in 3D, as their eyepieces match the angles of the light rays entering. These diagrams from How stuff Works should make really make things simpler.

The LCD shutter method is advanced, and involves a TV displaying the two left and right images alternating one right after the other. These LCD glasses block the view of one eye and then the other in rapid succession.

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Gear to go 3D now
This is the best part of the feature, probably the most relevant to us this moment. The first name to mention is obviously Nvidia: they have a feature in their GeForce series called 3D Vision. Quite a few of their GPU models support 3D vision, (click here for a complete list)

But you have to have the other accessories, glasses remember… Nvidia sells packages with special glasses and the appropriate GPUs that can render 3D. Also you need a 3D ready monitor or TV. For that there are 2 names on list: ViewSonic FuHzion VX2265wm 120 Hz LCD display and Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ 120 Hz LCD display. There is one point that I would like to mention, you can view 3D on a CRT monitor, provided the refresh rate is more than 100 Hz.

There are many games already available in 3D enabled versions, plus lots of movies are also being redone, so we can view them in the comfort of our own home, with this gear. A nice place to check out 3D available movie titles is here. It is an updated list.

I am sure everyone is aware of DVD upscaling, and how you can get a full HD image from a now boring SD image. Analogously, there is gear available that can make normal images into 3D images. There is one cool company called Glacier Media systems. Google 3D home gear and their name pops up. These guys have products that can play real 3D games/movies and also convert normal DVDs to 3DVDs. Particularly interesting is the Glacier Iceberg PC.

This is just the beginning, we are trying to get our hands on the gear and do hands on reviews. Sooner rather than later Tech2 will be reviewing and watching everything in 3D.