Here’s an interesting case study in internet behavior dynamics: when Engadget publishes a story — any story — about 3D TVs, the comments are filled with fans and excited (potential) consumers. When the NYT publishes a story called “Do Consumers Really Want 3-D TV’s?” the comments overflow with doubters and pessimists.
Thanks to the magic of social comments, each sub-population reinforces its own beliefs. The result is that viewing either story in isolation would convince you that it represents the majority opinion. If the NYT story were a little more critical, crossing some invisible line in the virtual sand, then the fanboys would come running to defend their turf. But it isn’t. Engadget’s stories, on the other hand, have a broad enough audience that they do attract a few nay-sayers — but their opinions are quickly drowned out.
For me, the clincher is that the NYT author seems to be worried that he will be forced to watch old shows in 3D:
And what happens when I want to watch shows like “Seinfeld,” or “Everyone Loves Raymond”? Will I really want to experience these in 3-D too?
3D screens do not automatically make everything into 3D. The spatial processing that would require has not been developed on a supercomputing scale, much less a consumer entertainment device. Moreover, they can display 2D content without any problem – in fact, the “3D” content is nothing more than a specially (and spectrally) oriented 2D image which, when viewed through the polarized or shuttered glasses, is rendered differently by your two eyes. The result is the perception of 3D from 2D – and the key point is that there’s nothing preventing the good old 2D images we know and love.
I have seen a 3D TV – there’s one at the Sony store in midtown Manhattan. It is extremely impressive and yes, you’ll own one one day (though they’re going to be expensive at first). Depending on the intersection of technology and regulation, you actually may have to (a la digital and de facto HDTV).
I completely agree that the glasses are impractical and a little annoying. But I’ll limit my critique to that accessory rather than the entire industry. The NYT article actually notes that glasses-free viewing may be “two to three years away” (personally, I’m less optimistic about that timeframe). Indeed, auto stereo TV’s exist (I saw one in Bloomingdales, of all places!) and certainly will be the norm. Will consumers be ready then?
The NYT article concludes:
Maybe the consortiums and manufacturers are right, we’ll see these images popping out of our TVs in our homes and never look back to a 2-D world. But I’m about as geeky as they come, so are most of my friends. We all wait in line for the latest iPhones or video games and we spend an exorbitant amount of time sharing links about the latest digital cameras, video game consoles and the Apple rumors. But I can’t recall a single geeky friend saying anything, with any excitement, about 3-D televisions.
I have to wonder if those “geeky” friends have ever read Engadget.
Confession: I got lost in Bloomingdales.
This turned out to be a Very Good Thing, because it’s how, way in the back of the women’s cosmetics department, I discovered that Bloomingdales has a glasses-free 3D television set.
The screen itself is unassuming, and positioned as the backdrop to a small un-manned display table, just like countless other promotions throughout the store. But as I walked by, it literally jumped out at me. It’s a hard effect to describe, and obviously a photo wouldn’t do it justice – but there’s a clear sense of depth in the screen’s moving images. It’s very impressive.
The screen itself was one of the parallax-barrier types, but much bigger than I had heard of before (it looked to be about 32″). There were a couple of “hot spots” in front of it from which the 3D effect could be viewed properly. Standing outside a hot spot resulted in an image that seemed to float in an impossible dimension which, while eye-catching, quickly gave me a headache.
I spent about ten minutes staring at the thing from different angles, while many women in search of perfume went by and didn’t give it a second look (though I earned a few confused glances). To each his – or her – own.
I’ve spent a couple days reading all about relief mapping (or a very similar algorithm called steep parallax mapping). Essentially these techniques implement ray tracing inside a texture map, resulting in dramatic representations of geometry without the need to render additional polygons. Key benefits include parallax tracking, occlusion, and self-shadowing again all without rendering extra modeling.
Pictures are worth 1000 words, so here you go. Note how the cobblestones appear to have real volume when the parallax mapping is used (click to zoom):
I grabbed this image from this paper presented at the 2006 I3D conference.
The best part is that the procedure is (relatively) cheap, and easily implemented in realtime when offloaded to a GPU.
I think the advantage here is that the relief map doesn’t support “caves” or overhanging architecture, which greatly simplifies the ray tracing problem. Otherwise, why not simply implement the ray tracer everywhere?
The downside that I’ve observed is that the simulated geometry doesn’t interact well with other objects in the world. For example, shadows cast by other objects may not follow the relief map. This is more a limitation of the rasterization procedure and could probably be overcome by clever shader programming.
Paul Kedrosky writes about a study on the rate of entrepreneurship among various age groups, which includes the following piece of junk (ch)art:
Why is this chart 3D? It contains information in only two spatial dimensions (time and rate), with a third dimension coded by color. To make the chart itself is a purely superfluous move – in fact, it’s worse, because it distorts the graph.
One of the points of the study is that the rate of entrepreneurial activity is much lower among young people than older people. Thus, in the chart above, the blue line should be lower than the other lines. However, the forced perspective of the 3D chart makes the blue line appear even lower than it really is. For example, if all age groups had rates of 0.27% in 1996, then the blue line would print physically lower on the page than every other line despite having the same value.
Adding an extra dimension when it is unnecessary is a serious charting mistake. Adding an extra dimension beyond what your medium (in this case, a 2D screen) is capable of displaying requires serious justification. In this case, it adds nothing and even detracts from one’s ability to read the graph.
Of course, it does so in a way that enhances the study’s point (that blue line is REALLY low!). Perhaps the third dimension wasn’t added solely for visual effect, but for suggestive purposes as well?
You may know that I like to watch movie trailers (massive understatement). Today, I’d like to discuss the trailer for Jerry Bruckheimer’s new movie G-Force.
As one might expect from a Bruckheimer flick, G-Force is about an elite squad of spies who are forcibly retired and subsequently called back to action.
As one might not expect, they are hamsters.
And they’re in 3D.
Thus far, the surge in 3D movies has been pleasant, if somwhat underwhelming. The small screens, flat seating and not-quite-as-good sound systems in the 3D theatres offset the visual impact of the films. Even so, the 3D effect is really only noticable in scenes with profound depth (extreme foregrounds and backgrounds in one shot), or in a “made-for-3D” scene, like when a ball bounces right at the viewer.
However, the G-Force trailer that aired in 3D immediately before Up was different. The 3D effect was much more pronounced and engrossing. One of the reasons it was more impactful was a clever visual trick not unlike the forced perspective of pre-CG matte paintings: some 3D figures were actually projected outside the movie area of the screen.
The trailer was shown in a wider aspect ratio than the actual screen, and so there were black bars above and below the picture. These turned out to be part of the trailer, rather than empty space around it, when various items that were “close” to the audience were projected on top of the black bars, as if the item/character had literally come out of the screen and was covering the bar. That visual cue, combined with the existing 3D effect, made the item really pop. The effect was used sparingly but with great success.