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IBM Media Television

IBM Develops New 3D TV Technology 106

Posted by CowboyNeal from the captain-eo dept.
neutron_p writes "IBM has recently announced a new and affordable 3D video system that works with normal DLP (Digital Light Processing) televisions. IBM demonstrated the new system on a 50-inch, flat-screen Texas Instruments rear-projection digital television at the 22nd annual Flat Information Displays conference held in San Francisco this month. This "black box" device can be connected to any DLP projector or television via the common VESA 3 pin stereo connector. Exact details concerning the 3D technology - still unnamed - were not forthcoming, but the company spokesperson said it was compatible with OpenGL and Direct Draw, which is definitely aimed at software developers who make 3D games."
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IBM Develops New 3D TV Technology More

IBM Develops New 3D TV Technology

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  • sex (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tezbobobo ( 879983 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:19AM (#14015120) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, and the sysadmins at IBM just noticed a proliferation of sex sites in the proxy logs,
  • hope game developers decide to start using this kind of thing...it would be enough for me to go back to a CRT-type monitor over a flatscreen...
    • If they start developing software for this kind of thing (lets face it, software will take advantage of this kind of thing before mainstream film does) then there's a serious incentive for people to start investing into other stereoscopic projectors.

      Hell, anyone remember that 3d setup that was projecting onto the walls that /. reported on a while back? This could be the baby-step that gets us towards that kind of setup.

    • All Direct3d and OpenGL programs ALREADY have this ability. Nvidia has been doing this for years. It's built into they're drivers. All you need is to purchase a 50$ pair of 3d LCD Glasses (the same type described in the article) and download the '3d stereo' driver from their website and you're ready to go. Nvidia does it by rendering to two buffers at the hardware level (one for the perspective of each eye) and showing the buffers in succession. Say you have a monitor with 100hz refresh rate [wikipedia.org] it just du

  • "Hey everybody! Let's put on our "special" TV glasses and have FUN!"

  • Sharp3D (Score:4, Insightful)

    by trollable ( 928694 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:29AM (#14015153) Homepage
    I'm not it will work. People don't like wearing glasses, except maybe gamers. OTOH, Sharp3D [sharp3d.com] seems to be a more promising way. What do you think?

    • Re:Sharp3D (Score:3, Informative)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      Doesn't the Sharp 3D have a very limited range in which you can see the 3D effect? I think that the Sharp method is more promising at this stage, however it's just a case of who can do away with their disability first. Will Sharp learn how to increase the range to a more acceptable level, or will IBM learn how to do away with the glasses first? CAN either of these obstacles be overcome? Are the current methods of creating 3D images, doomed because the obstacles are inherent in their designs?

      I personally don
      • Doesn't the Sharp 3D have a very limited range in which you can see the 3D effect?

        I didn't have the oportunity ti see it myself. Do you mean the range in depth or in large? If it is in large, just get a big screen. If it is in depth, I don't see any reason why it would be limited. I remember plenty of 3D images with impressive 3D effects. However our 3D perception is quite limited. A few meters. After it is just an interpolation (illusion) of our brain.
        • From what I understand, it means the problem that when you view at an angle, the picture starts to break down, which happens even in 2d pictures in some LCD monitors.

      • Re:Sharp3D (Score:3, Informative)

        by InvalidError ( 771317 )
        The Sharp LCD was goggle-less thanks to a special surface finishing and double LCD matrix.

        This IBM '3D' display is the same old alternate-frame display trick we have had for years... look at the older nVidia cards, the 'Deluxe' models had an extra port for 3D goggles. This is the same technology, only with an IBM spin. Most modern mid/high-end CRTs could already handle alternate-frame at ~100fps up to at least 1280x960 but video card manufacturers have apparently given up on the 3D goggles and people have f

  • Did you hear? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chickenofbristol55 ( 884806 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:29AM (#14015156) Homepage
    IBM is also working on a 4-D TV, but unfortunately you can't see it.

    Bang bang tish!

  • Call me when there's news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:30AM (#14015158) Journal

    On the downside, you still need 3D glasses to correctly view the image and practically no video is shot in 3D as it requires more expensive cameras, but as price drops and general interest rises, this is sure to change.

    Uh-huh. And we're sure to get virtual reality sometime soon as well.

    It's great that IBM (of all people) have developed a system to allow 3D movies at home. But the problem is, there's no content. And I doubt just because there's a $1,000 US piece of equipment on the market that content will suddenly come spewing forth. ESPECIALLY when glasses are still needed for this to work.

    This is a chicken and egg problem, but unlike DVDs and High Definition televisions, 3D has been promised for quite a while but has yet to come. The article makes it sound like IBM has made a giant break through and 3D movies are about to become common place. I doubt very much this is so (especially while we need glasses for these things). This is a positive step, but it's a small one. The adoption of 3D movies will come one day, but the road towards it will be paved with lots of small steps, and we aren't anywhere near the end.

    • Re:Call me when there's news (Score:4, Insightful)

      by af_robot ( 553885 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:38AM (#14015176)
      But the problem is, there's no content.

      How about *3D* games? They need no or minimum modification for 3D displays.
      • Well an earlier post talks about that issue. In that it will double frame rates, and a lot of the newer games tend to require the latest technology (or as new as the developers can get with their audience). And if you're talking about open source (or independant) games, they're not going to spearhead the adoption of a technology. You might believe otherwise, but name once that it has happened.

        Also, NVIDIA has been able to turn 2D games into a semblence of 3D for some time now. It doesn't work the greatest,
      • 'Tis true. Stereoscopic techniques have already been developed in vertex and fragment shaders that can run straight on the hardware. They require 3D glasses still, but their presence could be made transparent to game software.
      • Well, I wouldn't say minimum... and I certainly wouldn't say no modification.

        In order to show a game that is already being processed as "3D" in true 3D where you can actually see depth, the game would not only have to render twice the number of frames, but one perspective would have to be offset in order to create the illusion, so a software patch is definitely required.
        Also, in reality, the game would actually have to render each frame twice, once from each perspective, effectively doubling the hardware re

    • Content (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:05AM (#14015251)
      This may not be such a thing as chicken and egg. Maybe it's jut that people like 2-D TV. As has been noted many times, esp in regard to the ipod, video+audio is not always superior to video only. Stereo graphic books have been around for 200 years and they did not take over regular books. 3-d movies have not taken over regular movies. Holograms have not take over photographs.

      When I wear a pair of Crystal-eyes doing anything elese with my computer or in the room is prohibitive. Somethings just work better as 2-d experiences. Our brains understand that not everything in the 2-d picture should be in focus. But in 3-d everything shoul dbe in focus if we focus our eyes on it--but that won't happen here. only some of this will be in focus so it's going to be mighty strange for our brains.

      • Re:Content (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ClosedSource ( 238333 )
        "Holograms have not take over photographs"

        The fact that holograms haven't taken over photographs has nothing to do with people's preferences for 2D over 3D. It's because of the expense, lack of true color and the fact that people can't stand still that long. If you could point and shoot a hologram with full color using normal exposure speeds and the camera was less than $500, they'd be selling faster than iPods.

        Holograms also solve the focus issue since they reproduce the wavefront that came from the origin
      • The current polarized glasses in use for Chicken Little 3D have little more affect on looking around the room than a pair of sunglasses. Good active LCD polarized glasses will have the same affect when not processing. Focus has already been addressed...just go see Chicken Little 3D.

        Man, I tell you, this is my second post on this subject and I can't believe how ill informed /. readers have been on this subject. Just go see CL-3D....forget the story, just check out the technology. It'll be worth it.
    • I actually had a discussion about the "3d-everything-in-focus" issue with a researcher at Argonne once. He said that it was the lack of out of focus edges on the periphery, as well as the lack of tghe constantly changing in/out focus of the real world that causes immersive 3d environments to create a "throw up on your shoes" urge. On the other hand, if you combine this with the microvoltage stimulation we read about (the one that allows you to feel motion even if you're not moving, maybe a more comfortable
    • ...the problem is, there's no content ... This is a chicken and egg problem...

      But there's a condor here. Every NFL fan who's watched a game in hi-def on his buddy's 60-inch widescreen now lives in constant resentment of his own former pride-and-joy set. The same will happen as soon as either of them watches a pass spiral into their living room. (Fwiw, the glasses are comfortable enough to be a relative non-issue.)

      Fwiw, you can see a (very hi-def) approximation of the technology right now... if you're w

  • Easy code change (Score:4, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:35AM (#14015168)
    Creating 3-D games won't be that hard. All the game software needs to do is render each frame twice with a slightly different POV corresponding to the right and left eye. The only downside is that frame rates for the game will probably almost half what they are for the mono version (assuming that rendering is a significant chunk of the total CPU/GPU processing budget).
    • In the interview, it's mentioned that most games already support 3-D. So its not a matter of making them support it, but actually utilizing it.

    • Re:Easy code change (Score:4, Insightful)

      by reachinmark ( 536719 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:11AM (#14015273) Homepage
      The framerate won't be half - you wrap the entire left eye rendering inside a GL display list and use the cache to render the right eye. In practice the framerate doesn't drop all that much.

      There are also techniques for achieving 'fake' stereo rendering by using the depth buffer to extract a stereo pair. The result isn't as good obviously, but it works with existing games.

      • I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone take my left eye... just for a 3d experience.

        You gamers are a sick bunch!

        No one is touching my eyes!

      • Difficulties with this (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jtdubs ( 61885 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:42PM (#14015642)
        Your left and right eyes can't always see the same set of objects.

        If you use occluders and occluder volumes, then you run the risk of missing objects that were occluded from the view-point of the primary eye, but are not from the view-point of the secondary eye. So, you have to perform occlusion tests per eye or not use occluders at all.

        You also run the obvious problem of objects "popping" in from the sides of your vision. There will be a moment when an object approaches from the side, into your peripheral vision, that the object is only visible from one eye. If this is your secondary eye, then I guess you'll miss it. When it is finally visible from your primary eye, it will suddenly "pop" into view. This problem can be fixed by performing your visibility tests from neither eye, but from an in-between eye with the view frustum scaled up to encompass both eye's frustums.

        I just wanted to point out that this wasn't as easy as your made it sound. You can't just draw the primary eye, remember what objects you drew, and then draw them again from the secondary eye. Atleast, you can't do that if you want accurate results.

        Justin Dubs

      • The framerate won't be half - you wrap the entire left eye rendering inside a GL display list and use the cache to render the right eye. In practice the framerate doesn't drop all that much.

        That only is a meaningful optimization if the limiting factor of the game is how long it takes the CPU to fill out the display list (a function of CPU speed and how well the developer has batched up their API calls), not how long the GPU takes to render it (a function mostly of vertex throughput and fill-rate). If

  • Alas, this is only a rehash of the Crystal Eyes / Barco solution, which has been around for years. Granted, it's over an order of magnitude cheaper in price than it was in the mid-90s (these systems used to run around $60K for the projection monitor and $3K for each pair of glasses). Probably a bit less durable though.

    And unfortunately, the writer of the article is a bit new to the 3D monitor industry also, or he would have given the Synthagram lenticular monitor a mention at the end of the article (menti
    • Sounds to me like a rehash of the X-Specs technolgy available for the Amiga back in the day. Their stuff was cheap enough for anyone who could afford an Amiga. The X-specs used the two fields of a frame of video to represent the left and right eye views. The glasses had LCD shutters which would sync with the fields. I even had some object modeling software which could use the X-Specs technology to give "real" 3d modelling results. Good fun way back when...
    • "And unfortunately, the writer of the article is a bit new to the 3D monitor industry"

      I think the author is new to the 3d industry altogether.
      This is a choice quote from the article "it was compatible with OpenGL and Direct Draw - both software components of the Microsoft Windows operating system that allow programmers to manipulate video for computer games."

      I tend not to read much more when an author writes unfocussed information like this. OpenGL isn't actually installed in windows by default anymore, an

  • One reason to like IBM (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Jeng ( 926980 )
    Quote:
    IBM tends to develop cutting edge technology and then license it to third party manufactures rather than build and sell finished products. This strategy allows them to keep pouring funds in to basic research and cutting edge technology. It also permits wide dissemination of it's technologies throughout the industry increasing chances for permanent adoption over competing technologies.

    An IP based business that actually trys to use its head.

  • Direct Draw != 3D (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BlueMonk ( 101716 ) <BlueMonkMN@gmail.com> on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:01AM (#14015239) Homepage
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't DirectDraw the 2D graphics component of DirectX 7.0 and earlier. In DirectX 8 it was replaced with Direct3D which (as the name would suggest) would be more suited to 3D development that DirectDraw was. And as I understand it, Direct3D is so encompassing that Microsoft dropped DirectDraw and now expects Direct3D to handle all 2D and 3D graphics. So why on earth did the article choose to use the term Direct Draw (with a space no less)?
  • Is there really anyone who would prefer to watch TV using heavy goggles just to get the 3D effect? I am not so sure. So many ideas that are 'cool' but don't solve actual problems get funded, while research in say efficient worldwide distribution of food or eradication of malaria get stiffled, despite being much more useful.
    • Same could be said of going to the moon or of any human exploration of space. Usefulness (though I'm not sure about this project's potential) also needs to take into account the journey of getting that cool thing to work. Who knows what contributions a silly project will make to different fields (like stuff in biology affecting antenna design).
  • This wouldn't sell. People just want to sit in their living room and watch. That's it. Anything else is too much work. Besides, who wants to see stuff like American Idol in 3D? The singers are just as bad regardless of dimensionality.

  • New TV? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NardofDoom ( 821951 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:32AM (#14015347)
    Am I the only one who's perfectly happy with his 4-year-old Sony 27" CRT TV? I don't want a Hi Def TV, and I sure as hell don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a TV and then pay extra for content.

    Can someone explain to me the allure of buying three or four thousand dollar TVs? Cause I must be missing something.

    • there are so many people that have extra money and they cant wait to waste it on some random new tech. im sure they will sell a few to the super rich but it will be years before its mainstream and ready for the common lower class familys
  • a 50-inch, flat-screen Texas Instruments rear-projection digital television

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

  • 3d goggles, ps3, this gadget (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dindi ( 78034 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:41AM (#14015383)
    I wonder why they completely dumped the 3d glasses, that worked just fine in theatres (the colorless polarised ones, not the blue/red)

    Also where are the promised VR goggles? I tested one at a computer show with the "descent game" a long time ago, and it had ridiculous resolution (gravis cybermax or something like that), but now my cellphone has a better cheaper display so why aren't they there ?

    Oh and where are the LCD shutter glasses? The ones that came with any higher end ASUS nvidia card? I know these were hard on the eye, because technically it halved the refresh rate with terrible blinking (e.g. a 80Hz monitor became a 40Hz output) .... these were fun though for some games, but they are completely gone...

    Mentioning 3d every time makes me think what sony really wants with dual video output on the ps3 ... yes duak head ... and maybe "split screen" gaming is finally possible without a split screen on the same box.....

    but is dony about to bring 3d thru their dual output? with projection + 3d filter lens? VR goggles.....

    We hear so much about 3d LCD, 3d DLP, 3d tv, 3d laptop, and I just do not see these devices on the shelves of stores when I walk in. Am I missing something ?

    • You don't need fancy glasses. You polarize the light before it his the screen... I think.
      • You need polarized glasses (horizontal on one eye, vertical on the other) to block the light though. The advantage is that they're cardboard and plastic and cost about 10 cents, as opposed to electronic, connected to a computer and up to several hundred dollars for the active glasses.

    • I wonder why they completely dumped the 3d glasses, that worked just fine in theatres (the colorless polarised ones, not the blue/red)

      They didn't [reald.com]...

      Also where are the promised VR goggles?

      VR is very much in use in business [christiedigital.com]...design concept rooms, network monitoring, simulators, etc...

      Oh and where are the LCD shutter glasses? The ones that came with any higher end ASUS nvidia card?

      Well I have a pair from the ASUS v7700 Deluxe setting in an old parts box that I would be more than happy to par

      • oooh, uuuh .... the prices of their projectors .... I did not even want to know...

        I was interested in consumer devices ... you know in the $100-$1500 range somewhere,

        I think current technology - such as a nice dual output VGA card and cheap lcd displays in a thin goggle - might comfortably allow creation of such 3d devices .....

        I mean 2x 800x600 LCDs and some cheap optics mounted to a dual Nvidia would satisfy most gamers for a little driving, flying or a fragfest.......

        Just think of those "video glasse

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:02PM (#14015452)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Some prior research work in the area (Score:3, Informative)

    by Samir Gupta ( 623651 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:02PM (#14015454) Homepage
    At my last job at SEGA, my lab was in charge of coming up with many different and pioneering ideas for new ways to play video games, many of which, for one reason or another, never made it to market.

    One of those was HOLO-GENESIS. It was a 3-D laser holographic projection device for the MegaDrive/geneis. It could have displayed 3-D rendered images, in full-color, in real-time, using a system of 3 red/green/blue lasers, and a finely-meshed micro-faceted surface which gave a pseudo 3-D effect based on carefully utilized light diffraction effects, a la printed holograms.

    It was slated to come out in mid-1995, but at the time, we couldn't get a acceptable frame rate (3-D graphics accelerator hardware was still very primitive and expensive, the province of SGI workstations and arcade machines), so we decided to not commercialize it at the time.

    In any case, I must say, this is a very interesting announcement, and I must congratulate IBM for further and seemingly admirable work on bringing such technology to the market. Hopefully they can continue to lower the price point and make it adopted wider.
  • First off, we don't see in 3-D, we see in 2*2-D. We've had 3-D art for years, it's called "sculpture." The only difference between so-called "3-D" and traditional 2-D is parallax [wikipedia.org], and there are other ways to simulate depth from a static perspective, many of which are far more meaningful.

    We simulate depth through motion, shading, relative sizes, overlapping and a slough of other visual clues that are easily captured on a 2-D screen.

    Ask yourself, have you recently confused the foreground for the background

    • irst off, we don't see in 3-D, we see in 2*2-D. We've had 3-D art for years, it's called "sculpture." The only difference between so-called "3-D" and traditional 2-D is parallax, and there are other ways to simulate depth from a static perspective, many of which are far more meaningful.

      There are many times I DEEPLY desired parallax perspective for video games. I can't tell you the number of times I've died just because I can't tell how far away an object is in the game. Especially when flying or jumping

    • From the few 3D movies I've seen (using polarised glasses), I can tell you why: Even when there aren't special effects that make particular use of it, things still look a lot less flat when your eyes see slightly different versions of the same scene.

      But I'd gladly bet that a lot of movies WILL start making use of 3D for special effects, particularly light-on-story action movies that survive on their over the top effects.

    • That's why Americans prefer theatre to film.
    • We get depth perception through eye focus - when I focus my eyes at the monitor, the wall get's blurry and gets less attention, when I focus my eyes at the painting behind the monitor, then it gets blurry.

        2D can't simulate that. No way, no how.
      Well, unless they somehow manage actively track how my eye lenses contract, and automatically adjust some focus-blurring instantaneously.

  • "...compatible with OpenGL and Direct Draw..."

    So video games will be 3D with this, big deal. When can I read Slashdot in 3D? Or better -- when can I moderate in 3D?!

  • Caught this blurb in TFA:

    "Some sports TV networks have expressed interest in filming NFL games in 3D. To shoot in 3D, TV networks would need to install expensive 3D cameras and image processing hardware. "

    My (admitedly simplistic) understanding is you could get the 3D persepective simply by fixing two cameras at approximately the same separation as human eyes. It can't be that hard to sync the frames, especially with digital technology. Maybe zoom is more complicated, but it still seems like that coul

    • My (admitedly simplistic) understanding is you could get the 3D persepective simply by fixing two cameras at approximately the same separation as human eyes. It can't be that hard to sync the frames, especially with digital technology.

      That was my first thought too. But then I remembered that our eyes are only a few inches apart and high quality camera lenses are much wider. They may be able to pull it off using mirrors and lenses.

      I've taken 3D pics before by just moving the camera a short distance. If

  • I wonder what video card can produce this....? Perhaps some sort of dual graphics card solution.
  • ...works with normal DLP (Digital Light Processing) televisions.

    Are DLP TVs normal now? I thought they were still pretty darned high-end. But then, I don't have a TV, so what do I know?
  • Neural interfaces to the brain. 3-Dimensional TV. What's next on /., flying cars?

  • International Business Machines, a worldwide leader in technology innovation, has announced a new and affordable 3D video system that works with normal DLP (Digital Light Processing) televisions. Before now, 3D video systems would set you back at least $1,800 while the price of IBM's new system is expected to be only $1000 - if only a grand sounds cheap to you.

    Or you could just buy a pair of shutter glasses for 69.95 from this site http://www.ray3d.com/glasses.html/ [ray3d.com]

    IBM has managed to alternate the v

  • First off the article makes it sound like IBM invented this when in fact all they have "invented" is a consumer way to utilize the real invention, DLP. Texas Instruments tied their Digital Micromirror Devices to two DLP processors quite a while back for the purpose of faster image processing, which would include 3D.

    Christie Digital [christiedigital.com] (3-chip DLP Cinema projector with the dual source inputs necessary), Dobly [dolby.com] (media server), Disney (content creation) and RealD [reald.com] (active LCD panel and media processor) have alre
  • These are probably not shutter glasses, too heavy, requires wireless synchronization... bah.

    A cheaper way would be to copy the method from the 3D Imax theatres where circular polarizing
    filters are placed in front of the projectors with matching passive filters on the glasses.

    Since this is based on DLP tech, then the expensive switching filter would be placed over
    the mirror system - thus keeping size and cost down - much cheaper than putting a switching
    system over the entire screen.
  • This kind of stereoscopic 3D imaging is nothing new -- in high end visualisation work it's been around for decades. However, I had the fortune(?) to attend this year's SEG (society of exploration geophysicists -- oil and gas exploration) conference where there were severel stands with 3D displays that did not require glasses. Most of them were stereoscopic displays with a special film on which makes the left and right eye see different images, given that your head is in exactly the right position. I didn't
  • > but the company spokesperson said it was compatible
    > with OpenGL and Direct Draw, which is definitely
    > aimed at software developers who make 3D games.

    In a room off to the side, a smaller announcement was made in that this new technology would be compatible with OpenGString and Direct Drool, which is definitely aimed at the pornographers who will be driving early adoption.
  • I saw this idea at the 1996 COMDEX. The glasses use LCD's to block one eye at a time, alternating with each frame. That allows any normal video display to be used. The demo game was Descent II. It was neat, but you had to wear those glasses and the flicker was annoying.
  • If user interaction with displayed objects can be achieved, we'll be looking at a rudimentary form of the Star Trek holodeck. That would make quite a computer monitor.
  • Just so you know how this could be made a whole lot simpler.. use two DLPs and polarized light.. no need for this uber high framerate crap... I've done it, its pretty darn easy, and very, very cool looking. The glasses are $1 and don't need any electricity. Now, to be cheap just alternate between filters on one DLP very quickly.. Most cheap DLP tv's render three filters a frame as it is.. (RGB) Too bad LCD's are already polarized or I would use cheaper projectors..

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