This thread is partly an excuse for me to answer a question asked in another thread, but I also welcome all contributions on the subject of 3D displays!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Medusa
NicolasB do you have any info on hows 3D TV Technology getting on?
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Not really. The direction "3D" displays have been going in for the past few years doesn't interest me very much, TBH.
We're still a long way away from real-time hologram displays - probably decades rather than years - and even then I'm not sure they'll ever be able to get convincing
colour images using holographic techniques. There have been a few suggestions for transparent 3D imaging systems (where you have a 3D image inside a solid block display) but these are really only of interest for things like medical scanners.
Consumer 3D focuses on stereoscopic systems - where you have two separate 2D images, one of which is fed to each eye. A system like that cannot ever be genuinely 3D, because there's no parallax: if you move your head from side to side, the elements within the "3D" scene don't move correctly relative to each other.
They had a moderately effective 3D system in IMax cinemas about 15 or 20 years ago, which uses two different images with different polarisations projected onto the same screen; you wear lightweight glasses with polarising lenses. That actually works reasonably well (aside from the parallax issue), but it's hard to achieve the same thing if you're not using a front projection system.
If we hadn't abandoned CRT we could potentially still be looking into combining high-refresh-rate CRT displays with LCD shutter glasses. You could possibly achieve the same thing with some other display technologies - DLP, for example - but unfortunately companies refuse to explore that avenue because they've become obsessed with the idea of doing 3D "without glasses". All of the resulting 3D displays therefore require the viewer to be at a
very precise distance away from the screen - and are thus useless in a domestic situation, and always will be. (They're useful for shop-window displays or booths at exhibitions, but that's all).
So, frankly, I wouldn't hold your breath. No company is interested in consumer 3D right now,
AFAIK.
One thing
I would love to see is a return to "Virtual Reality" style systems. This isn't remotely relevant to watching movies, of course, it's only useful in situations where the image is generated dynamically, such as in video games. The most important aspect of VR (to my mind) was not actually the stereoscopic aspect, but the head-tracking; it's the only stereoscopic system where you actually do get correct parallax. From a computer-gaming perspective it ought to be an amazing experience; all of a sudden you're no longer looking at the game world through a small window, you are completely
inside the world, and can turn your head in any direction, look all around you, within that world. If you combine that with a glove controller that offers force-feedback, so you can pick up objects and feel the shape of them in your hand, you've got a potentially stunning setup.
Sadly, VR was launched a few years too soon. At that time the resolutions and frame-rates that could be achieved were too low; that not only made the experience visually unsatisfying, it also actually caused motion sickness in users! So I suspect the idea is probably gone, never to return.
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3D TV
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