HP announces breakthrough in 3D viewing
This time, playing the fool fits the (duck) bill
If you’ve pondered whether to sink a cool couple of grand into a fancy new three-dimensional TV but didn’t want to mess around with those dorky glasses, you may want to sit tight for a few more years.
Researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP) Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, report that they’ve come up with a new 3D technology that not only doesn’t require viewers to wear special glasses, but it also can be viewed from a wide variety of angles. The advance could propel the development of mobile 3D devices as well as TVs.
Our eyes and brains visualise our world in its full 3D glory with seeming ease, thanks to what’s known as parallax. Our eyes are several centimetres apart and thus perceive slightly different-yet overlapping-images when looking at an object. Our brains stitch the two views together into a single coherent image. But because TVs present images on 2D screens, this task is much harder to pull off. To allow us to see in three dimensions, imaging technologies must present slightly different images to each of our eyes.
Numerous technologies have been invented over the years to carry this out. Perhaps the most familiar is the one that requires moviegoers to wear red and green glasses. In this case, the visual information for full 3D images is sent out in all directions, and the glasses filter out unwanted portions for each eye. To display 3D images without special glasses, engineers must control how light is directed from each pixel of the display so that different light patterns reach the viewer’s eyes. (The strategy for more modern 3D glasses is largely the same.)
Today, the gold standard in providing that control is holography, which can project specified colours in any direction. But holography is expensive and practical only for displaying still images rather than full-motion video. In recent years, researchers have come up with several alternatives. One family of techniques, known as autostereoscopic multiview 3D displays, projects multiple different images on a single screen. But such approaches have tended to reduce resolution or permit the ideal 3D images to be seen in only a few spots where viewers are the right distance from the screen and oriented at the correct angle, muting interest among consumers.
To get around these limitations, the HP Labs team, led by physicist David Fattal, used standard computer chip manufacturing techniques to create an array of optical elements called diffrac- tion gratings that precisely control the direction in which light emerges from each pixel in the display. The researchers then used other standard optical devices called waveguides to steer light toward the diffraction grating in each pixel, as well as liquid crystals to modulate which colors of light are sent out from each spot. The result was a high-resolution video display that allowed viewers to see full 3D images from 14 different viewing zones, the researchers reported online in Nature. The HP team believes that it should be able to increase the number of viewing zones to 64, enough to convince our eyes that they are seeing a seamless 3D image even if we walk around the room. In addition, because the technology uses conventional chippatterning techniques, the new diffraction gratings should be cheap to make and already offer a resolution that is potentially higher than current displays.
Still, the novel displays aren’t a shoo-in for commercial success, notes Neil Dodgson, a computer scientist at Cambridge University. In a commentary in Nature, Dodgson writes that the novel displays must still leap a series of manufacturing hurdles, and that engineers must come up with cameras that can capture 14 to 64 different images that would then be projected through the 3D TV. ‘‘If the authors can solve the practical problems, then they have a compelling alternative to existing 3D display technology,’’ Dodgson says.
Iused to quite enjoy April Fool’s Day but the never-ending array of hoaxes lurking online has taken the gloss off April 1. It was nice to see the likes of Google still getting creative with the company’s now-expected selection of elaborate hoaxes hitting the net throughout the day – everything from the end of YouTube to Google Nose aroma search and Gmail Blue, where everything in the email program was blue. Revolutionary (is.gd/z2lVn5).
However, that’s the problem: we expect the hoaxes. And most of us have become a little jaded and perhaps a lot suspicious by nature after seeing so many hoaxes on Facebook and in our inboxes on a daily basis. It’s a bit of a shame, really, because there’s a whole generation missing out on the fun some of us, ahem, slightly more mature web-users had every April 1.
Because of that, I was pleased to read in Tuesday’s edition of The Southland Times that there were a few people out there who fell for Monday’s story proclaiming the likelihood that duckshooting season might be cancelled.
I’m quite fond of ducks, having had a whole family of them as pets many years ago, but I understand the problem with population numbers getting out of control and I reckon the duck numbers on the Mataura River are well up on this time last year. They are also looking very well fed, although a whole mob of them mugged me for a loaf of bread the other day and polished it off in minutes.
I also understand just how excited
ONLINE
duckshooters get about the whole duckshooting season thing, so I can imagine there were some distraught Southland blokes reading the paper on Monday morning. But never fear, it was all just a hoax. Now, can I email you some information on my Nigerian duck scam, er, scheme?
Jim Parsons (Dr Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory fame) is nothing short of a comic genius so the opportunity to see him in fishnets, corset and full makeup is too good to turn down.
The Big Bang Theory cast once again took part in the annual A Night at Sardi’s event in support of the Alzheimer’s Association.
This time around they all got into their favourite frillies and performed the Time Warp. This is just a wee snippet of the action, which kicks off at around 1min 12sec: is.gd/Xb96Bg
I suppose the police be a little blase when it comes to unusual characters but sometimes there is a sight just so weird that it just stops you in your tracks. Take this wannabe burglar/ vandal/fashion victim in Redding, California: is.gd/G6d7rf.
I reckon he needs to work on his throwing arm, too.