

Watch Everything in 3-D? Here’s How One Inventor Is Making it Possible - wilschroter
http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/02/watch-everything-in-3-d-heres-how-one-inventor-is-making-it-possible/

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glenra
Okay, I give up. HOW? What does his 2d-to-3d converter actually DO in order to
produce 3D? I read the whole linked article and watched the video on his
fundable page and it seems like it's all just handwaving. What is being done,
and what are the tradeoffs?

On the output end of things, it looks like his glasses are the old red-green
color filters. Yes, you can use color filters to generate 3d "on any device",
but only at the expense of losing color info in the source image. (Will people
really want essentially black-and-white 3D over either full-color 2D or the
full-color 3D you can get using polarized lenses (with a special screen) or
active (powered with a smart shutter) glasses?)

On the input end of things, suppose your input is, say, a bugs-bunny cartoon.
How does his software give us useful 3D info where none was present in the
source signal?

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gdolgoff
glenra - Good questions! On the display end of our technology we use two
different 3-D glasses technologies to provide full-color 3-D video to viewers.
When using a 3-D TV or projector, you simply wear the 3-D glasses that came
with the 3-D TV or projector. When watching a 2-D TV or projector, whether
it's CRT, LCD, plasma, DLP, or laser, we supply a special pair of RF shutter
glasses. When watching a computer monitor or handheld device such as a smart
phone, we supply our FullColor 3D glasses. These are not anaglyph glasses. We
spent several years on research and development to develop complex notch
filters that would work with every kind of display to provide full-color with
no eyestrain or headaches. These glasses have been tested successfully by
millions of people and, while not providing quite as good color as shutter
glasses, the longer you wear them, the more the brain adjusts to provide a
more natural looking color image. In addition, the output of your computer
(VGA or HDMI) can be input to our converter, making it viewable on any 3-D TV
or projector with our shutter glasses (or on a 3-D TV or projector using its
3-D glasses). Our patented 2-D to 3-D conversion technology works in a unique
way that is different from all other attempts to convert 2-D to 3-D. Our
algorithm compares two frames at a time and presents stereo pair data that is
designed to work hand-in-hand with the algorithms the human brain uses to
create the 3-D experience. Our software makes use of the facts that objects
further from the camera in a scene exhibit less brightness, sharpness,
contrast, and color saturation, are located higher up in the frame, get
smaller, and objects that occlude other objects generally move faster than the
objects they occlude (telephone poles move by faster than buildings as seen
from a moving car, for instance). I hope this is helpful in clarifying your
excellent question.

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janeesah
The converter layers frames to determine depth information. The reviews by
people who have seen the converter say it's fantastic.

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glenra
Setting aside how that works, to then get "3D on any device" do they use the
resulting info to make a cheesy old-fashioned color separation, or is there
something new involved on that end?

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janeesah
There are glasses involved, but from the looks of a video posted on Hip Hop
Gamer Show the picture isn't blurry without the glasses. He's freaking out in
the vid playing COD in 3D... hilarious.

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310robert
im looking forward to 8-bit NES in 3D!

