MSW@mplvax.sri.com (Mark S. Williams) (09/02/89)
If there was a technique that would allow you to produce images with a pronounced 3-D depth effect, without using special glasses or other equipment, would anyone be interested in trying it out? Well, believe it or not, there does exist such a technique, although it doesn't seem to be widely known - at least to my knowledge. An engineer friend of mine and his girlfriend witnessed a short demonstration of this technique on tv a couple of years ago, and were quite impressed. And no, I'm not talking about the method that requires objects to be in motion to produce the effect. I did some research and found a short article in a magazine about it. The inventors names were cited, and this allowed me to have an online patent search done and then obtain a copy of the patent. The amiga is a perfect machine to use this technique, and boy would it shine if this was used in Commedore's upcoming advertizing campaign. I've thought about making copies of the patent description and sending them to Commedore, commercial software companies that could benefit from this, and user groups, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, and I don't have all the companies addressess. If there's an interest, I'll post the patent number and an abstract. I haven't seen the effect myself, but even if marginal, it's got to be of great benefit to the amiga community. Of course, to use this technique commercially, one would have to make arrangments with the patent holder. msw@mplvax.sri.com
tony@hp-sdd.hp.com (Tony Parkhurst) (09/02/89)
In article <DEHMZN@mplvax.sri.com> MSW@mplvax.sri.com (Mark S. Williams) writes: >If there was a technique that would allow you to produce images with a >pronounced 3-D depth effect, without using special glasses or other >I haven't seen the effect myself, but even if marginal, it's got to be ^^^^^^^^ Bingo! Marginal is the best way to describe it :-) This method is indeed a neat effect, but it is a bit irritating after a bit, does require special gear (of course), and the biggie is that you need to license it as the inventors are indeed out for the big bucks. I really don't think this will work well with the amiga because the effect of using X-Specs stuff without wearing that glasses is very similar, and doesn't do much. Probably the big difference is that X-Specs takes the screen objects, and moves them closer to the eyepoint by moving apart the left and right views of the foreground object. Without glasses, this is a mess. This other TV method works by moving the perception of the depth deeper into the screen. That is, the object of the focal point does not move, but slight left and right views of that object flutter on the screen. It has to be seen. And yes, it works better for moving objects (whose movement will tend to lower the distraction of the alternating views), but it does not depend on it for the effect. -- Tony -- Tony Parkhurst ( tony@hp-sdd.HP.COM ) "Is this Hell? Or is this Texas?" "Both" -- Heinlein, _J_O_B: _A _C_o_m_e_d_y _o_f _J_u_s_t_i_c_e