This is a lovely video clip demonstrating the latest and greatest in 3D video technology from the mind of James Cameron. The system uses two high def cameras and a nice little parallax adjustment to create two images that are fused in the user’s head via polarizing glasses.
This should make this a wonderful camera if it ever become a standard production camera. The mass adoption of LCD screens in the home may make this rather tricky however. It’s common to use an alternating left right frame display coupled with LCD shutter glasses worn by the viewer. This is fine with old CRT tube TVs and monitors because of the way the images are ‘painted’ on the screen but it won’t work on LCD displays. I have no idea if it would work on a plasma or a DLP screen. Anyone know the answer to this?
I look forward to seeing the movie when it comes out, in an IMAX theater near you I should think. One extra note, it’s nice to see that I was on the right track with my own 3D video camera. I would ‘toe in’ the cameras when the subject would get near to mimic the way the human eyes deals with moving targets. Nice to see I’m on the right track.
[via uberreview]
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Once they gave away enough hints, I realized the projection technology was the same as something called a Geowall, which has been around for about 7 years in the geomatics / geosciences research field. I have used one at the University of Michigan, and I have one at our offices as well. In fact, they are so easy to make (if you have the money) that DIY instructions are available at http://geowall.geo.lsa.umich.edu/intro.html – all you need are two DLP projectors, two polarizing filters, a projection surface which preserves polarization (or ours which preserves and rotates 90 degrees) and cheap e-bay polarized-per-eye glasses.
When we put ours together at the office, the biggest problem we had was getting a polarization-preserving projection screen.
I guess I just wanted credit to go to the people who pioneered this stuff, the geowall folks. Now, we have only been using it with geomatics imagery and doing stereo video the way they are doing it may be novel – but I bet someone familiar with stereovideography would claim old hat.
Give the geowall people a hand, they worked HARD to make this happen.
p.s. our Geowall cost us $3,900(CAD) to make. Well within reason for a dedicated hobbyist.