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More on the 3D DTI Monitor 47

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-wet-your-pants-over dept.
Tyana pointed us to a review at Evil3D about the DTI 3D Monitor that we mentioned here not to long ago. They actually sat down and used it a bit and talk about the price ($12k!) the aesthetics (They like it) and play some games (it crashes a lot). This is a really fascinating technology tho: 3D without glasses, and it apparently works really well, assuming you can hold your head still while you play Q3A!
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More on the 3D DTI Monitor More

More on the 3D DTI Monitor

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  • Which would be more valuable, 3-D imagery or peripheral vision? What if the even/odd pixels were rendered as images you would see out of the corners of your eye, and you wore mirrors on glasses-frames to create the illusion of periphery?
  • They weren't talking about shutter goggles. They were talking about wearing two polarized lenses and having the monitor refreshing quickly to show separate polarized images for each eye. Sort of like Captain Eo at Disneyland.

    CAVEs and Imersadesks are pretty nifty, but last time I checked, each screen (3 in a CAVE, 1 for the desk) required an SGI Onyx to drive it. To get a monitor to do that you would need a monster refresh rate, probably like 120 Hz minimum (60 for each eye).
  • How does the monitor work with people that only have vision out of one eye? Being someone with only one eye, I am not able to use any of the 3D technologies like VR headsets and and such since they require two eyes to fake a 3D image. Will this still have true 3D with only one eye?


    -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
    Version: 3.12
  • On a more serious note, given that this display is static, would head tracking work?

    I think the answer is yes, given that you do have a little freedom of movement. For objects that are "close" to you in the 3-D view, it would probably be a nice effect. Unfortunately, adding headtracking would probably encourage the user to move their head out of the narrow viewing area, thus breaking the effect.

  • The page crashes NS 4.61 on HP-UX also, although that seems to happen on a lot of pages.

  • After reading this article, i guess i do sort of want one of these monitors, when they're the price of flat panels. But then at that point you have to see if this 3D junk would end up giving you a headache if you tried using it as your regular monitor all day. If it does turn out to cause headaches they might as well keep the price high because its only going to see use as a novelty at arcades and a visualization aide in science and industry

    My vision of hell:

    Being locked in a room with "Evil" and "KillerG", the gangsta geek doodz. Hey yo, yo! We gotz the forties, now we can start codin proppa! Crank that "Thugz for Jesus" album while i'm hacking up the Visual Basic!
  • The technology is nice, but it's really not that new.

    True enough. I saw a demo of this technology on a hand-held lcd display at MIT back in 1993. I think it is pretty neat. people are fairly used to nairrow viewing angles on LCDs anyway. I didn't think it was much trouble to hold my head in the 5-10 degree feild of view for the device. Then again, I wasn't doing that for hours on end trying to play a game.

  • Games like Quake, et. al. work cause the monitor is like a kind of window into a world you look into - and you get immersed.

    This isn't just sour grapes cause I have almost no stereopsis, but it would seem to me that this technology is good at making solitary 3D objects look like they're IN FRONT OF the monitor.

    Wouldn't that destroy the illusion they're going for?

    Instead of you suspending your disbelief that you're walking through a corridor, etc. you're looking at this 3 inch tall elf hovering above your keyboard. Not quite the effect I think people want.

    For stereomicroscopy, yes. A game of chess, so you can see all the pieces from any angle, yes. For archiving and the like, definitely. Even, my friends, for salespeople, the idea of bringing it along as a low-cost alternative to lugging around a 14 ton worm gear (you can browse the 1/12 scale model virtually!) to conventions, etc. yes.

    But gaming?

    Somehow I don't see Quake working this way.

  • Correcting image distortions ... (Score:3)

    by LL ( 20038 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @04:33AM (#1009213)
    I hate to rain on anyone's parade but I suspect that 3D displays are not just a case of plonking down the hardware (and the money) and expecting Quake et al to work out of box. For an idea of the complications of correcting stereoscopic image distortions, take a look at this [curtin.edu.au]. There's also the added complication that VRML is undergoing a transmorgification into Web3D [web3d.org] at the moment with all the attendent uncertainty for developers. Now let's look at the intended audience for $12K screens. You can probably count the industry sectors on a couple of hands (defense, medical, yuppies, some geospatial apps like energy exploration). Justifying such a beast for dedicated gaming would be a bit of a hard sell at that price-point. If they've managed to incorporate some 3D capability into the (H)DTV standards, it might have a chance of be taken up my mainstream media which would take the chance to create the necessary premium content, e.g. for home entertainment centres with digital cameras straight to digital projectors.

    What are the potential barriers towards adopting such a technology - better connection with kinesthetics, the intuitive match between spatial awareness and body motion - between physics models like MathsEngine [mathengine.com] to express - some killerapp vertically integrated applications to reach selected markets (like telesurgery which requires precise placement) to help bring the price-point down - software/content that supports 2-3D with the marginal effort of adding 3D smaller than marginal increase in sales

    Apart from the gee-whiz factor, a realistic look at what services would benefit most from such displays needs to be addressed, especially their willingness to cough up the money. Remember that hardware is only 10% of the total costs, ad another 20% for peripherals/support, 30% for software/operational consumables, and 40% for training. It's starting to looking expensive.

    3D will have a role but I suspect widespread star wars type holographic displays are still a way off unless a miracle occurs.

    LL

  • there are better alternatives. Requiring the head to remain relatively fixed will not do, if there are alternatives that don't, and there are alternatives that don't: at my workplace, we have a so called CAVE, a room with three display-walls, on which alternatively projections are made for left and right eye, with polarized glasses closing the "wrong" eye in synch, which gives an extremely realistic 3D view without requiring the head to remain still. A simpler setup is the Immersadesk, a large display with similar features: wearing the glasses you get the 3D effect from a flat screen, making a racing game just that much more realistic.

    At the moment such setups are too expensive for the casual user, but if the technology would be scaled down to a similar setup like DTI's, it could well become affordable. It'd need such glasses, a head tracking system for optimal representation, and special software, just like with the DTI system. Call me optimistic, but it could be done quite soon for no more than $500 total, in the near future, if I go by prices for other goodies coming onto the market. But so long as that doen't happen, there may be a place for the DTI stuff.

    Stefan.
    I should get a colleague from the VR group to comment here, but I don't think they read Slashdot yet.

  • What happened to the "Post Anonymously" button? or is that just me?
  • Bologna. Use piezoelectrics to physically shift the LCD array. Same way adaptive optics is done.

  • Honestly, I tried my best to read it. When I read the word 'kewl' I let it slide, and when the reviewer referred to himself and his friends as 'DooDz' I cringed. Once 'schweet' and 'so happenin' appeared, I gave up.

    On a more serious note, these monitors will never catch on, in the same way that those kitchy mid-90's 'VR' goggles/lenses never caught on, and the same reason most movies stopped requiring 3D-lenses sometime after 1957.

  • I use the 3d Revelator [elsa.com] from ELSA [elsa.com]

    They work with DirectX and now OpenGL on Windows with Nvidia cards. For about $50 you can get the wireless ones. They fit nicely over glasses (as I can confirm!). they also do a browser plug in so you can view .jps files in 3d too.

    well worth $50 i can tell ya. Need For Speed rocks even more in 3d
    .oO0Oo.

  • In the long run, this tech sucks... (Score:3)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @08:49AM (#1009219) Homepage
    I am sure not going to win any points for this POV, but I think these displays are DOA.

    A limited FOV, the need to not move the head too much, and a high price tag - effectively puts it out of reach of consumers, and should even make the IS department of any company who might have a need for such a display to do a double-take.

    One person here mentioned a CAVE solution, or an ImmersaDesk-style system. Such systems would be better for many of the same apps, but both are still quite pricey. This same poster thinks that such systems will become affordable for the home user (I imagine he was speaking of the ImmerasDesk system) in the near future, coming in at around $500.00! This person has never priced LCD projectors (and I think high-end CAVE systems use CRT projector systems, just to get the high refresh rates needed for the stereo shutter glasses) apparently - prices for these devices, which would be an intregral part of any such system - haven't come down much in the past 10 years. Indeed, what seems to be apparent is rather than keeping the older tech around from the early 90's (which would be more than adequate for home projector use), and charging less - projector companies tend to dump it, and only sell the latest, thus keeping prices high (an ok projector will run you a minimum of around $1000 - used, you might get away with $800).

    So, what does that leave for the average consumer? CAVE/ImmersaDesk systems are out and this DTI tech is out. Both mainly from a cost standpoint - prices that are not likely to come down at all in the near future for either system (barring some breakthrough in display tech - and even then the price will be high because it is *NEW* and *EXCITING*).

    Only two possible affordable solutions - Shutter Glasses, and HMD's.

    Shutter glasses are available now, and supported by several graphics cards, and they are cheap - however, while they allow more freedom of movement of the head, they still only have a limited FOV - due to the monitor. They are, and will continue to be, the choice for most people - only due to cost and ease of use.

    HMD's are still rather pricey - but one can get an HMD today for around $1000 dollars that works quite well. Still, this is rather expensive for most gamers, who have already shelled out this much and more for their system likely - and don't have much left over for exciting 3D. What to do, what to do...

    Homebrew, anyone? Why has EVERYONE (ok, that's an exageration - but not by much) forgotten about homebrew VR? Once, way back in the early 90's - if we didn't have a custom 3D display tech, we built it ourselves, using cheap (and cheaper today!) Casio hand-held TVs and Fresnel lenses, cobbled together in a plastic frame. The PowerGlove allowed us to reach into our worlds, and a lightweight boom mounted system allowed us to look around (some of us got adventurous, and used strings, LED's, ultrasonics ripped from PG systems, and other tricks for tracking - but the boom arm was the most accurate).

    Today, homebrew VR has all but died - a few people still play the game, but most went on to other things. But look at what is available! We have free, open-source, GPL'd display engines! Low, low cost HMDs on the used market (one can pick up a used Forte VFX-1 for about $400 on eBay - Victormaxx Stuntmasters can be had for around $50). One could buy a couple of StuntMasters and home-brew their own HMD, with good res and a 60 degree+ FOV (the point of immersion), for under $300. We have fast, low cost computers and extreme 3D cards only dreamed about by the pioneers of the early 90's. Heck, one can run Rend386 or Avril on a normal PC of today, rendering standard VGA, and see frame rates well over 150 FPS. The code to both of these tools is available, and other code is available to do similar tasks under Linux and other OS's - using today's graphics cards...

    What has happened? Why aren't we satisfying the urge to explore our own 3D worlds?

    In a way, we are - witness things like Q3A and UT - both are networked virtual environments - the only thing lacking is full immersion, with full tracking. I can't understand why these players aren't clammoring for a fully immersed experience, or at least why some of them haven't built their own HMD systems, or why they would rather sit in front of a monitor playing a game, rather than being *in* the game. Q3A and UT offer the possibility of extreme VE immersion only dreamed of in the Rend386 days - yet donning a homebrew HMD, reaching out with a PowerGlove, and catching a spinning bannana is still something that neither UT or Q3A can quite match...

    On a final note I would like to offer a link to my website, where I am trying to inform the public about homebrew VR, and today's possibilities:

    PhoenixGarage.ORG [phoenixgarage.org]
  • I'm not on that combination, although am using Linux Netscape. It is hard to get the next page when the NEXT link is a thin invisible bar over the word "NEXT".
  • I'm on Solaris 2.8 with Netscape 4.7, and it works fine...
  • I had similar problems on my machine (it's NT, I'm at work, what can I say...). It's not the platform that's the problem, but rather the pages use of Cascading Style Sheets and Netscape 4.7x's rather mediocre implementation.

    It took a while, but eventually I got through the article.

  • You don't want to shift the LCD, you want to shift the lens.

  • On the other hand, if they instead used polarized light with the article's technology, you could move around as much as you want...and polarized glasses aren't as heavy as head mounted displays.
  • Head tracking wouldn't help because the lenses can't be adjusted to change the monitor's behavior.

    One solution, obviously, is to put the head in a clamp to hold it in just the right place and allow the body to be wriggled around. Obviously zero-G would be the easiest implementation.

    However, inertia of the large mass of the body could cause dangerous stress on the neck. An inertia canceller is left as an exercise for the reader.

    The other obvious solution is to put the head in a jar. (See FOX TV's "Futurama")

  • Actually, LCD shutter goggles are old news - They had them for the Sega Master System. Heck, the Vectrex had 3d goggles that made the black and white system COLOR... It had a rotating disc which was half opaque black, and the other half had red, green, and blue panels.

    These days, ELSA has a 3d goggle system which only works with TNT/GEforce chipsets, which works at the driver level - No game changes necessary. It works pretty well, actually, but the glasses give me a headache. Luckily, the arms aren't an integral part of the solution, so I can remove them and put on a headband or something.

    ELSA's 3d glasses model would seem to be the best (unless you wear glasses and don't have contacts) because it's cheap, and it works. It also comes in tethered and untethered versions so you have the option to go through lithium batteries, or not. They're pretty lightweight, too.

    The precise reason that lenticular displays aren't practical is that your head does have to remain fixed. Putting the lens on piezo or servo is impractical because the head-tracking is expensive when done right, and there's just no point in doing it wrong. How many people do you know that remain perfectly still while playing first person games? If you're not moving, you're not in the game.

  • So what does it use, two polarizing filters on two projectors?
  • I agree, the overuse of 'kewl' and 'peeps' made it hard to take the "article" seriously.

  • you could move around as much as you want...and polarized glasses aren't as heavy as head mounted displays.

    Not really. You'd see the image from the same virtual angle no matter what angle you're viewing the screen at. Just like how, in the old Captain EO show at Disneyland, everybody in the audience would see the same thing no matter where they were sitting.

    The only way to get around that would be through head-tracking (or puil-tracking at best, to tell how the user is focusing). That's a whole new can of worms, however.


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • This is the right technology for displaying floating objects about a foot cubed in size, as you need in medicine and engineering. It's not the right technology for 3D gaming; as the reviewer notes "the 3D effect was nowhere near as good [in Heavy Gear II]" and "we saw intimations of the 3D effect".

    For games, the most important cue is motion parallax--the way a 3D image changes when you move your head. The "3D monitor" actually makes this worse, not better, since the stereo cues also don't behave right when you move your head.

    For 3D gaming, the best thing is going to be a head mounted display. Ideally, it will have considerable peripheral vision, since that gives a sense of immersion. Used with gyroscopic sensors, a head mounted display lets you look around naturally, and if you add head tracking of some form (an accelerometer may be sufficient), it can display motion parallax as well. Once you have a head mounted display, if you also want to throw in stereo, that's pretty easy.

  • Actually, most of the cost is due to the fact that each and every monitor is being hand-built right now.

    As the review stated, by the time these things go mainstream, they should be about the same cost as a decent flat-panel.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • I'm not sure I agree at all.

    90 steps is plenty, given that our vision only uses this sort of depth perception for things that are very close. It's not like you have to split the 90 steps up linearly from distance 0 to infinity. Serendipty helps us out: it works out that you get more resolution for close objects' depth (large horisontal separation) than you do for distant objects (low, or zero horisontal separation (*)), which is ok because motion parallax takes over beyond a certain depth. This is why MIT's display is soo cool.

    MIT has a display that uses this sort of lenticular display, but also has a camera that keeps tabs on your head. So that when you move it, the POV is moved too. So you get the parallax for distant objects and "real 3d" for near ones.

    I'd like to see it in action one of these days (they're just across the river from here).

    (*) can anyone comment on whether it is possible to use negative separation to illuse (a verb of my own invention) an object moving very far away?
  • Now we all can see NT blue screens in 3D!

    I guess it 'Adds a new dimention' to computering
    and 'projects an image of the future'?

  • I like the idea (I'm pretty sure it was slashdotted some time ago...) of LCD display embedded into prescription glasses... the company was already selling it for $40K or so... and you could use auto-stereoscopy and transparency to do some really cool things... like, how about floating labels that tell you the names of guests at a party, and you can turn it off with a command?

    WorldMaker
  • I have been sick the past few days - but anyhow, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that by having this display somehow track where you (move/turn) your head, it tracks with it (kinda like if I turn my head to the right, the monitor in front of me moves to the right) - would increase the FOV?

    If this is what you mean, then, in a word - no.

    FOV is defined by the combined angular measument of a pair of imaginary "cones" radiating from the approximate center of each eye (one cone per eye). There are both horizontal and vertical FOV measurements (generally expressed in degrees) - so each "cone" can actually have an elliptical cross section (generally, vertical FOV is smaller than horizontal FOV in HMDs). Some HMD manufacturers are beginning to use a diagonal FOV measurment - muddling the issue further (kinda like diagonal measurments don't mean jack for a monitor, until you know about the 4:3 ratio - however, in the case of an HMD, you really have no clue what the ratio is)!

    Generally, when speaking about FOV measurements for immersion, a horizontal measurement is used as the baseline. Most commercial, off the shelf HMDs, that are priced under $1000 (like the I-Glasses, or the Victormaxx Cybermaxx), have an FOV of around 30 degrees. Some of the good ones can go up to 45 degrees (I believe the Forte VFX-1 is around the area, maybe less). It takes a horizontal FOV of at least 60 degrees to be in the area of full immersion. An FOV of 65 or 70 degrees is better, in that at this point the FOV begins to extend into the peripheral vision areas, thus enhancing the immersion experience. A carefully built homebrew rig can approach (and with a lot of care in design, hit) the 60 degree mark. It takes patience, and a lot of skill, but it has been done before.

    But tell me if my interpretation is wrong. What you seem to describe sounds more like a moving "window" on the virtual environment being viewed - not necessarily a bad thing - certainly something that could be utilized (imagine a gauzy "plane" in front of you in an HMD, that would show a cutaway "x-ray" view of the inside of an object in the VE, as you turned your head!) just not what I was describing...
  • or even laser

    I can see it now, a scr1pt k1dd13 hacks into your computer and increases the intensity of the beam..."Ieeeiiee! My eyes!".

    On a more serious note, given that this display is static, would head tracking work? It's a bit like an LCD display, if you move your head you can't see the display, but nor can the display move to suit the position of your eyes.
  • The technology is nice, but it's really not that new. The advent of flat panel displays on the desktop is what really makes this practical (I laugh slightly when I call it practical) on the desktop. If you have ever been to Disney, they were thinking about putting a similar device into their "innoventions" exhibit at least 5 years ago, and there were devices that did similar things too.

    It's cool and all, but not AMAZING. When I was a kid I drew plans for something similar. The theory has been around since long before any of us were born (calling it theory is a bit sketchy since it was theory in the dark ages).

    Also, for $12K, I can get a head mounted display, head tracker, all wireless, and still have some left for some neato controllers to hold.
  • you wouldn't have to keep your head still if you had head tracking. You could use magnetic, or even laser to update the head position in the computer...

  • Personally, I'm looking forward to a production version of this soon. I'm a big fan of 3d gaming in general, and having written a few, I can think of nothing I'd like better than a tunnel-race type game where you're practically immersed...
    I wear glasses (contacts at the moment actually, but you get the point) so I find it easier not to PUT anything on my eyes. While I appreciate the ease and availability of head-mount systems and all, I personally (and I'm fairly certain others) prefer having a physical monitor in place on my desktop.
  • ...renders the site beautifully on my Linux box

  • This bit is slightly disappointing. (Score:5)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @04:22AM (#1009241)

    "When in 3D mode it produces one line of light for every two columns of pixels on the LCD. Imagine that the columns are divided into two groups. One group being the even numbered columns and the other being the odd numbered columns. When you sit directly in front of the display or in certain positions off to the side, your left eye sees these light lines through the odd columns of pixels, while your right eye sees them through the even columns. So, each eye sees only half of the pixels."

    Since they are using more or lass standard flat panel LCD's this more or less halves the horizontal resolution. The unfortunate fact here is for stereo imaging you need all the horizontal depth you can get. Since the perceived depth is relative to the horizontal offset of the two images, the dumber of depth steps becomes limited.

    The offset between image components is limited to the distance between eyes (this would be perceived as infinite depth), this distance is approximately 3 inches. The resolution (once halved) is about 30 pixels per inch giving a maximum offset of difference of about 90 pixels. The translates to about 90 discrete steps of depth although this can be smoothed of somewhat with anti-aliasing it could really do with some more horizontal resolution. That said, I still want one.

  • "... not to long ago ..."

    What happened to proofreading? Has it, too,
    gone the way of open source?

    -- Just another pair of eyes
  • He/she noted they were British, DUMBFUCK.
  • Anybody else out there using Solaris (I'm on 2.6..) and Netscape 4.72? My box seems to not like the evil3d page.. NS just crashed twice in a row when loading this site. Can anyone try and confirm this to be an incompatability with the site/NS 4.72 or is it just my box being a piece?

    Thanks,

    //Phizzy
  • ok, so above I mentioned MIT's display that tracks your head and recalculates the POV for the 3D display based on that, in the context of parallax. In retrospect, I may have glossed over the complications of how they get a wide field of view from a lenticular display. I seem to recall them having some beam combiner thingiee..

    but it struck me that a low tech solution might be the best idea -- mount the display on gimbals, and have some dedicated electronics (read: cheap) to always point it towards a reflective dot on your forehead. This is just a simple extension of the track-the-sun that some solar cells use. The current position of the display is then read by the computer to regenerate the POV.

    This would solve the FOV, no?

    It might be a bit disconcerting, tho, to have a display that tracks you as you work... but it would be cool, at least until your baseball cap obscures the dot and the display goes into target aquisition mode, swivelling about like a headless chicken

  • Sorry, the correct address is http://www.dti3d.com
  • So I'm not so bright.

    The other way to get parallax is of course to display multiple views. Instead of just the two, you can get lenticular lenses with 4 or 7 (at least that's what philips has) views. This would buy you the parallax and greated FOV that seems to be the weakness with this approach -- but at a corresponding loss in horisontal res.

    You've seen this if you've played with one of thost 7 odd frame animated postcards. In this scenario, tho, each frame isn't a different time, it's rather a view from a different angle.

    I have no idea why I didn't get this before.

    Eventually, we'll have enough resolution to go to those kinds of multi-way lenses. Then this will be really sweet.
  • On slashdot? Never there, never meant to be there. It's annoying at times, though.

  • I think 3D screens are great, and will probably be everywhere someday, but first there needs to be a good 3D input system. The best thing we have now is joysticks, because they have x/y, and a bit of z because the joystick tilts.

    Here is my idea for a good 3D input device:

    Two boxes, one for each hand. Inside the boxes is a glove-like device to support your hand. The glove has elastic sensors attached to the walls that can sense which way you move your hand. The elasticity of the sensor strings naturally positions your hand in the middle of the box, so you can be completely relaxed when not in action.

    Each box's output would be kept separate (great for first person combat games), which doubles the possible combination of posititons you can attain (get your mind out of the gutter :). If you were playing a flying sim, you could put a joystick inside the box, and grab it as if it were in the plane you're flying. The joystick itself would provide no input to the game, but would make the gameplay more realistic.

    This same "elastic box idea" TM could be applied to other parts of your body, including feet, arms, legs, or even individual fingers. Heck, you could have all of the above, and then a box around your whole body.

    I think this would dramatically improve gameplay and make 3D monitors (or glasses, or rooms) alot more viable.

  • You gotta love those _totally impossible_ ad photos with the car and the gears being so far out of the screen that you can seem them when the monitor is view from the side ie. there is no "screen" behind them.

    This is physically impossible as you need a screen or something similar for the image to lie on. This is a blatant case of false advertising (and illegal).

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