9th September 2005, 7:11 AM
Polarized is a good route too. One lens is actually darker than the other. While you lose brightness and contrast you retain most of the color information. And if you project it on a silver screen instead of a white one you can retain some of the brightness and contrast. But you field of 3-D is limited and it often gets blurry, you can usually still clearly make out the ghost images.
LCD shutter glasses use the same principle, one lense is darker than the other but it's switching back and forth at an extremely fast rate. The speed at which it switches dictates the level of 3-D you're seeing, a box sends the signal to the glasses telling it when to turn the effects up or down or what is 'distant' and what is 'close'. A movie still has to use two cameras for this effect but a mirror box to split the image at slightly different angles works well too.
In a video game you could tell an object exactly where it is on a 3-D plane when viewed by a slight degree of seperation. There would never be any guess work and it would look beautiful. Just as CGI looks better in 3-D as compared to what is filmed.
What's also nice about LCD shutter glasses is that you dont have to sit a certain distance from the screen, but rather sit inside a 'bubble'. If you're in the bubble, you see 3-D. If you're out, you see a flat image. With polarized 3-D (or red and blue) the degree of optimum location changes by the inch of where the viewer is in relation to the display device. You can also set shutter glasses to be closer or further back (you're just telling the box how far to send the signal), so everyone in the living room is seeing the same 3-D image regardless of their distance or position.
Of course what this also means is that people will have to learn how to properly calibrate their televisions and monitors. I cant tell you how many people I see turning their contrast all the way up and flood it with color and way too much enhancement to the point that anything slightly bright on the screen is blooming. A display device with poor settings wont give you optimum 3-D, in most cases it completely ruins the 3-D effect. You could throw in any THX approved DVD and use the "tHX Optimizer" to get your device closer to standards but usually the TV manufacturers jack your set in to torch mode, throw in red-push and green-push and other effects that ruin the picture. You can only change those in the service mode (which you need a special code to get in to and then have a service manual to tell you what does what) and some factors, like proper gray scale of 65D, can only be done by a professional or expensive instruments.
If people end up calling Nintendo saying "My 3-D doesnt work!" hopefully Nintendo will get the ball rolling on getting normal consumers interested in proper calibration.
LCD shutter glasses use the same principle, one lense is darker than the other but it's switching back and forth at an extremely fast rate. The speed at which it switches dictates the level of 3-D you're seeing, a box sends the signal to the glasses telling it when to turn the effects up or down or what is 'distant' and what is 'close'. A movie still has to use two cameras for this effect but a mirror box to split the image at slightly different angles works well too.
In a video game you could tell an object exactly where it is on a 3-D plane when viewed by a slight degree of seperation. There would never be any guess work and it would look beautiful. Just as CGI looks better in 3-D as compared to what is filmed.
What's also nice about LCD shutter glasses is that you dont have to sit a certain distance from the screen, but rather sit inside a 'bubble'. If you're in the bubble, you see 3-D. If you're out, you see a flat image. With polarized 3-D (or red and blue) the degree of optimum location changes by the inch of where the viewer is in relation to the display device. You can also set shutter glasses to be closer or further back (you're just telling the box how far to send the signal), so everyone in the living room is seeing the same 3-D image regardless of their distance or position.
Of course what this also means is that people will have to learn how to properly calibrate their televisions and monitors. I cant tell you how many people I see turning their contrast all the way up and flood it with color and way too much enhancement to the point that anything slightly bright on the screen is blooming. A display device with poor settings wont give you optimum 3-D, in most cases it completely ruins the 3-D effect. You could throw in any THX approved DVD and use the "tHX Optimizer" to get your device closer to standards but usually the TV manufacturers jack your set in to torch mode, throw in red-push and green-push and other effects that ruin the picture. You can only change those in the service mode (which you need a special code to get in to and then have a service manual to tell you what does what) and some factors, like proper gray scale of 65D, can only be done by a professional or expensive instruments.
If people end up calling Nintendo saying "My 3-D doesnt work!" hopefully Nintendo will get the ball rolling on getting normal consumers interested in proper calibration.