Really something I have wondered since a child. Why has no one developed 3D television yet? (And by that, I mean that is 3D per se–I know you can have 3D, if you wear special glasses:).)
I know I hear and read about the idea, from time to time. And when I was a kid, they had these 3D pictures, that rather resemble laser holograms we have now. In fact, I got just such an item at the dollar store recently, and I am looking at one, just as I write this. My memories go back to the 1970’s. So I know that type of 3D image has been around for at least 40 years. Also, Polaroid was marketing a camera, with multiple lenses, that took 3D images. This was around the early 80’s. They just had to assemble it at the factory. (The only drawback, I think, was it was just too darn expensive, for the average consumer.)
The basic idea behind to what I just described, or laser holograms, if you will, is projecting a separate image to each eye. And laser holograms, for example, apparently do that by making the image change, depending on which angle you view it. As a child I wondered: Why not just do that with television?
So back to my original question: Why haven’t they developed it yet? And are they getting any closer, as time goes by?
The old pictures you got from a Cracker Jack box that shifted when you looked at them from different angles were what’s called lenticular images: They’re covered with a series of ridges that act as lenses, and the image (or set of images) underneath is in stripes, so you see different stripes from different angles. This is also the technology used for Nintendo’s 3DS, and is used in some TVs (though it doesn’t work as well for a TV as it does for a handheld device).
True holograms can produce a much better image (for one thing, you can view them from any angle at all, and they often work both horizontally and vertically), but the catch there is that it takes a fair bit of work to create even a still hologram, and nobody has yet come up with a good technology for creating an image on demand, or for changing it quickly.
because unless you can segregate what the viewer’s left and right eyes see, you can’t show them a 3D image. and honestly, even when you can segregate what the viewer’s left and right eyes see, it just looks like flat things moving in front of/behind other flat things.
You’re not counting the 3d TVs they tried to sell a while ago, which crashed and burned? Projecting an image into the eye works great as long as you and your head are strapped in, and no one else is watching. Otherwise, there might be problems.
I bet we’ll get VR TVs first.
And the real reason 3d TVs failed is that if anyone made porn for them, it didn’t catch on.
It would seem that the current iteration of VR, using clunky goggles should be able to send different images to different eyes.
Pokemon GO (may it die a quick and painful death) plays on the ides of 3D.
If you want a history lesson - see: ViewMaster - now a small child’s toy, once a high-end 3D photo system - cameras which took left and right images, a punch to cut out the images, and disks into which to place them.
In addition to the hand-held viewer, there were real, live projectors - just like Slide Projectors.
The ViewMaster company published 100’s of different disks - at one point, ebay was showing collections of 500 - 700 disks from estate sales.
Two photo types that will not die: Panoramic and 3D.
Asking people to wear red/blue glasses to watch TV will not go over. Once somebody figures out real 3D - don’t even bother patenting it - it will be stolen immediately, and by the time it comes to trial, the technology will be obsolete.
Which it does. Combined with gyroscopic detection of your head’s motion, it’s a pretty convincing effect. It’s still not glasses-free, which is what the OP asked about, but it’s good and getting better.
Interestingly, some of the proposed solutions for low-power colour displays (that is, the aiming to be the colour counterpart of e-ink) use modulation of interference - which might be a stepping stone in the direction of being able to modulate a truly holographic display.
I think the image sources would have to be computer-generated though, because shooting a movie with a camera that captures front, sides, top and bottom of the subject seems like a difficult bit of engineering.
The answer to “why isn’t TV 3D?” is similar, I think to the (hypothetical) question “Why aren’t paintings sculptures?”. Even if we can, do we necessarily want to?
Glasses didn’t bother me, lack of content and very short lived video game support did. However the Nintendo 3DS has tons of games at least and it’s successful.
Actually, there HAVE been patents issued for lenticular 3D TV. It CAN be done. I don’t know why no one has tried marketing it yet – it wouldn’t require special glasses, and it hasn’t the problems that addressable holograms would have.
It’s true that the effect is limited to a small area if you only have left eye/right eye images. But I’ve seen proposals using up to 18 separate images. You can cover a large range if you do it right.
(You need much higher resolution pixels to make holography work using a TV screen. And if you use lasers for reconstruction – you can use three colors to get an apparently full-color image – you still have the problem of laser speckle)
Just not for TV yet. It’s hard enough to project two images for one pair of eyes at a set distance (sitting at a computer desk). It’s hard to get the angle right for multiple viewers at the same time at arbitrary distances.
