And it probably only looks compelling from about where those videos were taken of it. If you stand on the side streets it’ll look like video screens with a distorted image.
The type of 3D that requires you use glasses is relying on your stereoscopic vision, I.e. each of your eyes is seeing a slightly different image which helps your brain create a 3D perception of what you see.
The thing is, we only use stereoscopic vision at relatively short distances. At longer distances other effects such as relative size and parallax are much more important. Provided you don’t move, parallax isn’t a problem, so then it just becomes a matter of playing with relative size, shapes, placing objects in front of other objects etc, it’s all 2d techniques.
It’s so popular they made a livestream video of it, from an angle that doesn’t really show off the 3D effect. It doesn’t help that it’s mostly 12 hours difference from the US and the screen is turned off at night.
I find it amazing the programming power to draw such a thing. It does seemed to be pre-programmed loops and not “live” – currently the cat is ready to nap, yawning way too much and twitching it’s tail.
Yeah, a key technique is to make the edges of the screen look like they’re part of the infrastructure or adjoining billboards or whatever, so that when the moving figure goes “outside” the apparent boundary of its screen it startles us into seeing it as 3D.
Life imitates Blade Runner. And does it one better, at least as far as the original Blade Runner is concerned. This technology is far ahead of an advertising blimp.
At some point, I’m sure we’ll have multi-story 3D holographic women being used for advertising, as in Blade Runner 2049.
Huh. I’d never encountered a YouTube stream that didn’t allow you to go back at least a few hours. But apparently you can’t with this one. It’s live only.
These kind of illusions really do work only when viewed from the right angle. When viewed from the wrong angle(s), they break down completely. See this google image search for many examples of 3-D crosswalk illusions: 3d crosswalks - Google Search
There is a subway entry/exit from diagonally across from the corner of the screen, so the major consumer of the videos are the people exiting. The photos from the OP (CNN) show it from there. The entire screen is turned off for the night at 7 pm local time (if my world clocks are correct). There still seems to be people wandering about at that time. (Did you know you can pan the Liveview???)
I’m not the target audience for the advertisements, so I have no idea what the screen is advertising. Outside of the boy bands, and The Cat, there is a group of videos that remind me of the Eleanor Rigby segment in the Yellow Submarine movie.
Okay, so not directly outside the station, but across a plaza and around some plantings from the station. There is a traffic light there, so bored pedestrians have something to watch. I’m not sure if the tree helps or hinders the illusion.
The math must have been fun to make the letters appear squared off and not curved with the screen.
I managed to catch the cat sleeping (7:00 am Tokyo time) – and nearly falling off the ledge waking up! Now it’s cycling thru the same ads with the cat yowling every 3-1/2 minutes. It seems to be the same ads morning and night. I don’t know if it changes over the course of the day.