3D at "Tommorows World Live Exhibition"

[P3D Peter Homer <P.J.Homer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 I went to see this event in the UK which is now finished . Chiefly to see
the 3D TV system which I saw ont TV and wrote about earlier . It seems it
uses a conventional lenticular screen and the LCD side of it is just to
produce the image . This means that it is quite a flat screen and the 3D is
even flatter!.
 The apparent depth is not as much as even this reduced depth of screen and
I have seen much better still lenticulars. There was also a virtual reality
system there which was even more of a dissapointment as it was 2D. Another
thing touted as 3D virtual reality without the need for the headsets was
actualy a miniature Omnimax type dome with no stereo but which could hane
been quite good if the images had been sharp.
  The best bit of stereo there was a new type of stereomicroscope which
uses a single large lens for viewing rather than two. The angle of view is
limited and only one person at a time can view it so I think it uses the
method of viewing the real images from two objectives with the large lens.
Rather than single lenses throughout. This is not a new idea except for
applying it to a stereomicroscope rather than a stereoscope and I have had
that idea myself. The first time I time across this was in an article by
Jeremy Hinton in the UK stereoscopic society journal. He apparently
realised it would be possible himself independantly after reading a text
book on optics and experimented with a normal stereo viewer and a Fresnel
lens and later a Fresnel mirror. I tried this myself but could not view
both images at once because my viewer does not have adjustable interoculars
and it needsto be reduced for this method. So I tried it with the
stereomicroscopes at work which are adjustable and also with high power
binocular microscopes as some of them can also give stereo images . I have
since found out that this method was first used by a Victorian James Clerk
Maxwell although before him there was a similar device called the
stereomonoscope which used a ground glass screen for the real images. The
viewing lenses of the microscopes were large enough to get a Nimslo in and
I took a few shots so this may  be an easier way to get
stereophotomicrographs if they turn out alright.  P.J. Homer



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