P3D SIGGRAPH99

[aifxtony@xxxxxxx (Tony Alderson)]

I wandered around the trade show yesterday, and saw a lot of stereo stuff.
It seemed a lot more than the last show.

There seems to be growing interest in stereo displays for solid modeling. I
saw several controllers for moving in virtual space, some with pressure
"feedback." There were lots of shutter headsets. Many booths had
lenticulars promoting the other "3D" computer stuff they were actually
selling. Numerous lenticular vendors were on the floor.

I saw a couple autostereo computer displays, including one laptop that
could switch back and forth between 2D and 3D. It could only use two views
(they're working on more), and the "sweet spot" is too small, but it shows
potential. They wouldn't tell me how it worked!

I was especially impressed with the StereoJet prints. They had a small
booth with a variety of prints and backlit transparencies, and they looked
great. The prints are still pretty expensive, but hopefully that will
change before too long. I got to talk with some of the StereoJet people,
they seem quite enthusiastic about stereo in general. I have high hopes for
this.

I got to talk with VRex and thank them for their support of our 3D Movie
Competition. They had a small booth, but plenty of visitors.

There were several VR vendors with what looked like electronic
Viewmasters...little binocular LCD displays. The ones I saw had only
640x480 chips, so were rather chunky, but they claim to have higher res
devices in the pipeline. One was mounted on a controller stand that allowed
manuvering though the virtual environment. A joystick with a headset
mounted in it.

There were a few booths using photogrammetry to extract 3D models from
stereo pairs (or arrays.)

Well, we were there for over four hours, and still didn't see near everything.

Tony Alderson




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