[photo-3d] nwave web site, 3-D Mania movie, color anaglyphs

[Abram Klooswyk <abram.klooswyk@xxxxxx>]

Sergio Baldissara wrote Jul 21, 2000 about the nwave-site.

Earlier Dan Vint asked (May 4, 2000):
>...there is a new Imax 3D movie called 3-D Mania: Encounter 
>in the Third Dimension.

and Dave Williams answered:
>... isn't bad, has some nice computer 3d animation and some 
>good 3d effects.  Elvira is only in it a few minutes.  
>I enjoyed the stuff going on in the background as much as 
>the main movie.  

I have seen that movie last Saturday in the Omniversum, an 
Omnimax theater in the Hague, the Netherlands (they have a 
web-site about the movie, but in Dutch:  
http://www.omniversum.nl/films/3D-Mania  ). 

I also have seen the pictures on the nwave site with the 
orange-blue (yellow-blue) specs, and  again on the site 
http://www.3dmagic.com/spacespex/spacespex.html by Mark 
Starks, where you find some images and two _very short_ MPGs. 

(Most interesting there: a stereophoto with Takanori Okoshi 
[misspelled Okashi], author of "3D Imaging Techniques". Also a 
tutorial "Create Blue/Orange Anaglyphic Stereo Images" is
there.)

I my opinion the movie 3-D Mania is very disappointing. 
The orange-blue glasses (produced by "Theatric Support", 
Studio City, CA 91604) have a rather large density difference, 
the blue is very dark.  Sergio: >...i believe in order to 
exploit some Pulfrich component during rides.

Maybe, but that is a dubious thing to do. Any anaglyph system 
is likely to cause some rivalry, but adding density difference 
to the color difference is asking for trouble. I had a rivalry 
after effect for some time, and I find using the specs quite 
irritating after some time (the movie takes 35 minutes).
Moreover, the blue filter gives a haze to the images, they are 
loosing definition.

Sergio: >Most pics don't show any double contour of images.

I disagree, anyone who _has_ the right orange-blue specs can 
judge this on the sites with all images. 
Most conspicuous are the blue and yellow vertical bars in a 
wall-paper on an old black-and-white view (interesting for its
content: Japanese girls using a Holmes stereoscope),
http://www.nwave.com/cgi-bin/ccshow.cgi?s=img/medium/japan.jpg 
where you can seen that the anaglyph extinction isn't perfect: 
the image seen through the blue filter shows definite doubling 
and blurring of edges. This effect is also seen in all the 
other images, but of course most noticeable when disparity 
(with regard to the image plane) is large and edges are sharp.

>What kind of spex? Any!

Again I disagree. I have a box full of different anaglyph 
glasses, most red-green or red-blue in different densities 
and slightly different colors, but they cannot replace the  
orange-blue glasses required for this movie and these sites.

There is a little more information on the color-anaglyph 
system used for the movie at http://www.colorcode3d.com/ 
But color anaglyphs in my opinion remain far inferior to full 
color polarization systems (for projection), and on web sites 
I prefer classical side-by-side images.

The Omniversum in the Hague is not equipped for pola 3D, but 
I have seen several Imax 3D movies in Germany. (Imax index at 
http://www.imax.com/theatres/index.shtml, Imax 3D in Germany 
at: http://www.imax-filmtheater.de/ (Bochum / Düsseldorf / 
Frankfurt) and  
http://www.technik-museum.de/home-imax3d/index.html
(Sinsheim).

Having seen New York 3-D (Across The Sea of Time), T-REX 3D, 
Siegfried & Roy and others, I must say: 
What a waste of time and energy to produce this 3-D Mania 
movie when you could have used polarization and Imax-3D.

Abram Klooswyk