If 3-D in movies make you sick and 3-D TVs seem out of this world for your living room, consider a 3-D cellphone.
It’s not that far-fetched. Nintendo has already debuted the Nintendo 3DS, a handheld game console that sports a 3.5-inch 3-D display — about the same size as modern smartphones. With fast graphics processing capabilities and a screen technology that can produce 3-D effects without requiring consumers to wear any special glasses, cellphones might just be the latest frontier for the third dimension.
“One hundred percent of handset manufacturers are evaluating 3-D behind the scenes,” says James Bower, president of MasterImage 3-D, a Burbank, California, company that makes 3-D displays. “Everyone wants a glasses-free 3-D experience.
The first 3-D cellphone could be available in the United States next year, he says.
As cellphone processors become more powerful and telecom carriers introduce 4G networks capable of transporting more data, 3-D could charm consumers who are looking for more entertainment and functionality from their handheld devices.
Last year, Japanese wireless carrier KDDI started selling the first commercially available 3-D cellphone, called the Hitachi Woo. More than 300,000 devices were sold in in just a few weeks. The Woo’s 3-D display, powered by masterImage, uses a parallax barrier, a layer that’s placed over an LCD screen to help produce the feeling of depth by directing slightly different images to each eye.
“We can create a 3-D experience in pretty much any kind of screen including LCD and OLED,” says Bowers.
3-D films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland have sparked consumer interest in the format. Most major TV makers including Sony, LG, Panasonic and Mitsubishi have started selling 3-D TVs. ESPN launched a 3-D channel in time for the football World Cup. Even PC makers have hopped on to the trend with the launch of computers with 3-D displays.
But the real driver of 3-D content is expected to be amateur photos, video and gaming. Last month, Nintendo announced its new gaming system called the Nintendo 3DS portable. The Nintendo 3DS lets gamers see a rich 3-D display in their hand without the need for any special glasses.
Gadget Lab got a chance to play with the Hitachi Woo. The Woo has a flip-out screen so when opened it looks a lot like a small portable DVD player.
Some 3-D content, such as clips from the Shrek movie and a video of bubbles floating in air offered a better 3-D experience than, say, a music video.
Overall, the 3-D effect on the Woo’s 3-inch display isn’t eye-popping in the same way as on a TV screen or as enveloping as in a movie theater. But it is real and and it works. It’s convenient because you don’t need glasses to view the 3-D effect. A button on the keyboard lets you switch back to the standard 2-D view so you can scroll through the user interface on the device.
The downside: The videos seemed dull and the display didn’t have the intensity you can expect to see with a Nexus One or the iPhone. Watching 3-D clips on the device after a minute or so also made me want to look away from the screen.
MasterImage’s 3-D technology that’s used in the Woo is similar to what display maker Sharp has created for Nintendo’s 3DS Portable. Both use the concept of a parallax barrier.
A layer of material with a number of small, precise slits is placed on top of a display. The slits direct light from each image slightly differently creating a “sweet spot” that can range from 12 inches to 20 inches in front of the screen. At the sweet spot, the brain sees two slightly offset images that it can use to create a composite with the perception of depth. MasterImage says the 3-D layer adds about $10 to $15 to the overall bill of materials for the phone.
“Only one person who’s holding the phone can see the 3-D effect,” says Bowers, “but we have created a good sweet spot so there’s no struggling to find the the right position.”
That doesn’t mean the results are perfect, but it’s good enough to experience 3-D without requiring cumbersome glasses or extremely sophisticated technology.
But the ease of use comes at a price. Adding a layer on top of the LCD or OLED screen reduces brightness by up to 50 percent and resolution by almost the same number.
Bowers says the additional information that the brain perceives because of depth helps make up for some of that.
“Technically you are losing resolution but psychologically you are gaining a lot more information,” he says.
See Also:
- 3-D Goes DIY With Amateur Photos, Videos
- 3-D PCs Will Make a Splash at Computex
- 4 Things That Could Keep 3-D TV Out of Your Living Room
- Samsung’s Impossibly Thin 3-D TV Tempts Hollywood Producer
- HP Plans Line of (Relatively) Affordable 3-D Printers
- Wired Explains: How 3-D Television Works
- Wired Explains: How 3-D Movie Projection Works
Photo: Stefan Armijo/Wired.com
