Recently, I got an interesting new gaming device called the Nintendo 3DS. It is the next in Nintendo’s handheld gaming line, the Nintendo DS. The main features are the two screens, one wide and the other touch, and other control buttons. This is not exactly new. But, one feature which makes the 3DS a class apart from other devices lies in the name itself – it has 3D graphics (on the widescreen) … without the need for glasses! I thought about how this was possible – and so delved into the history of 3D Graphics.
3D graphics are basically an artificially generated 2D image to trick the brain into thinking that that image is indeed 3D. The original 3D image was a red-green shifted image. This meant that the image was composed of two images – the same figure, but differently positioned. One was red in colour, and the other was green. Now, the user was required to wear special glasses, where one lens was red and the other green. The idea behind this was that in one lens, say red for example, would absorb the red image and only transmit the green image. Meanwhile, the other green lens would absorb the green image and only transmit the red. So, each eye would get two differently-positioned images of the same “object”. This is how our eyes detect 3D in our regular world – and this is how it feels that that red-green (RG) image is indeed 3D.
This, however, was not comfortable, and would cause eye-strain. So, safer, more comfortable polarized glasses were invented. These were based on the more advanced concept of photon polarity – but in basics, they had the same principles as the RG glasses. Different polarity photons were reflected by the polarization filters in the glasses, and only similarly polarized photons would pass. And, since both the eyes had different filters, they would receive differently positioned superimposed images.
All these 3D graphics images were solely based on the following concept. When each eye received slightly “shifted” images of the same object, together the eyes would interpret it as 3-Dimensional. The methods mentioned above involve the need for special glasses, for the image is a shifted image. But the researchers at Nintendo thought of a different way around it. If the screen itself was somehow able to give each eye a different image, then there would be no need for those “geeky” glasses! The manufacturing unit ingeniously came up with the 3DS, having an upper widescreen showing crystal clear 3D images, without glasses. Here’s how it works:
The upper LCD screen has another “barrier” on top of it. Called the parallax barrier, it has accurately placed micro mirrors and lenses positioned so that the actual image seen on the screen would be “split” into two, and each slightly different image would be sent to the eye! Unfortunately, this parallax barrier required extremely delicate materials and accurate production. So, this was easier said than done.
Another problem the producers faced was that the two images portrayed with the help of the Parallax Barrier could be interpreted by the eye as 3D only at a certain angle (distance didn’t matter that much). But this was easily adapted as they included a “3D Slider”, which enabled the user to manually adjust the depth of the images, or turn in to pure 2D images. This was a quite interesting technology in itself – but better stuff was yet to come.
The 3DS comes with two cameras – outer and inner facing. The inner facing is a simple 2 Megapixel lens. But the outer camera is far more intriguing and interesting. This is the 3DS 3D Camera. It has two lenses, with which it captures two images. These are processed and then placed appropriately so that they appear 3D. This alone was a novelty in the 3D industry (so to speak) and caused wonders in their sales.
One question which arose (for me) was whether this could be used in theatres, or TVs. The main problem with this is that that technology is too expensive at such a high scale. Another thing is the problem about the “sweet spot” for 3D. If there is a wide audience, even for the 3DS, the images would appear blurred. In a theatre, you can only imagine how horrible it would look!
But the world today is full to the brim with innovative minds, which are ever ready to come up with great ideas – and I feel, this is only the beginning.