S3D screen attachment for iPad 3

[Roger Dass]

Hello,

I just wanted to gauge the interest in a product that would attach onto an iPad 3 and allow glasses free viewing of stereoscopic content (SBS, and MVC) on an iPad3.

What would your expectations be for such a product?
What would you pay for it?

I'm thinking along the lines of pro/prosumer use where this solution would be used to preview daily rushes or arm a sales team for a studio.

Any thoughts on this will be much appreciated :D

Thanks.

Regards,
Roger

[Jesse Blanchard]

I'd love one. Especially if it was built into a protective case for the ipad.

[Ron Labbe]

Unfortunately, most autostereo is not very good, and the only way to see is to have one in front of you.
(who has seen any decent tablet size autostereo screen? I've not!) Attachments are even less likely to be any good.

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Roger Dass

Hello,

I just wanted to gauge the interest in a product that would attach onto an iPad 3 and allow glasses free viewing of stereoscopic content (SBS, and MVC) on an iPad3.

What would your expectations be for such a product?
What would you pay for it?

I'm thinking along the lines of pro/prosumer use where this solution would be used to preview daily rushes or arm a sales team for a studio.

Any thoughts on this will be much appreciated :D

Thanks.

Regards,
Roger

In Japan, they are selling lenticular film for $20-40, I never saw it, but I heard it isn't very good. For similar price I'd try it.
I have Gadmei for $120 it isn't great, but it beats glasses. Good lenticular should be better.

Need wider viewing angles, which will probaly need more cameras - 7 to 9.

Two to four is already hard to do, so there is roomfor invention. The super packed pixel pitch of the iPad should yield amazing results if the screens could be practical to align.

I'd try it, again, if thr $s were within reason.

[Paul Newman]

I still use this:

8" LED Glasses-Free 3D Digital Multimedia Player Photo Frame (4GB) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

which is really good for the price, of course it isn't perfect being lenticular, but does have a higher resolution display - 1280x768 which is better than most at 600x400 as well as pretty good storage with a 32 gb sdhc card in addition to the 4gb internal - battery life is good too.

I hear that a lenticular sheet sells for around $40 for the ipad - does the ipad have a SBS full screen player app? I'm not very mac aware!

Paul :-)

[Matt Faw]

Originally Posted by Paul Newman

I still use this:
8" LED Glasses-Free 3D Digital Multimedia Player Photo Frame (4GB) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

Yeah, me too. I think it's an excellent product, for the price. Looks good.

[Roger Dass]

I've seen that device... The color shift makes it hard to use if your trying to preview the overall resulting video. On the iPad 3 I would say the lenticular technology I plan to employ is superior in quality to all the above listed examples.

If you guys are ok with the size of the 'sweet spot' on that tablet (amount you can move your head from left to right before the 3D effect degrades) you're currently using, then my solution would be comparable or have even a slightly wider sweet spot.

My thinking here is that since the iPad is primarily a personal device, viewing it mostly straight on should not be a huge imposition, what do guys think about that?

Regarding an app that plays sbs files as well as other formats; I would be developing this as well.

As far as the alignment of the film, this can be done in software as a quick calibration step (you attach the screen to the protective case, or whatever, then you run a <1 min calibration. -you won't have to do this every time ideally)

[Roger Dass]

Originally Posted by Jesse Blanchard

I'd love one. Especially if it was built into a protective case for the ipad.

That's the plan :D

That or a portfolio case...

[Pavel Houda]

How will it be different from the "Grilli3D"?

[Roger Dass]

Grilli3d is not lenticular.

You can achieve almost 0% crosstalk when in the 'sweet spot' when lenticular is done correctly... This means not just take some lenticular film, stick it over the screen, interleaved the left/right views in alternating strips and hope for the best.

When a lens is designed specifically for the display and every pixel is rendered based on precise optical calculations the results are astounding. Nothing on the market does this yet.

Also, to your previous post, you can increase the viewing angle and still just use two views (this is better because it keeps the system compatible with standard 3D content). The side effect is you lose a little resolution, but luckily, the retina display has some extra to spare :D

[Pavel Houda]

I know that Grilli is not lenticular, I was more interested in your views with respect to results.You answered the question. My Gadmei is way too sensitive to head position and as the screen gets larger, the angles begin cause color shifts at the edges. Grilli claims that barrier is better than lenticular for lcd/led, for some reason, which they don't explain, I am having hard time believing that. Their satisfaction ratings are poor. Couple of other questions. With iPad3 fine pixel pitch, do you have a good scheme for the overlay alignment? Finally, what will the lenticular do to regular 2D output of the iPad 3? Thanks. BTW, I do wish that your solution works. To me the output fatigue and glasses, are the main reasons for fairly low acceptance rate of 3D by general public at home, even before the cost. I myself can watch TV for hours, but not 3DTV with active glasses. I am hypnotized in 20-30 minutes.

[Roger Dass]

aha...

You have gotten to one of the drawbacks of this approach. While the lenticular attachment is on the iPad, you will only be able to see content that is "interlaced" correctly (this mean clear 3D or clear 2D with slight resolution loss). It is possible to interlace the entire user interface of an application which will allow mixing of 2D and 3D content in real time. Due to the way iOS is written and protected, however, the only way to use other application or navigate iOS in general is to remove the lenticular attachment. I'm currently working on a way to make this removal attachment process as quick and painless as possible.

Regarding the alignment issue, it is possible to get reasonable good repeatable alignment for the lens attachment such that you will not need to calibrate every singe time you attach (by keying the lenticular attachment off of one edge, or feature of the iPad itself). I do suspect, though that as the pieces wear/warp/seat differently you may need to do a quick software calibration to compensate for this.

Overall, I understand that the removable attachment concept will cause some annoyances, but given the visual quality of the end result (and you can use the iPad for many other uses besides this), I believe it should still be an acceptable solution considering the second best option is to carry around an additional device.

[Pavel Houda]

I was also thinking that perhaps concept similar to "Alioscopy" could be successfully used with the iPad3 due to it's very high pixel pitch. I saw a demo of it. That would be very promising with multiangle viewing. Are you familiar with it? Of course there would be special input required and bit of processing. Also, there is a slew of patents protecting it from mass-marketing point of view.

[Roger Dass]

I've worked on my share of multi-view displays in the past. Frankly, I don't believe in that approach since unless you film with N(usually 5-8) number of cameras (I cant imagine Hollywood doing this any time soon), the extra views are "fake" and you lose the realism of the 3D (both quantity and quality of depth perception) thus making it more of a gimmick.

When the solution I'm talking about is paired with eyetracking on a notebook PC, it's quality is one of the very best there is in terms of depth and resolution as far as autostereoscopic displays go (I was at CES to witness this for myself - a 3D notebook attachment from Spatial View Inc.). Keep in mind that the laptop was only 1920x1080 (iPad3 is 2048x1536). With lenticular, the quality goes up with resolution.

On an iPad I don't think eyetracking will be necessary anyways, since the sweet spot can be defined enough such that it's very easy to find (the FujiFilm Finepix W3 has a decent sized sweet spot with its lenticular display IMHO).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Alioscopy. I'm in fact, very impressed with their technology for multi view displays. I'm only worried about the ability to leverage the growing library of 2-view 3D content if I were to employ multi view in this solution.

[Neil Richards]

I'm very interested in this but would like to understand the alignment process and related issues. Would it work on an iPad 2 as well? (perhaps not as well)

I also have the Gadmei display for show-and-tell (I think I first drew everyone's attention to it on here) and despite it's limitations it does wow people for simple show-and-tell use, it does have a narrow working angle but that's less of an issue than the colour refraction imho which can be a bit distracting.

I'm also a bit sceptical about current multi-view for live-action 3D but see how it can work well for CGI content where you can easily create many virtual cameras.

So yes please post more info and, of course, how much it costs and when we can get it:)