A story with depth - about following up on your project

Use 3 screens to make a 3D display - that's the vision with which the idea originated. "I somehow always strike those solutions that get overlooked by big shot researchers, because hmm they probably skip the first few pages of the books." About this idea, we could move a point in the 3D space on left, even a box, further the space itself is a box; hence by induction, any 3D display should be possible. "I will put a my space ship there to claim this frontier in science." Its so fascinating and different than other 3D displays, which feed separate images to either eyes. With this technology, just put the phone in that cool angle and you are good to explore the galaxy in 3 dimensions. Even a kid can understand that. I soon came to know, that this funda had already been used in a Hindi movie. That's when I realized, everything wrong in my fundamentals about 3D.

Having spent atleast over a week on the idea, I had produced 3 great works of art (one displayed above). I did try my best, but luckily this idea didnt travel through many mouths to surface as in the list of most funded government grant areas for the year. It was time for cover up, one of my major goof ups of 2010.

Not that I couldn't use one, but the original vision gets replaced as cool attention grabber, like this - "While the image looks really stunning, it is not entirely what we proposing. What we are proposing looks a little more geekier, a little more alien – without much delay, ..." there is more to this story. I raced my head to understand, how conventional 3D display systems work. Well there are these kinds,

1. Binocular effect by placing images in 2 layers, one over the other (used in Fuji 3D TV sets)

2. Those that use one screen, but feed different images to eyes filtered with colored glasses (as in PVR)

3. Real 3D displays, for example, which have LEDs embedded in a cube

4. Parabolic mirror based ones (are huge)

5. And... the 3D spects ... these look cool

Since these were already done, I decided to device a 3D display, where the screens would be placed next to each other. Something like the alien device below,

".... an odd geometry and an even number of screens will provide a 3D display – high resolution with images that jump out of the screen ."

If I had a company, I bet the stocks would have gone up. I verified it with an interesting experiment done with my thumb. This is back to the basics - remember evolution really took off when we started with thumbs OR when we started rating peers with thumbs up and down creating a social network - which much much later also gave birth to internet.

Not without an Experiment

This is an experiment to prove our concept.

1. Put your head at a distance of about 6 inches from the monitor, facing the image of the toroids.

2. Defocus your eyes to see 3 images of toroids, instead of 2. The center one is the 3D image and the images on side are 2D residues or noise (both my terminology).

3. What we would like to do is to place a thumb or a coin between the image and the head, such that it acts as a filter and removes the images 2D residue/noise images (leftmost and rightmost).

4. We have invented a terminology – the filter test – that we will use in next step. If the filter (thumb or coin) placement satisfies the filter test, the noise would be eliminated. The filter test :-

i. With left eye open (and right closed), place the thumb at point such that the leftmost image gets covered with it.
ii. Vice versa, with left eye open (and right closed), we only see ‘left eye view’.

5. This step describes how to place this filter object (thumb or a coin) at its right place,

i. We are seeing 3 images right now because – we have defocused our eyes in such manner (refer to step 2)
ii. Place the coin is such a manner that the left most image gets covered
iii. Now you should see 2 images, leftmost hidden by the coin and rightmost faded.
iv. Now we need to move the coin back and forth, while still covering the leftmost image, such that the rightmost image disappears under the coin too.
v. At this point we are left with the center 3D image
vi. Some snacks for thought Another funny observation is that - we see 1 toroid, while there are 2 in reality; and we actually see 2 coins, while there is only 1. However note you may not be able to use this trick in the real world while paying out bills.

That was the experiment, where we made a 3D image from 2D images. I should also list out the limitations (hmm... opposing thoughts is a safety measure for evolutioning into self obliteration) :-

1. Head and phone have to be kept at a fixed distance from each other. This is because filter object needs to block left eye from viewing right eye image and vice versa.
2. We cannot move head independently of the phone and see a 3D display. This is same as above point again.
3. Works better with small screens.

Proposed experiments for readers

For those who where able to train their their eyes in last experiment (to see 3D), there is some interesting stuff that you can do.

1. Take 2 phones with cameras

2. Try focussing them on a far object and making 3D (just like above experiment)

I am tempted to give more details, but am restraining, as a science blog without some mystry like being spoonfed vegetables.

Finally, after the experiments and the blog, I feel a little bit motivated buy 3D glasses from ebay...