Stereoscopic 3D is here to stay - report from SIGGRAPH

Just about everyone loves to watch 3D movies since it’s such an incredibly different experience from a normal viewing. From the distinct visual differences to the feeling that a character is about to reach out and touch you, 3D films make for a truly unique viewing experience. Now imagine playing your favorite computer game, watching live television, or experiencing a theme park ride all in 3D. Monday afternoon, 3D for Gaming and Alternative Media: How 3D is Altering Our Concept of Entertainment presented exactly that. Neil Schneider, President and CEO of Meant to Be Seen and Mark Rein, Vice President and Co-Founder of Epic Games presented The Power of 3: An Insider’s Look at Stereoscopic 3D Gaming; Mark Mine, Director Technical Concept Design at Walt Disney Imagineering presented Designing Theme Parks in the Virtual World; and Steve Schklair, Founder and CEO of 3ality Digital Systems presented Production of Live 3D Content for Broadcast. Stereoscopic 3D is here to stay, so why isn’t there a bigger buzz?

What exactly is Stereoscopic 3D (S-3D) and how does it work? S-3D “is the ability to display visible depth through two dimensional media” (http://www.mtbs3d.com/). More specifically, S-3D achieves the illusion of visual depth on-screen by flashing two identical images at the same time (one left eye and one right eye image) at different positions. If you look at the on-screen image with only one eye at a time, you will see a slightly different perspective through each eye. When both images are combined at the same time, the viewer witnesses an amazing 3D experience. There are, like all things, a few hurdles that need to be overcome in order to have an S-3D experience - the hardware solution that is capable of filtering a unique image for each eye, and a software driver that will take the game’s visual information and translate it into both left and right eye views.

Right now, NVIDIA has the distinction of having the recommended stereoscopic driver of choice. The driver is supported by most newer NVIDIA graphics cards and works with mostly all of the hardware solutions on the market. The driver “works by intercepting DirectX and OpenGL programming calls, and translates the virtual 3D information into a practical stereoscopic result.” While NVIDIA has the most supported driver, Meant to Be Seen says there are driver solutions which support other NVIDIA and AMD/ATI products. Thankfully, most current DirectX and OpenGL games are S-3D compatible to some extent with a bit of tweaking.

As for hardware, there are many solutions on the market now which support S-3D, and the good news is that they are reasonably priced (based on the type of gamer that is already investing in the game hardware). The only draw-back, for now, is that S-3D games are PC based only, though there was a rumor which Neil mentioned that suggests the technology is on the way for console games. Most of the speakers seem to agree, however, that the technology most likely won’t make it to console gaming until the next generation of systems due to the processing power it takes to render two gaming streams simultaneously (systems currently just don’t seem to have that kind of power onboard). More on the impact S-3D could have on the entertainment industry later.