Details on the 3D superbowl ad via Time.com
Some short cuts:
I was at Target this week trying to decide between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Cowab
unga Carl Van and the $200 book about Calculus when I stumbled across the gem on the right. An actual 3D t-shirt. At least, I think it is. I'm not quite sure. The tag didn't say anything on it other than something about green, as in the cliche "eco-green" every marketer is going crazy about these days. I wish I had a pair of anaglyphs on me to check it out. Happily, I did have el iPhone, hence the pic. Click to embiggen.
There will be a 3-D anaglyph commercial during the superbowl this Sunday, I think during the first quarter. I have yet to see the LifeWater displays where you can get the glasses, though. From the screen shot it seems to be well designed so that you can "enjoy" the commercial sans glasses.
And, finally, the first 3-D movie that I actually think will treat 3-D as art instead of a gimmick. Coming in March.
While continuing to edit my first stereoscopic paper, I found a reference that claimed stereoscopy increased performance at the beginning of a learning task rather than towards the end. The theory is that it is good for giving a general overview of material/structure, but is not so good for detail. If true, then it would agree with my application of cognitive load theory. But it was just one paper and one study. I may play around with it in my piot study this spring to see if there is something to it.
About a year ago I ran my first research study as part of my program here at Tufts. I spent a week at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago giving middle school aged kids spatial tests using their GeoWall. I'm presenting the results at NARST this April and will submit a paper to a journal soon. But I'll summarize it here, because the results were not what I expected.
Basically, I gave the kids 3 spatial tasks to complete, all taken from existing literature. One was completely 2D in nature (a letter rotation task). One involved a single 3D mental manipulation (block rotation task). And one involved lots of 3D mental manipulations (a paper folding task).
The students took one version of the three tasks presented on pieces of paper. Then they were given the same tasks, in a different order, via the stereoscopic GeoWall. I recorded accuracy, time on task and a short post-task interview.
My hypothesis was that the GeoWall would have no effect on the 2D task, a little effect on the moderate 3D task and a larger effect on the multiple 3D task. I thought the stereoscopic presentation would make it easier for the students to "see" the objects as 3D and therefore make 3D manipulations.
Wrong! Results show that there was no change in accuracy on any of the tasks between the paper and the stereoscopic presentations. (Note that no change means just that, not only did it not improve but accuracy didn't drop either.) However, completion time was affected by the difference in presentation formats. For the 2D task, there was no difference in time on task. For the moderate 3D task there was a moderate, but statistically significant, increase in completion time for the stereoscopic format. For the larger 3D task there was an even larger increase in completion time. In other words, completion time increased in line with the 3D nature of the task.
What does this mean? It means my hypothesis was waaaaayyyy off! The stereoscopic projection had no affect on accuracy and actually SLOWED the time it took to complete the task. Using cognitive theory and data from the interviews, I interpret that as meaning there is an increase in cognitive load when students use the stereoscopic system. Specifically, I think the kids are still thinking in 2D even when presented with a stereoscopic presentation. So their mind is taking the stereoscopic object, converting it to 2D and then RECONVERTING it to a 3D mental model.
If so, there are some things I may be able to do to resolve this. One, use cue theory to build in more depth cues into the image (i.e. make it more realistic). Two, give the students more training time to get used to the stereoscopic environment. I hope to do that in a small pilot study this spring at a local middle school.
Of course there are lots of details of this study I'm leaving out. My paper currently sits at 28 pages, not counting tables and figures. :) If you want more detail, wait for the NARST presentation or publication in a journal. Or e-mail me. :)
This is a description of the 3D toys I setup in my office at Tufts. I use this for development of stereoscopic visuals. The entire setup cost almost exactly $5,000. It was funded by a small faculty support grant that my advisor and I applied for at Tufts.
MacPro 2 x 2.66GHz w/2GB RAM and 2 NVidia GForce 7300GT
OS X Leopard
MacAlly iShock FFB Controller
2 x inFocus IN26 projectors
30 plastic glasses, a silver screen and two 5" polarizing filters from Berezin Stereo (I found them pleasant to work with)
For a stacker, I bought a $20 adjustable wire frame cabinet from Target. And I needed an additional DVI->VGA converter from Office Max for $25. I also have setup a small table top fan (which I had extra) to blow on the front of the projectors. I attach the filters to the front of the cabinet with clothes pins that used to hold up a paper airplane in the office.
For software, I'm using Art of Illusion for my 3D modeling needs, Quantaga for my VRML needs, GIMP for illustration/drawing, and "viewer" to display the stereo pairs. All is freeware.
The nice part of the setup is that it is largely open source and is semi-portable. I mean semi in that you do need to be in some type of decent shape, but otherwise it's easy to move around. This spring I plan to bring it into a middle school classroom for a few days. That will be the big test. Can it withstand the jostling of tweens?
This setup was based on the excellent GeoWall concept, introduced to me by the fine folk at the Adler Planetarium Space Visualization Laboratory.
I am in the midst of catching up on the awesome revival of the Dr. Who series. Tonight I finished the last ep of season 2 and was quite amused to learn that 3D anaglyph glasses will let you see the deas ex machina of the week - pieces of "nothingness" that surround people. I think this image should be our new logo.
I was also surfing the Internet at work today while waiting for an InDesign CS install to fail for the third time in a row when I ran across this at the BBC: Sky Moves to 3D Broadcasts. Apparently when one starts a stereoscopic blog, it's a bit like buying a new car. Suddenly you see the new model all over the road.
The story takes what I said about 3D on television and advances it a few years. Apparently they are testing it now and, as we predicted, on sports. They only tested it on a small audience and they used polarized glasses. That means either 1. they had two projectors inside the TV throwing the image on a single screen or 2. they have a new screen technology that does polarization in a new fashion - perhaps with interlaced pixels. In any event, if they spent money on setting up equipment at a stadium, then they must be close to making it happen.
So far the first few entries of this nascent blog has been mainly about business. I promise to get into the research and technology aspect soon. It's just that I underestimated how quickly the consumer electronics companies are moving on this!
While in the throws of a Wikipedia bender, I stumbled across an interesting debate between two visionary directors: James Cameron and Tim Burton. Cameron is filming his first post-Titanic fiction movie in 3D. It's a sci-fi shoot-em-up called Avatar. Burton is filming his next big movie, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. Both are planning to release the movies in 3D.
In my last post I mentioned how easy it is to take 3D animation and re-render it into a 3D movie. Both of these movies are going to include heavy use of CGI (animation), all of which can be re-rendered. However, what about the live actors?
Cameron is doing it the traditional way: by filming the actors from two viewing angles. Burton is going to film in 2D and use computer gimmickry to try and recreate a 2nd viewing angle. Traditionalists call this cheating. Burton's producer sez that if you can't tell, who cares? He scores a point there. It's all about fantasy, anyway. But can the technology truly pull it off?
Cameron also goes on to attack the DVD releases using the blue-red anaglyph glasses. I'll explain soon why that is considered low quality, but is thus far the only option available.
Hollywood power plays and gossip about 3D technology? Stereoscopy has arrived.
In a future post I'll cover how I managed to wander into the stereoscopy field. For now I want to talk about one of the reasons why I decided to make it a major focus of my academic research: business.
In my opinion, stereoscopic projection is the next HD. In 10-20 years most TVs will support it. The reason? Hannah Montana and Joe Theisman.
I am not a father (yet), so I haven't been indoctrinated into the phenomenon that is Miley Cyrus. However, her father Billy Ray hit it big when I was in high school so I remember him well. In particular, I remember seeing a triple bill concert where he was the last "headliner" act. Everyone walked out after the second act. But apparently he had enough talent to co-spawn Miley.
Her last movie, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds was a stereoscopic/3D movie. It made $70 million (worldwide theatre revenue) on a $7 million budget. That's enough to make even the most blockheaded Hollywood exec sit up and take notice. It was shown in theatres using polarized glasses (the DVD uses red/blue anaglyphs).
Disney's right hand was aparrently aware of what the left hand was doing. Their Pixar division learned from this and decided that all future movies will be released in 3D. Dreamworks soon followed suit. This makes natural sense. Once a 3D animated movie has been produced, it takes very little additional effort to re-render the same movie from a slightly different camera angle. I have no knowledge of this, but my guess is that it would cost about 1% of the overall budget of the movie. With two versions of the movie that differ only by a slight camera angle, you have an easy 3D film. This is why concert movies are also popular in 3D (U2 did it recently too). The concert occurs on a single stage, so it is easy to setup multiple camera angles.
What else occurs on a single, fixed stage surrounded by cameras? Sports. There is a reason digital/satellite/HD technologies all embraced sports first. The avid sports fan is, well, a fanatic. They will pay big bucks as early adopters to get their fix bigger and badder than before. Samsung, Hyundai, Philips and other television manufacturers are quickly rolling out competing stereoscopic technologies. How much do you want to bet that they will be cutting deals with the major sports as their major content generators?
That makes me think to a defining moment of my sports life. When I was ten I watched Joe Theisman suffer a compound fracture of his leg on national TV. It was a sick moment. Now imagine it in stereo.
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