Dimenco needs display
manufacturers and developers to take it from sweet demo to immersive product
Nine years ago,
3D was touted as the next big thing in display technology, the pixie dust that
would get us all to run out and replace our TV sets so we could experience it
at home.
By 2011 it was
already becoming clear that people weren’t going to wear special glasses to
watch TV at home, and tech companies began tinkering with glasses-free 3D technology.
It had a lot of issues—resolution was reduced because the screens had to
produce two images. Viewing angles were limited. And for a lot of people
(including me), the effect was headache inducing.
Tech innovators pretty much
stopped talking about putting 3D into traditional TV displays and instead moved
to creating virtual 3D worlds via head-mounted displays. Because you strap
them on, your viewing angle doesn’t change and the 3D effect can be much more
stable.
But at least one company didn’t
give up on the quest for a viable 3D television display. Dimenco,
a company from the Netherlands, arrived at CES 2019 with what it calls
“Simulated Reality” technology. (It’s not a great moniker, but “virtual
reality” is pretty much owned by Oculus and its
head-mounted brethren.) Dimenco is displaying interactive 3D video images using
a lenticular filter (recall old postcards that displayed two scenes depending
on how they were viewed) over an 8K LCD display. With an 8K image, a video feed
split into right and left eye images still gives you a 4K resolution:
resolution problem of 2011 solved.
Dimenco also solved the viewing angle problem by adding cameras
and image processing to track the viewer’s eyes. And I can attest that, at
least in the demos I saw, the 3D experience was smooth enough so I had no
issues with headache or nausea—and I tend to be a real canary in the coal mine
for those kinds of side effects.
For the demos, Dimenco
partnered with Ultrahaptics, a company
that uses ultrasound to simulate touch and added spatial audio processing to
complete the “simulated reality” effect. In the demos involving
computer-generated figures, I was able to walk to the side and peek around a 3D
human head. The company indicates that for 3D content that is recorded from the
real world rather than computer generated, “peeking around” won’t be possible,
but the 3D perspective will still come through without distortion as you move
from side to side in front of the screen.
Dimenco’s Simulated Reality is
not exactly a product yet. The company is aiming to convince hardware
manufacturers to add it to their displays, starting with manufacturers of
laptops for gamers. In that product, it is expected to add about $200 to the
manufacturing cost. And it also needs content. In an effort to get developers
excited, the company introduced a development kit, including a 32-inch 8K
display, gesture sensors, and audio hardware, along with software to allow its
use with the main game development platforms. Dimenco indicated that it expects
to see this technology reach consumers in 2020.
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