World’s Most Beautiful (WMB) 3D is an ambitious new magazine that is going to be available on print in 3D and online for mobile devices such as Android-based smartphones and iPhone, as well as for Android-based tablets and Apple’s iPad in both 2D and 3D. The mobile applications for accessing the magazine from Android-based devices as well as for the iPhone and iPad are already available in the Android Market and Apple’s AppStore respectively. WMB actually is a 3D magazine with the 2D version being there just for the sakes of “backwards compatibility” as not everyone is yet 3D-ready and here by 3D I’m referring to anaglyph 3D made for anaglyph glasses with red-cyan color filters. The magazine’s first issue is just out and it features Kim Kardashian as a cover girl, but the magazine is not only about models and celebrities, it covers topics such as travel, gadgets and technology and so on, so it seems promising so far. But don’t get the wrong idea it will be most for the photos in 3D and not as much for the content in the form of text as the text is after all still in 3D and it won’t look that cool even if it is made in 3D as would the photos of beautiful girls or expensive cars.
There were a lot of newspapers and magazines all over the world that went out with single issues made in mostly or entirely in 3D, but this appears to be the first commercial magazine that starts as a completely 3D publication and will continue to be made entirely in 3D. Will this turn out to be a successful strategy or not is yet to be seen, but if it succeeds we are sure to see more publications to follow this trend. So let us see how things go from now on with the WMB 3D magazine now after the first issue is already out…
This week I was trying out for a bit an Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet using Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, actually one of the first to become available to the market in Europe (similar to Motorola Xoom in US). The tablet is based on Nvidia Tegra 2 and although there is no 3D screen present (fear not, 3D-capable tablets are also coming), I was surprised to find a game that actually natively supports stereoscopic 3D mode and more specifically anaglyph 3D rendering if you have a pair of paper or plastic glasses lying around. The game is Pinball HD, released just recently and is optimized for Tegra. It comes with three different “tables” and all of them support anaglyph 3D rendering in multiple formats – red-cyan, green-magenta and yellow-blue.
I’ve tried the game with a plastic pair of anaglyph red-cyan glasses that I’ve had laying around and it seemed quite nice… and I haven’t used anaglyph 3D for quite a while. Have in mind that activating the 3D mode in the game can increase the load on the tablet and you can notice some slight lag at times, that is with the default of 1GHz per core on the Tegra chip (overclocked Motorola Xoom running at 1.5GHz per core is more than fine). But back to the game, in both stereo 3D and normal 2D mode it looks really nice and if you happen to get a tablet with Android 3.0 this is one of the games that you should try, it can help killing some free time when you have it… especially when traveling and I plan to do some next week. And with that said, Pinball HD will be my dose of anaglyph 3D for now and I’m going back to active shutter glasses, although I do plan to try some other 3D apps from the Android Market that seemed interesting while testing the tablet… ;)
DAM999 is an upcoming 3D movie directed by Sohan Roy, and the production company behind that movie has recently launched a dedicated 3D website for the movie (for anaglyph red-cyanglasses), which is dubbed as the world’s first 3D movie website. I can say that I like the idea, although for the moment besides the website’s dynamic 3D background and the 3D movie trailer, there is not much content in 3D available, but more is expected. And maybe in the future we’ll be seeing more dedicated 3D websites from other movie productions that will be made in 3D, also releasing official 3D movie trailers not only in anaglyph, but in Side by Side format as well.
Movie Storyline:
The story revolves around the central edifice in this movie, a 100 year old Dam built by British during their colonial days in India. Like a Dam, each character in this movie, holds back their emotions for various reasons, eventually the DAM breaks along with that of its characters drawing the audience to gripping climax. The numerical 999 has got great importance in British Colonial Indian historical pages. The story reveals the concealed truth of India’s age old myths and science.
The movie is a message to the world about the overlooked dangers of outdated dams; the realities of the marine world; the tradition, culture and forgotten medical cures of the Indian history; the pain and pleasure of being in love and the nine hidden but living emotions of a man. This movie is a tribute to the 1975 Banqiao Dam disaster in China that claimed 250,000 innocent lives. DAM999, the movie is in its final Post production stage and is expected to be released in 3D later this year.
