3D Vision Blog

More interesting news coming from GDC 2010 in San Francisco, this time from ATI announcing their Open Stereo 3D Initiative in trying to work with more partners to ensure support for multiple different stereoscopic 3D solutions. The idea of the open initiative is to offer consumers additional choices when selecting an S3D solution, more innovations and of course help in lowering the costs for the hardware and software making it easier for wider adoption. ATI (AMD) and its partners will supposedly soon announce a lineup of 3D products, including a 3D-enabled ATI Eyefinity technology (to counter Nvidia’s 3D Vision Surround), 120Hz 3D-ready displays and notebooks, active shutter glasses and passive polarized ones (have you heard of passive shutter glasses!?), S3D support for DirectX 9, 10 and 11, Quad Buffered OpenGL, Blu-ray 3D support. As you can see from the presentation slide above the 3D-gaming middleware partners are DDD and iZ3D, and for Blu-ray 3D support ArcSoft and CyberLink. ATI is also going to try to work on establishing standards that will help in having compatibility and much wider choices when building your computer and stereo 3D setup if they are adopted by others. The only thing that still remains to be seen is how soon we are going to see actual products on the market as ATI has been talking about S3D support for quite some time, but still no dates when to expect it are available… although we have multiple hints about summer availability.

Today marked an interesting new first (in Europe at least?) in stereo 3D as the Belgian Sport Newspaper called La Derniere Heure / Les Sports, that translates in English to something like Last Hour Sports, has released its first completely 3D issue. Of course they’ve used paper anaglyph glasses that are provided free of charge with the newspaper as this is the cheapest and easiest way to provide stereoscopic 3D images on plain paper. By the newspaper going in 3D I mean that all the pictures inside it were shot in stereo 3D and printed in anaglyph format, thus needing the free anaglyph glasses provided with the paper to be viewed by the reader. The idea took about two months of experimenting to find the best solution and provide the best results to the readers, and the publishers report that their advertisers liked the idea too. It is interesting to note that during the preparation for example the paper that today’s issue has been printed was not the normal paper used for printing and this was needed in order to provide better results for the anaglyph 3D photos. It is still unclear if the newspaper will continue to be published with 3D photos in anaglyph format, it probably depends a lot on the reaction of the readers. You can see some anaglyph stereo 3D photos published on their website and available for free viewing, but have in mind that it is in French language only!

- To visit the website of the newspaper La Derniere Heure / Les Sports (in French)…

Animation Magazine has a twenty-plus year history with animation professionals in gaming, cinema, and TV and by joining the S-3D Gaming Alliance (S3DGA) the magazine is giving very positive signals that it is finally the right time for stereo 3D to go mainstream. And another good news for the S3DGA and MTBS3D members is that they will qualify for a free digital subscription for the Animation magazine for an year. This offer is only available through links on s3dga.com and mtbs3d.com. The submission form is accessed after registering and logging in to mtbs3D.com with all registrations being free and instantaneous.

An Animation Magazine representative will also be speaking at the upcoming 3D Gaming Summit taking place on April 21st and 22nd in Universal City, Los Angeles. The summit is the first conference that is nearly 100% focused on stereoscopic 3D gaming, and features top names like NVIDIA, Real D, Panasonic, Mitsubishi Electric, Jon Peddie Research, The S-3D Gaming Alliance, and more. The S-3D Gaming Alliance’s next meeting will be held at the conference as well. In addition to feature speakers, S3DGA will outline its current goals and strategies as they relate to making S-3D gaming successful in the home. While this will be a private member-only meeting, all game developers are welcome to participate too if interested.

- For more information about the upcoming 3D Gaming Summit…