Neil Schneider from MTBS interviews Frank Lee, Manager of Public Affairs for LG Electronics during the CES 2012 . In the interview, shot in stereoscopic 3D, Frank Lee talks about their new glasses-free monitors, simultaneous game-play features on their passive 3D HDTVs, new 3D displays, AIO PCs, SMART TV sets and more. The interview is in three separate parts as it covers quite a lot of stuff, above is embedded only the first video, follow the link below for the other two parts…
About a month ago the new Radeon HD 7970 GPUs were revealed by AMD as the must have solution for gamers willing to have a really powerful next generation video card in their system. And a bit earlier than that AMD has released a Catalyst Preview driver 12.1 announcing some new and exciting features for gamers. Both of these also came with some very interesting promises for gamers interested in stereoscopic 3D as well, such as multi-gpu CrossfireX support in stereo 3D mode, HDMI 1.4a 30Hz 3D mode on supported hardware, 60Hz 3D mode support over HDMI, Eyefinity setups with active stereoscopic 3D monitors.
So the question that many gamers interested in playing their favorite game titles in stereoscopic 3D mode were asking themselves (and me too) is if they should buy a new video card based on the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPUs. And while a lot of people may be really tempted in pulling the trigger on a Radeon HD 7970 for stereoscopic 3D gaming platform, I would strongly suggest to wait a bit more and not to be in a hurry. There are a lot of things that we are now expecting from AMD, but they are apparently not in a hurry to deliver them, especially after the release of the HD 7970 that yet again brings some architectural changes and probably way too many features for the company to quickly bring them to the users. It has been about a month already since the official announcement of the Radeon HD 7970 and while the card is “Out of Stock” already in most places or is being sold for an extra high price where there are some quantities, there is still no proper driver available for that GPU. Let me explain what I mean by that, on AMD’s website there is still only one driver available for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series of GPUs, released on 1/9/2012 with no version or information what features it supports, it is only available for Windows 7 64-bit OS, so you can pretty safely assume this is not the typical official video driver you are used in getting from AMD for their products.
The problem with this driver release is that there is no information about what features it supports, not only regarding the stereo 3D, but in general what from the all new things that were announced with the release of the new GPU are already supported. The latest official Catalyst Driver 11.12 is from 12/13/2011, or over a month ago and it does not have support for the new GPUs. So AMD may need some time for releasing a proper driver and for making available all the features initially introduced in the Catalyst Preview driver 12.1 as well as all the new things announced as supported for the new GPU. And especially if you are interested in using the HD 7970 for stereoscopic 3D gaming you might have trouble not only in getting the new software related features, but also in getting the 3D-capable hardware that is going to be compatible with them. Not to mention the fact that you may have trouble finding more than one of these cards or that you will have to pay extra for them and then find out that stereo 3D mode is not yet supported in CrossfireX in the driver. Better play it safe now, instead of being sorry later on, because of being too eager to get your hands on the new hardware. I do plan to do some testing of the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 in stereo 3D mode when a proper driver for it is released…
SpatialView’s 3DeeCentral software for watching stereoscopic 3D content on iPhone got an update allowing you to easily capture photos in stereo 3D with the single camera available on the iPhone 4/4S and then to preview the photos in 3D on the smartphone. In order for this to work you need to use the 3DeeCentral software together with SpatialViews’s special adapter called 3DeeSlide for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that transforms the 2D display of the phone into an autostereoscopic 3D one (with reduced resolution in 3D mode). You can see a demonstration of the new 3D photo taking feature on the video above, it seems quite easy and there is a ghost image being displayed to help you take the second photo, and there is an extra adjustment phase for the two photos available after that, so that the resulting 3D image could be great. Not sure if the software can already take advantage of the improved camera features such as higher resolution in the iPhone 4S, most likely not yet as it requires the use of iOS 4.3 and not iOS 5 as a minimum. The only drawback is that you would need to move the 3DeeLens on and off the screen quite a lot if you are taking multiple pictures in 3D using the application. The interface could probably be easily tweaked, so that you will not have to do all the acrobatics with moving the lens that makes the screen in 3D and then removing it to see it back in 2D when taking 3D photos. Also sharing of the 3D photos you have taken with this application could be a bit limited, especially if you want to send it to someone that does not use the 3DeeCentral software. Also have in mind that the 3DeeCentral software is free, but it does not work on jailbroken iPhones.
