3D Vision Blog

You may have noticed that I was a bit absent from the blog the last 10 days and the reason for that was a critical hardware failiure of my work laptop, so I’ve had to get a new one install it and recover all the data and backups to it… and it took me some time, but now everything is back to normal. But more importantly, I was again looking for some portable laptops with 3D-capabilities, something that I’ve talked about not too long ago here on the blog. This time my idea was to actually get a portable 12 or 13 inch 3D-capable laptop with a 3D display, not a gaming solution, but something that can be used to preview 3D photos and 3D videos and of course to do some testing of different stereo 3D software on it as well. Unfortunately I still could not find a good solution that fits my requirements, probably they are too specific, or I’m in need of something that is still considered a way too niche product for anyone to make it. So in the end I’ve ended up getting a good 2D laptop, namely the HP EliteBook 2560p – a great portable, yet very powerful and feature rich system that pretty much offers all that I need, minus the stereoscopic 3D support. So again a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses gets packed in my laptop back for use whenever I need to preview something in stereo 3D or test something and I don’t have my stereoscopic 3D-capable desktop test systems available. Maybe I’ll have more luck the next time I’m replacing my laptop… hopefully by then there will be more 3D-capable portable solutions actually available on the market. For now most 3D-capable laptops are intended for gaming or multimedia use and go with a larger display size and powerful discrete graphics, instead of being designed for stereoscopic 3D use on the go… and we actually need a bit more diversity.

SnapilyPro is an online lenticular 3D digital printing service for professionals that allows you to print all sorts of products showing 3D depth or movement/animation on a print – this includes things like invitations, name cards, big posters, lanyards, business cards, event promotions, displays, entry tickets and much more. I’ve already mentioned Snapily’s 3D application and photo printing service here on the blog, but SnapilyPro is a more advanced service offering much more options.

Lenticular printing is a process where a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, change of image or movement. When viewed from different angles, different areas under the lens are shown to the viewer, and since these views are specially arranged under the lens – each eye gets to see a different view and the brain then processes these views to a single coherent 3D, Flip or animated images. This is pretty much the easiest way to make 3D prints that don’t require the viewer to use any kind of glasses to get a sense of depth or movement and it doesn’t cost that much at least for smaller size prints.

Lenticular technology actually dates back to the 1690s when Gois-Clair, a French painter, discovered that he could achieve a dimensional effect on canvas by interposing a grid between a viewer and a painting. Modern lenticular began in the 1930′s with the development of the modern lenticular lens and since then lenticular has been used on and off in various applications. Nowadays the technology allows you to get single prints for a very reasonable price, so that everyone can afford use lenticular prints. And with more 3D cameras also becoming available to consumers, printing lenticular 3D photos is something that interests more and more people, but getting depth printed on a photo is not the only way to use this technology. You can also create Flip images where the image switches between two different photos creating an interesting effect as well as to create prints that represent movement by using a sequence of photos, so you can be creative.

SnapilyPro supports prints with a size from 1.9 x 1.9 inches up to 47.2 x 35.2 inches on prints wth either flexible and inflexible lens with the bigger size available only with inflexible lens great for printing posters in 3D. Using flexible lens and smaller size prints of up to 11×17 (17×11) inches is not that expensive, but going for prints with inflexible lens and similar or even bigger size prints costs quite a lot more, but also brings real attention grabbing effect. There is an easy to use calculator available that you can use to find how much will a print of specific size cost you and there is also a PDF guide with more information about the lenticular printing, what are the requirements and supported formats for prints at SnapilyPro.

Currently SnapilyPro runs a promotion allowing you to get 20% off from any order made between May 1st until 7th by using the promo code PRO20, so you you want to test out the service you can take advantage from that and then don’t forget to also share your feedback in the comments below.

- For more information about SnapilyPro’s lenticular printing services…

It seems that there is a strange misconception going on around that since passive 3D monitors use only half of the vertical resolution for displaying the frame for each eye you are supposed to get higher fps in a game. But this is far from the truth, because even though each frame for each eye displayed with a resolution of 1920×540 on a passive 3D display is actually still rendered in 1920×1080 resolution and then the extra lines are being discarded. As a result you have the same performance requirements for rendering the stereoscopic 3D image on either passive 3D or active 3D monitor, even though you are getting a bit lower resolution on the passive 3D solutions when viewing the result.

Rendering at Full HD resolution on passive 3D solution allows you for example to save stereoscopic 3D screenshots or 3D video from a game with full resolution, though this might not work on all stereoscopic 3D solutions. It also allows you to get better quality of the image without having to resort to very performance taxing solutions for anti-aliasing as lowering the vertical resolution can lead to more jagged edges. Using the extra visual information that has already been rendered can help process the stereoscopic 3D image that is going to be displayed, so that it will look better, even though the extra vertical lines from each frame are still being discarded. That does not help much when you have very small details or small text displayed using passive 3D setup, but still can help improve the overall visual quality without much of a performance loss. In the end you can expect to get pretty much the same number of FPS on the same system running either a passive 3D display or an active 3D solution for gaming in stereoscopic 3D mode. Actually with passive you can be getting a bit less fps due to the extra processing of the images before they are being displayed on the screen, but the difference is very small, so you will hardly notice it.