3D Vision Blog

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)…

The guys from RadiantStar – the company that is making the 3Dfier DirectShow filter for realtime 2D to 3D video conversion have just released two new versions of the filter to compliment the already available one that was designed for 3D Vision owners. One is for Passive Polarized Displays like the ones found on Zalman Trimon 3D monitors and Acer Aspire 3D notebooks and the other one is for Anaglyph red-cyan glasses. These two are currently available only as demo versions for personal testing and still are not being sold like the 3D Vision version. Also for these two you don’t need to use a stereoscopic player, you can just use them with a normal video player that can load the required DirectShow filters like Media Player Classic for example. And with the Anaglyph red-cyan glasses demo version there is no time limitation on how long it will play so you can watch whole movies with it.

- To download the latest 3Dfier DS filter demo versions for personal evaluation…

Everyone is talking about their 3D glasses not blocking as much light as the competitors or not stopping any light at all etc., but does anyone know how much light gets actually blocked when you wear a certain type of 3D glasses? I did a little quick and dirty test to check just that by placing a light meter at a distance of 20 inch (about 51 centimeters) away from display in a completely dark room with no other light sources. Then on the display (120Hz ViewSonic VX2268WM) was shown a completely white image (jps) displayed on the whole screen and I’ve taken out measurements of the light reaching to the sensor of the light meter directly and trough a few different types of glasses. The light was measured in Lux units as this way I could measure the intensity of light that reaches your eye without any glasses and when wearing a certain type of 3D glasses based on different technologies…

And here are the results:
- 22″ ViewSonic white, no glasses – 47.2 lux
- 3D Vision active shutter glasses – 41.3 lux (shutters constantly open)
- 3D Vision active shutter glasses – 5.9 lux (per eye with switching shutters)
- Passive circular polarized glasses – 32.1 lux (the glasses from Acer Aspire 3D)
- Anaglyph anachrome red-cyan glasses – 21.9 lux (for red), 22.3 lux (for cyan)
- And a with pair of plain black sunglasses – 15.4 lux

And a little update with more:
- Plain paper anaglyph glasses red-cyan – 7.4 lux (red), 21.3 lux (cyan)
- 3D Vision Discover (anaglyp red-cyan) – 6.3 lux (red), 17.8 lux (cyan)
- Pulfrich paper glasses (clear-black) – 3.5 lux (black lens)

As you can see there is a significant difference in terms of the amount of light that reaches the eye of a person when using different kind of glasses for viewing 3D content with 3D Vision getting the least amount of light passing trough. This is normal because of the switch on/off cycle of the shutters in these type of glasses, this however dos not mean that the technology is bad or something like that… it means that just like with other tech you need to compensate with more brightness of the image coming from the screen. But with a passive polarized glasses like the ones from the Acer Aspire 3D you can get more light to the eyes of the user and this is quite important as usually the screens of the laptops are offering less brightness than their desktop counterparts. The comparison with the plain sunglasses is also important, so that you can get a general idea on how things look trough the different types of 3D glasses by just taking a look over trough your sunglasses and taking into consideration the numbers above. Another thing to note is the difference between the light passing trough both color filters on a normal pair or paper anaglyph glasses compared to plastic anachrome glasses (the later have better color reproduction).