A new 3-D technology that doesn't depend on goofy plastic glasses or headsets will debut on a 25-inch "autostereo" monitor at the Siggraph '97 show next week in Los Angeles.
Developed by Infinity Multimedia, the "time multiplex" technology displays a series of 28 windows that represent a complete 3-D scene. Viewers can then move their heads left and right to look behind or around objects in the scenes.
"It's totally different from any current 3-D technology," said Peter Canepa, CTO of Infinity. "All of the representations of a scene are right there on the screen, or you could split it and have two scenes available to two viewers simultaneously."
A partner company, Litton, is using the technology to develop aerospace and defense applications - flight simulations, mission rehearsals, and the like.
Traditional methods for viewing 3-D - like glasses or headsets - can lead to "VR sickness," Canepa said. Headsets often have built-in sensors that render scenes based on head movements, and the time lag between the movement and the rendering often causes queasiness. IMAX movies, for example, usually last less than an hour, lest the theater turn into a gut-spillin', rollercoaster-of-a-film ride. Since Infinity's time multiplex technology system represents the whole scene all at once, there are no such sensors, latency, or queasiness involved, Canepa said.
The system is currently in prototype stage, and the company expects to have a 50-inch production version by the end of 1998, with a sale-ready version by 1999. The system will be driven by a PC or workstation computer equipped with specialized graphics processing boards. Infinity is showing the technology at Siggraph to encourage game developers to develop software that takes advantage of the new medium.
"You can write games around how a true 3-D system will look," said Canepa. "For example, in a fighting game you could look to the side and behind your opponent to see if he's hiding a weapon. Or you could look around a curve in a racing game to see if there is a road hazard ahead."
