Glasses-free 3D Comes to iPad 2, iPhone 4

A team of French researchers has brought glasses-free 3D to the iPhone and iPad in an ingenious piece of visual trickery that offers a similar effect to the new Nintendo 3DS handheld games console.

Jeremie Francone amd Laurence Nigay, from the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction research group, harnessed the front-facing cameras on the iPad 2 (video) and iPhone 4 (video) to track the user's head, thus allowing their software to deliver 3D experiences without the need for glasses.

Clips of the technology - dubbed "head-coupled perspective" - in action have begun going viral on YouTube, garnering hundreds of thousands of hits so far.

"It is based on a efficient head-tracker that uses the front-facing camera of the device," the researchers explain on their website.

"We use an off-axis projection in order to adapt the perspective of the 3D scene according to the head's position of the user."

The pair did not respond to requests for an interview at the time of writing but on their YouTube posting they say they were inspired by the work of Johnny Lee, who used similar head-tracking technology to create a 3D hack for the Nintendo Wii.

Toy maker Hasbro recently launched its My3D viewer accessory for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which purports to bring 3D gaming to the Apple handhelds. However, the device has been derided by reviewers as a cheap, ridiculous cash-in on the 3D craze.

The Nintendo 3DS, launched in Australia on March 31, is the only commercially available glasses-free 3D device. Rather than using cameras to track the user's head, it uses a special type of screen to deliver separate images to each eye, creating the 3D effect.

Nintendo announced today that the 3DS had broken the record for the fastest-selling handheld in Australia, with 31,000 units sold in four days.

(The $349 3DS was recently panned by a Sony executive as being a "great babysitting tool" but not something any "self-respecting 20-something" would use. Sony this week slashed the price of its competing PSP handheld to $189.95.)

LG has announced glasses-free 3D on its new high-end smartphones and Optimus Pad tablet, but has yet to reveal a launch date for Australia.

One of the major factors holding back the rise of 3D is the need to wear clunky glasses. TV manufacturers are moving away from the LCD active shutter glasses of the first generation of 3D TVs and are now supporting passive 3D glasses - the same as those handed out in the cinemas.

But the next generation of 3D TVs will use no glasses at all and manufacturers including Sony showed off glasses-free 3D prototypes at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. However, this technology is still a good few years away from hitting stores.

source : kompas.com