[emailed by Mark Fihn]

Dear display enthusiast,

I am one of the three editors-in-chief of a new reference work covering all aspects of displays technology in 2000 pages. The work has taken 5 years to create. Please look at:

http://www.springer.com/engineering/signals/book/978-3-540-79566-7

The Handbook of Visual Displays Technology will be published by Springer in August, and we have arranged a discount of 20% for those reserving a copy before publication. If you would like to see details of this offer, please email robin@canopusbooks.com(Canopus edited the handbook with Springer).

“I am honored to write a ‘Foreword’ for the precious and voluminous book that you all edited tirelessly after compiling the chapters written by numerous experts of display technology in the world and I am proud of all those who contributed because most of them are well known in SID and they are the ‘cream’ in the world”.

— Prof Anandan, President of SID

Best regards,

Mark Fihn

www.veritasetvisus.com

(Philip Lelyveld comment: Jukka Hakkinen is a friend of the ETC 3D Lab)

Viewing 3D movies on small screens could lead to radically different perceptions of relative depth when compared to seeing them in the theater or on a television, conclude Nokia engineers.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of Stereoscopic Displays and Applications, Jukka Hakkinen and colleagues tested three short animations on viewers. What they discovered is a direct consequence of how we perceive depth and how it is recorded via dual cameras when creating 3D films: the closer you are to a display and the smaller it is, the greater the perceived difference of depth of features in a scene.

This effect was not seen when viewers were shown the same animations on a television or in a cinema, at viewing distances typical for those formats. The effect comes about because 3D is generated via two different cameras (or camera views, in the case of digital effects): When viewing a 3D movie, the user’s eyes are effectively the same distance apart as the cameras used to shoot a scene, other enhancements notwithstanding.

This enhances the effect of 3D at short viewing distances and is lessened for greater viewing distances. In addition, the researchers discovered that effects that went beyond one degree of visual angle simply weren’t perceived at all on television or in a cinema, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

The researchers note that those creating 3D media must therefore take into account the various viewing distances and screen sizes at which that media might be viewed, and limit the depth effects they’re trying to generate so that they are acceptable in all contexts. An alternate solution would be to re-master — perhaps even dynamically, in the case of video games — a 3D scene so that it looks best on whatever size screen it’s viewed.

The bottom line is that viewing a 3D movie on a Nintendo DS might be a very different experience than seeing it on a television or in a movie theater. Whether or not that experience is better or worse will depend on the film — it’s going to be interesting to see how users perceive individual works once they are available on both smaller devices 3D televisions.

See the original story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26471/?p1=A5