Session 9: 3D 10 years Hence: 20/20 in 2020?
Hans Hoffman, Programe Manager EBUI Technical
Panel
Tibar Balogh, cEO/Founder Holografika Kft
Dr. Aljoscha Smolic, Disney Research
Dr. Takayki Ito, NHK
Hans Hofman intro: There will be no interoperability issue in the future, because there will be no glasses.
Tibor Balogh, Holografika Kft
Home TV is in many ways a social experience. You watch with your family or friends with the lights on. You may talk about the show or something else. You are not just staring at the screen.
To see the perfect 3D TV, look out the window. When you cannot tell if it is a window or a TV then we have the perfect 3D TV.
Pure 3D will reconstruct the light field. The light field is a function of position and direction. Variants are X, Y, and angle for field of depth, plus vertical and horizontal parallax. Reducing the vertical parallax can simplify the solution.
HoloVizio system – Optical modules project light beams to hit the points of the screen with multiple beams under various angles of incidence. Holographic screen has a direction selective property. It will be comfortable, glasses-free, no viewing restrictions, 2D/3D compatibility, and won’t cause any visual discomfort or restrict viewers.
The smallest practical pixel size is 0.1mm or 1 minute of arc, at 25cm optimal viewing distance.
There is a difference between trying to construct the 3D scene (light field) and tryig to mimic the human experience (view field).
Aljoscha Smolic (Disney Research, Zurich)
He described basic concepts of acquisition, transmission encoding formats, compression, delivery formats (BD, internet file), decode and regeneration/rendering, display.
With advanced 3D displays, Holografika today shows 60 or more views. Other autostereo displays use 8,9,16 views without glasses. But transmission of multiview data is very inefficient. A spatio-temporal video continuum may be a better way to reduce/transmit/reconstruct the data. He proposed reducing X views down to a few views accompanied by the data to reconstruct the X views. He showed graphics imaging how this could be done. MPEG will issue a Call for Propose in Oct. 2010 for specifications.
He is also involved in the MUSCADE initiative (www.muscade.com ?), which is a large European consortium.
Depth estimation of the 3D scene reconstruction must be accurate, robust, automatic, and real-time. The form factor and handling of the acquisition systems is a problem. The rigs must be manageable.
Stereoscopic Warping: Disney has developed a technique to manipulate the 3D without manipulating the image itself. Good for corrections and conversions. (His description was not clear.) He will be presenting a paper on this at Siggraph.
Takayki Ito (NHK)
Phases of NHK research
– Phase 1: basic research
– Phase 2: 3D TV
– Phase 3: visual comfort / discomfort, visual fatigue
– Phase 4: holographic
The four key natural visual cues are vergence, binocular disparity, motion parallax, accommodation. The more natural cues you use, the better the 3D effect will be.
The cause of visual fatigue is inconsistent vergence and accommodation (i.e. the vergence accommodation conflict).
Test: He studied subject responses to: 2D still image, 3D still image with large disparity, 3D image with time varying small disparity, 3D image with time varying large disparity. People experienced more fatigue when viewing time varying disparity than when viewing a 3D still image for a long time.
NHK has produced an integral 3D image which causes focus to vary with viewing z position! The resolution of their prototype, shown at 2009 NAB, is too low. Their research and development effort is dependent on technology advances.