手機也能玩三維攝影：夏普(Sharp)將推出3D攝影模組
作者：數碼網   出處：evolife

夏普(Sharp)已開發出針對個人行動裝置，能夠拍攝720P的HD視訊的三維3D立體攝影模組，可謂開業界之先河，預計今年七月將有樣品問世，年內實現量產。

與我們的眼睛相似，立體影像由一左一右兩個攝像頭各自同時拍攝並合成。正是因為左右兩張照片不盡相同，需要經過色彩同步處理調節色彩亮度，以及光軸控制處理修正景物位置角度，加上時序同步處理協調不同的視訊信號，輔以高速的數據傳輸技術，方可得到能夠帶來縱深感的高分辨率的三維3D影像。

據悉，這種三維3D模組可以置入多種手持和行動設備，比如手機，數位相機...等。

電影“阿凡達”橫掃全球票房之餘，也向大眾直觀地介紹了沉寂已久的立體3D電影技術，再後來，光學器材廠商都紛紛加緊了向民生市場推出立體3D攝影器材的進程。夏普Sharp的這項技術向我們展示了也許相機，手機，甚至NDS的都能拍攝三維3D影像的期待。

Panasonic to Unveil Consumer 3D Camcorder Next Week

Panasonic will next week unveil a camcorder for consumers that is capable of recording images in 3D.

The camcorder, details of which are not yet available, will be shown at a Tokyo news conference scheduled for July 28, the company said Wednesday. It will be the first 3D-capable camcorder for the consumer market from a major manufacturer.

Panasonic and other major consumer electronics makers have been pushing 3D televisions in the last few months as the first professional 3D content begins to appear on Blu-ray Disc and via television networks.

The next target for the companies is products that allow consumers to create their own 3D content.

The 3D camera will be Panasonic's second after it launched a professional model earlier this year.

The AG-3DA1 looks like one of Panasonic's existing semi-professional camcorders with a bulbous twin lens assembly in place of the normal single lens. It records full high-definition images to SD memory cards and is available as a built-to-order product from the company for US$21,000.

The camera that will be unveiled next week is about the same size as a conventional consumer-use camcorder and is expected to cost much less than the professional model.

(Yahoo!)

Is 3D Already Dying?

Earlier today I reported on the unlikelihood that the next Batman movie will be in 3D. But is that a fluke or part of a trend? If box office numbers are any indication, it's definitely the latter.

Since the high-water mark of Avatar, where 71% of the revenue came from 3D screenings, numbers for big-budget 3D movies have plummeted to less than 50%.

Obviously Avatar was a unique case in that it was basically sold as a 3D "experience," so if you saw it in 2D you were missing out. But then three months later the animated How to Train Your Dragon pulled in 68% of its revenue from 3D screens, hardly a significant drop-off.

Fast forward a mere four months and you have Despicable Me, another 3D animated kids movie, pulling in 45% of its revenue from 3D screens. As you can see by The Wrap's chart below, it's a pretty clear trend.

What's this mean? It means that now that people have had a chance to experience 3D in theaters, they're opting to spend $10 on a 2D screening rather than $15 on a 3D screening when given the option.

It's not great news for Hollywood studios that have sunk boatloads of money into 3D cameras and tech, but it's much, much worse news for consumer electronics companies such as Sony and Panasonic who are betting the farm on people wanting to upgrade two-year-old HDTVs to 3D HDTVs. But if Hollywood finds that making 3D movies isn't as profitable as they thought, they'll stop doing it. And without that content, no one will have any reason to buy a 3D TV.

Sucks for them, but it's good news for consumers who are voting with their wallets. No more inflated ticket prices and no need to buy a new TV for a feature no one ever really wanted? Sounds good to me. [The Wrap via Ebert]

Leaked: Panasonic Prosumer HDC-SDT750 3D Camcorder

Budding 3D home movie aficionados take note: An "affordable" consumer 3D camcorder, the HDC-SDT750, has leaked out ahead of a purported "official" reveal on July 28. The one caveat is this isn't exactly a "new" camcorder at all:

Nay, it's actually an older 3MOS model with a "3D coversion lens" attached to the front. Nevertheless, this up-scaled 3D camcorder will sport 1080p AVCHD 60fps capability and Hybrid O.I.S. image stabilization. Perfect should your first foray into 3D home movies be, for instance, the birth of your first child. Price? Availability? Mysteries for now, dear readers. Perhaps there will be more at the Tokyo reveal on the 28th. [Panasonic via Engadget]

Entelligence: 3D TV falls flat for me

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

It's generally a bad idea to extrapolate larger consumer behavior from personal experience and say "if I like it, surely everyone else will as well." It's a mistake that happens all the time, but there's is one case where I will use my personal behavior to at least start the foundation for analysis -- when I don't want a new gadget or technology. Granted, sometimes I'm just not the target audience, but even then I'm usually able to remove myself from the process and say it might not be for me but others will love this. In the case of 3D TV, however, I think my lack of interest doesn't bode well for the market.

I'm surprised by figures, forecasts, predictions and prophecies all showing a rosy outlook for 3D TV beginning as early as this year, because I've seen most of the 3D offerings available and I have no plans to buy -- not now and not anytime soon. I should be a part of the core demographic for 3D: I like TV, movies and video games. I'm am early adopter. I have reasonable disposable income. I'm not afraid of betting on the wrong standard. And yet, I'm not buying. Here's why.

Cost: I'm fortunate that cost isn't the biggest inhibitor for me when I buy things, but I still do a cost/benefit analysis before I make a purchase. To really embrace 3D, I need a new TV, even though my current 1080p set is only a few years old and is wonderful. I'd need a new media player. I'd need glasses -- lots of them, as there can often be five or six people sitting around my set. I'd probably want a new digital camera to take 3D shots. And of course, I'd need some compelling 3D content from somewhere. That's already starting up to add into a significant cost proposition that takes it far out of impulse purchase territory.

Hassle: It's not just the cost to move to 3D. It's the hassle. Moving to HD was a breeze -- you just plugged in a new TV and were wowed by immediately available content. My upscaling DVD player made existing SD content look better than ever. By contrast, just viewing 3D content is a hassle due to the glasses. They're not cheap. They are gadgets in and of themselves, which means they require care and feeding, and everyone in the room needs a pair. Worse, I find 3D glasses very uncomfortable to wear for long periods over my regular glasses. The hassle alone of acquiring and viewing 3D content is enough to put me off.

Benefit: The cost and hassle of 3D could easily be justified and rationalized if there was a superb benefit on par with the move to HD. For me, 3D is cool but at best gratuitous. It doesn't change the visceral viewing experience for most of the content I've seen. I just don't see the value or wow factor that 3D brings to the table in its current format.

Someday technology will advance and 3D will be integrated into every screen. Standards will be deployed and the bulky and costly glasses will disappear. Content providers will figure out how to tell better stories with 3D that wouldn't have been possible before. And if that happens before I do my holiday shopping this year, I'll be on board. Given the low probability of that scenario, I'm going to pass for now. I expect many other consumers will as well.

3D-Camera-Equipped Mars Curiosity Rover Takes First Steps

The next Mars rover, dubbed Curiosity, is due to launch next fall and land on the red planet in August of 2012. But just today, it took its very first steps in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The rover, which is much bigger than I was expecting it to be, rolled a few feet surrounded by engineers and technicians in "bunny suits" on the clean room floor. All went according to plan, and everything is still on track for next fall's launch.

As previously reported, Curiosity is going to be headed up to Mars equipped with a pretty sweet 3D camera thanks to James Cameron, which should send back some of the most striking images of the planet's surface ever captured. Godspeed, Curiosity. [Physorg]

OpenGL 4.1 spec finalized, streamlines 3D graphics for web and phones

Only four months after OpenGL 4.0 hit the scene, the next revision of the cross-platform graphics API is here, bearing gifts of fancier math and more cribbed DirectX 11 features. Unless you're a graphics guru, though, we doubt you'll be that interested in "64-bit floating-point component vertex shader inputs," so let's get to the meat of what you're after: impressive 3D gaming. OpenGL 4.1 promises to help deliver that to cellphones easier than ever before, by making OpenGL ES (used in iOS and Android, depending on your hardware) completely compatible with the desktop graphics version, and promises "features to improve robustness" in WebGL 3D browser acceleration as well. There's also support for stencil values in fragment shaders, but we digress -- if you understood what we just said, hit up the source and more coverage links for the rest.

Electronista, CNET Khronos Group

As shown in the picture above, the N-3D can also produce images that change in response to sound. I’m not sure what the practical applications of that are, perhaps this is merely proof of concept regarding its interactive potential. I’d be more stoked if it responded to touch though.

Will the TV’s and monitors of the future be pyramid-shaped? I’m all for pyramid-shaped TVs.

[via DVICE]

Why 3-D is already dying

by Kit R. Roane, contributorJuly 27, 2010: 6:16 AM ET

FORTUNE -- Back in the day, the knock on Hollywood was that it produced too many two-dimensional characters. Now moviegoers are beginning to grumble about paying up to see them in the third dimension as well.

While premium pricing for 3-D movie tickets has lined studio pockets over the last few years, it hasn't translated into throngs of new moviegoers at the theater. Movie admissions have been in a tailspin for more than a decade, and despite a bump in 2009, new data shows the public is cooling to the offerings at their local theater yet again.

Hollywood.com's box-office survey shows attendance down by 2.2% through July 18th of this year when compared with 2009. Memorial Day weekend, traditionally the busiest four days of the year, drew the smallest audience in 17 years.

A river of schlocky films certainly doesn't help boost attendance, but a river of overpriced, 3-D schlock may actually be steepening the decline. A July survey of more than 2,000 moviegoers by BTIG LLC, a broker-dealer firm, found increasing chafe at the high cost of 3-D films, which tend to carry around a $4 surcharge. That brings a $9 children's ticket to see, say, Despicable Me, up to $13 in New York City -- a despicable premium for a product that often provides little additional value to the movie-going experience, and may even detract from it.

Movie studios have never really risked broad consumer revolt against theatergoing because ticket prices have remained relatively low. Sure, theater attendance has suffered from a few slings and arrows, including the rise of the DVD and the increasing ease of online downloads. But the rollout of improved 3-D technology again gave the multiplex an edge, because the viewing experience could not be replicated at home.

Not worth the price

The drastic climb in 3-D pricing now threatens the first glimmer of a profit rebound the studios have seen in years, testing the studio's "new normal," and their belief that 3-D is recession-proof. "To see a $4 premium on 3-D pricing is a pretty gigantic move for pricing," says Richard Greenfield, BTIG's media analyst. "Despite the staggering success of some blockbuster films, attendance is down year to date. That is clearly not a good sign."

The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan's epic flop at the box office, has become something of a poster child for all the expensive over-hyped promise of 3-D technology. Roger Ebert, who recently called Hollywood's rush to 3-D every film "suicidal" and described 3-D pricing as "a form of extortion for parents," saved a special dose of venom for the 3-D'd Airbender, calling it an "agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented." The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern was equally uncharitable, comparing Airbender to "a form of Chinese water torture."

While the film appeared to be no great shakes even in two dimensions, what unified most reviewers and viewers in protest was the extra mangling it took in 3-D. As Ebert put it, the process turned Airbender into "the drabbest, darkest, dingiest movie" he'd seen in years and hammered "a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3-D."

The problem with 3-D films is not just the high price of admission to see them. The technology process can make films noticeably darker and washed out, as if the projector lens were smeared with Vaseline. The 3-D process requires a scene to be separated into an image for each eye, making light levels about half that of 2-D films. Asked about his decision to keep his critically acclaimed movie, Inception, within the same old two dimensions, director Chris Nolan recently explained to an audience at the Hero Complex Film Festival that the quality of the technology was just not there yet, saying that he finds "the dimness of the image extremely alienating."

If price and quality concerns didn't spell enough trouble for the 3-D movement, Consumer Reports recently wrote how the brain's attempt to make sense of such 3-D images can cause headaches and eye strain in people with certain vision problems. That's not exactly what a parent wants to hear while being dragged into yet another 3-D showing of Toy Story 3.

The 2-D option is rising

Studios have generally brushed off concerns that they are killing their latest cash cow. While Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) CEO Bob Iger recently voiced concern over the sheer number of 3-D releases, Universal distribution president Nikki Rocco told The Hollywood Reporter, in his most abstruse studio-speak, that there remains "considerable incremental gross advantage to both distributors and exhibitors" in going with 3-D. As Hollywood.com's box-office stats show, despite declining movie consumption this year, studios are still making out like bandits, with high 3-D ticket prices helping to wrangle a 4% hike in running gross receipts.

But the revenue increase isn't a ringing endorsement of the technology by consumers. In fact, there is increasing evidence that they are not following the studios down the latest generational installment of the 3-D rabbit hole, one most notably separated from earlier attempts in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s by a lack of colorful cardboard glasses or a previous skew towards horror, exploitation and soft-core porn -- though now all of that bounty appears on the way.

The crush of 3-D movies being offered this summer has whittled down the number of 3-D screens available for any single movie release. Since big movies require big releases, more 2-D screens are being used, providing people with the option to see the films in the regular format. When given the choice now, many are choosing to forego an expensive trip to an often-gimmicky third dimension.

While 3-D tickets accounted for 82% of the box-office revenue for Avatar when it was released in December, Universal's July 9th opening of Despicable Me took in an estimated 45% of its revenue from 3-D screens. It follows a pretty steady decline seen by other hot 3-D releases from Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon, to Tim Burton's remake of Alice in Wonderland.

Most interesting, according to Greenfield, is that in some cases movies with a wider release on 3-D screens are doing worse in terms of 3-D revenue than those that had more limited 3-D screen penetration. Shrek Forever After, for instance, brought in a smaller percentage of revenue from 3-D screens than How to Train a Dragon, despite being released on about 200 more 3-D screens. A "greater percentage of consumers simply opted to see the film in 2-D," he wrote in a May post on BTIG's blog, adding: "The last thing the industry needs is consumers starting to believe that 3-D is simply 'not worth it.'"

With Jackass 3-D on the way, Ebert may be more prescient with that hammer swing than even he could see.

(CNN)

Newest Printers Show Skills In Making 3-D Objects
 By Stuart Fox

LOS ANGELES – Three-dimensional printers have existed for decades but have suffered from limitations in color and articulation in the high-end models, and from price and practicality issues on the low end. Now, two printers on display here at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics and interactive technology conference highlight how dramatically both extremes in 3-D printing have improved.