Visualizing the world in 3d.pd

Páginas: 17 (4066 palabras) Publicado: 7 de julio de 2011
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Photo: Baris Simsek

Visualizing the World in 3-D
From Stereoscope to the Super Bowl
By Peter B. Seel, Ph.D.
loss of depth perception as the remaining functional eye provides accurate visual information, but the brain lacks the required binocular detail to create a sense of depth. I would argue that one reason that we enjoy seeing the world in three dimensions is thatour sense of depth perception has fundamentally contributed to our survival and success as a species. The creation of photography in France by Niépce in the 1820s and advanced by Daguerre in the early1830s was followed by the development of twin-lens cameras that could take stereoscopic images that mimicked the

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n the natural world there are two broad categories of mammals: hunters and thehunted. The former group includes species with eyes placed on the front of the head such as birds of prey, large and small cats, and human beings. Such visual stereopsis provides optimal depth perception as the slight divergence between optical pathways allows creatures such as homo sapiens to hit a rapidly moving target with an arrow or a rock. The perception of depth in self-defense, as well ashunting, has contributed to the evolution and propagation of our species. Blindness in one eye results in a

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optical convergence of the human eye. When dual images taken with these cameras were placed side by side in a stereoscopic viewer that separated the perspective of each eye, the result was a magical perception of depth. 3-D stereoscopic viewers withblack-andwhite images of tourist sites such as Niagara Falls and the Brooklyn Bridge were very popular in the U.S. in the late 1800s. One of the most widely-adopted 3-D viewers was invented by American novelist and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Figure 1).
Photo: Dave Pape (Creative Commons)

imagery into three – and we especially enjoy 3-D images that move.
Photo: In the Creative Commons

Figure 2 –The Sawyer’s View-Master® model G introduced in 1962, a century after the Holmes Stereoscope. It holds a disk with fourteen 16 mm. color slides (seen as seven pairs of 3-D images). 3-D Film and Television Technology There are two basic types of 3-D technology used for motion media displays: active and passive. Passive systems rely on anaglyphic 3-D displays that present right eye and left eyeinformation in the same frame and utilize inexpensive eyewear (often simple cardboard) with plastic “lenses” of red and cyan/blue or amber and blue. Passive technologies such as the ColorCode 3-D system allowed home television viewers such as the Obama family to view commercials in 3-D during the 2009 Super Bowl football game (Figure 3). The ColorCode amber lens admits color information for one eyeand the blue lens admits monochrome depth information for the other – the brain links the imagery together to create the televised 3-D illusion. Anaglyphic passive 3-D technology was used with other recent telecasts including the memorial segment honoring Michael Jackson during the 2010 GRAMMY® awards.

Figure 1 – A reproduction of a Holmes American Stereoscope created in 1860 by physician andwriter Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. He declined to patent the widely adopted viewer. Readers may recall their first look into a View-Master® toy (Figure 2) and the entrancing look at cartoon characters in vivid 3-D, or seeing color images of tourist sights such as the Grand Canyon that replicated a sense of depth that a 2-D postcard could not convey. Millions of children worldwide have experiencedvivid color 3-D imagery thanks to the humble View-Master toy. Humans enjoy seeing things in 3-D, either with our own eyes or via technology that converts 2-D

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Figure 3 – Newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama watches commercials in 3-D during the 2009 Super Bowl with wife Michelle and White House guests. The amber and blue lenses in their anaglyphic cardboard...
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