3d With No Glasses Sold Overseas
The Age
Tuesday December 26, 1995
Unique technology for creating three-dimensional pictures has been sold to a consortium of United States and European investors, with the potential loss to Australia of billions of dollars, it was claimed yesterday.
A method of producing 3D pictures that can be viewed without headsets or goggles has been the holy grail of electronics.
Such a system could be used in the military, computer-aided design, remote sensing, videophones, simulators, television and movies.
Insiders in Trutan, a joint venture of a Sydney entrepreneur, Mr Donald Martin, and Arnott's Biscuits, said a multi-million- dollar deal had been signed. Mr Martin and an electrical engineer, Mr Bjorn Olsson, invented the system which does not require spectacles.
Mr Martin said he had sought Federal and State Government assistance to keep the technology in Australia.
He said that existing 3D systems, which require headsets, generate about $3 billion annually. These are used in industrial, automotive and aircraft design, and medical diagnosis and treatment. He said with minor modifications, the Trutan technology could add depth enhancement to television and film images.
Once television stations and film studios were pumping out proper 3D signals, he said, the public could have 3D pictures on a television that would cost about $3000. Professional 3D systems would range from $20,000 to $1.5 million.
Mr Martin said he hoped the technology would be on the market next year.
Existing 3D systems exploit the fact that people see in three dimensions because the eyes have two slightly different views of the world. The brain combines the pictures from the left and right fields of vision to create a perception of depth.
Until now, researchers had assumed that to produce a realistic 3D image, the brain had to receive images from both eyes simultaneously.
Mr Martin and Mr Olsson discovered that the brain can construct 3D images when the left and right fields of vision are presented in rapid succession, much the way people see objects behind a picket fence when travelling in a vehicle. Their system consists of a camera that takes pictures of two different fields of vision simultaneously. The signal is fed into a standard television through two channels where a computer splices the two perspectives into a single picture made up of narrow vertical strips. The strips show alternately the left and right fields of vision. The computer animates the strips in combination with transparent strips, creating a picket fence effect that flickers so quickly it is not noticed by the viewer.
© 1995 The Age