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Cool, but, it looks exactly like watching a display with a Wii remote on your head [0, 2007]. What’s so special? Is it actually 3D this time? [0] https://www.y

Cool, but, it looks exactly like watching a display with a Wii remote on your head [0, 2007]. What’s so special? Is it actually 3D this time? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

runawaybottle 6y ago
Well, if it’s as simple as head tracking with a IR emitter on your headphones or the like, then I’m a little surprised first person shooters don’t enable peeking around corners with head motion.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  It doesn't seen to be, or rotating the thing with a fixed camera wouldn't produce the effect, I guess ? https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech
mnw21cam 6y ago
I'm just going to link https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostereo.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostere... here - an autostereo display that was working way earlier than that. "The first displays were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s". They worked by projecting different images out to different horizontal areas in front of them, so your right and left eyes would see a different image, you could move your head and see around objects, and multiple people could look at it and see an appropriate view for their position. Not sure if they ever ran Doom on it though.
detaro 6y ago
> What’s so special? That it's not based on head tracking, and in a product you'll be able to reasonably buy.
mattowen_uk 6y ago
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw I did this at the time. I downloaded his Wii app that shows the little red/white discs, and bought a battery powered Wii-bar thing that had the IR leds in it and strapped it to my head. Can confirm, the 3D effect is 100% spot on, even the smallest move of your head caused the display to adjust perspective and your brain is totally fooled into thinking the Wii display is a just a window into a 3D scene. tbh, it was the only cool thing I actually did with my Wii!
- SirHound 6y ago
  Surely the depth effect only worked with one eye closed?
  - wffurr 6y ago
    Nope, works with both eyes. Your brain takes a lot more cues for depth than stereoscopic vision. The way the perspective changes as you move your head around is sufficient even for a flat display. It’s uncanny. Only works for one person though. If you stand at an off angle to the sensors, there’s no effect at all.
    - RHSeeger 6y ago
      Its amazing how the brain works... I am very cross-eyed at the moment (surgery resulted in both my eyeballs moving) and require a little plastic "stickon" that goes on the left lens of my glasses; which has prisms to redirect the light so that both eyes are looking in the same direction (prisms are fairly normal; it's the _amount_ of correction I need that is abnormal). The correction on the left lens is so bad that looking through it is completely blurry (with lots of rainbows if I'm looking towards a light). However, when looking through my glasses with both eyes, everything appears normal. I can see in stereo (which I cannot do w/o the correction) and everything is in focus. There is still _some_ rainbow effect. So, my brain is taking the "clear image" from my right eye and overlaying it with the distance information that the left eye adds to that... but ignoring the blurry image from the left eye completely. Honestly, I find it mind boggling.
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  And that video is over 13 years old! Too bad this idea didn't catch on more widely.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    It doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but I had a variant (literally same graphics) on my iPhone a decade ago. No fancy headgear and the effect was just as good—but instead of moving your head, you held still and tilted your iPhone. Apple later added the effect to the homescreen in iOS 7, but much more subtle.
Jemm 6y ago
TrackIR and variants are quite popular for simulator type games like flight simulator or truck simulator. They let you look around in the game just by moving your head.
- dividuum 6y ago
  Hm. I haven't really looked too deep into TrackIR, but I always thought it tracked your head movement to simulate head rotation within the game. So you could look around more naturally. The linked Wii "tracking" demo used the tracking to find your position relative to the display to change the rendered perspective accordingly. Does TrackIR also allow this?
  - winthrowe 6y ago
    As a TrackIR user, it feels to me like it should be possible to do something like this with the 6dof headtracking data from TrackIR, but basically nobody uses a 1-1 mapping that would produce a camera trick like this.
    - mrguyorama 6y ago
      TrackIR DOES do this. In flight simulator, with full 6dof, you can move your virtual head around and look under and around things
      - winthrowe 6y ago
        In my TrackIR config, I move my head left an inch, the projected head moves 6 inches. This is more useful than a even mapping in practice, but solidly breaks the 'looking through a window' illusion.
jcelerier 6y ago
with an holographic display two persons looking from different angles would see the image corresponding to their angle
- mdip 6y ago
  I think that sums it up pretty perfectly. It's the single reason I watched the video and my first thought was "there's no way that works that well" From the comments, here, it sounds like it might. There's some interesting applications, here. Thinking back to last night, it would have been really nice if when I was looking at the split-screen in my driving game with my kids, my own corner had that kind of depth to it. Hell, driving/flying games, in general, suffer from realism issues due to not being able to faithfully produce the effect of looking out a window. Doing this on a larger screen (and throw in a transparent LCD after you work out how to bend all of this into that, assuming it can be done) and you could have a light-switch that changes the scenery from "outside" to "outside somewhere else"[0]. [0] I remember seeing that in Back to the Future II as a kid and thinking it'd be really nice to have on a cold, gloomy, February day in Michigan.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Well, if it’s as simple as head tracking with a IR emitter on your headphones or the like, then I’m a little surprised first person shooters don’t enable peeking around corners with head motion.

xwolfi 6y ago
It doesn't seen to be, or rotating the thing with a fixed camera wouldn't produce the effect, I guess ? https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech

mnw21cam 6y ago

I'm just going to link https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostereo.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostere... here - an autostereo display that was working way earlier than that. "The first displays were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s". They worked by projecting different images out to different horizontal areas in front of them, so your right and left eyes would see a different image, you could move your head and see around objects, and multiple people could look at it and see an appropriate view for their position. Not sure if they ever ran Doom on it though.

detaro 6y ago

> What’s so special? That it's not based on head tracking, and in a product you'll be able to reasonably buy.

mattowen_uk 6y ago

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw I did this at the time. I downloaded his Wii app that shows the little red/white discs, and bought a battery powered Wii-bar thing that had the IR leds in it and strapped it to my head. Can confirm, the 3D effect is 100% spot on, even the smallest move of your head caused the display to adjust perspective and your brain is totally fooled into thinking the Wii display is a just a window into a 3D scene. tbh, it was the only cool thing I actually did with my Wii!

SirHound 6y ago
Surely the depth effect only worked with one eye closed?
- wffurr 6y ago
  Nope, works with both eyes. Your brain takes a lot more cues for depth than stereoscopic vision. The way the perspective changes as you move your head around is sufficient even for a flat display. It’s uncanny. Only works for one person though. If you stand at an off angle to the sensors, there’s no effect at all.
  - RHSeeger 6y ago
    Its amazing how the brain works... I am very cross-eyed at the moment (surgery resulted in both my eyeballs moving) and require a little plastic "stickon" that goes on the left lens of my glasses; which has prisms to redirect the light so that both eyes are looking in the same direction (prisms are fairly normal; it's the _amount_ of correction I need that is abnormal). The correction on the left lens is so bad that looking through it is completely blurry (with lots of rainbows if I'm looking towards a light). However, when looking through my glasses with both eyes, everything appears normal. I can see in stereo (which I cannot do w/o the correction) and everything is in focus. There is still _some_ rainbow effect. So, my brain is taking the "clear image" from my right eye and overlaying it with the distance information that the left eye adds to that... but ignoring the blurry image from the left eye completely. Honestly, I find it mind boggling.
cbm-vic-20 6y ago
And that video is over 13 years old! Too bad this idea didn't catch on more widely.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  It doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but I had a variant (literally same graphics) on my iPhone a decade ago. No fancy headgear and the effect was just as good—but instead of moving your head, you held still and tilted your iPhone. Apple later added the effect to the homescreen in iOS 7, but much more subtle.

Jemm 6y ago

TrackIR and variants are quite popular for simulator type games like flight simulator or truck simulator. They let you look around in the game just by moving your head.

dividuum 6y ago
Hm. I haven't really looked too deep into TrackIR, but I always thought it tracked your head movement to simulate head rotation within the game. So you could look around more naturally. The linked Wii "tracking" demo used the tracking to find your position relative to the display to change the rendered perspective accordingly. Does TrackIR also allow this?
- winthrowe 6y ago
  As a TrackIR user, it feels to me like it should be possible to do something like this with the 6dof headtracking data from TrackIR, but basically nobody uses a 1-1 mapping that would produce a camera trick like this.
  - mrguyorama 6y ago
    TrackIR DOES do this. In flight simulator, with full 6dof, you can move your virtual head around and look under and around things
    - winthrowe 6y ago
      In my TrackIR config, I move my head left an inch, the projected head moves 6 inches. This is more useful than a even mapping in practice, but solidly breaks the 'looking through a window' illusion.

jcelerier 6y ago

with an holographic display two persons looking from different angles would see the image corresponding to their angle

mdip 6y ago
I think that sums it up pretty perfectly. It's the single reason I watched the video and my first thought was "there's no way that works that well" From the comments, here, it sounds like it might. There's some interesting applications, here. Thinking back to last night, it would have been really nice if when I was looking at the split-screen in my driving game with my kids, my own corner had that kind of depth to it. Hell, driving/flying games, in general, suffer from realism issues due to not being able to faithfully produce the effect of looking out a window. Doing this on a larger screen (and throw in a transparent LCD after you work out how to bend all of this into that, assuming it can be done) and you could have a light-switch that changes the scenery from "outside" to "outside somewhere else"[0]. [0] I remember seeing that in Back to the Future II as a kid and thinking it'd be really nice to have on a cold, gloomy, February day in Michigan.