NTT uses scattered monitors to trick your brain into seeing 3D images

Japan's IT services and telecoms giant NTT Corporation says it has devised a way of making 3D images visible in augmented reality applications without requiring special equipment or even direct observation. NTT's Communication Science Laboratories was interested in this topic as augmented reality and 3D display today requires …

[Neil Barnes]

So...

If you have a 2-d picture of a rabbit shown on some carefully placed monitors, you see a 3-d picture of a dolphin?

Some serious brain hacking going on there!

[Francis Boyle]

Re: So...

I'm sure with the right chemical enhancement technology™ it can be made to work.

[diodesign]

Rabbit to dolphin

How that happened falls under a section in the research titled:

You Are Not Expected to Understand This

So we didn't bother.

C.

[Duncan10101]

Am I missing something????

Looks like a pretty straightforward implementation of what Robert Kooima described in his (excellent) "Generalized Perspective Projection" paper ...

[diodesign]

Almost

I think it's close but NTT's design uses scattered displays (as illustrated) whereas Bob's paper (there's a PDF of it floating around out there) describes an organized array of panels.

C.

[PhilipN]

David Hockney

Believe he exploited this in some of his artwork.

[diodesign]

Re: David Hockney

Probably!

C.

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand how this allows the brain to think it's seeing a cohesive 2D image when it's really seeing a broken one, but what does this have to do with 3D?

[Patrick R]

It's not really seeing a broken 2D picture

As I understand, the bits and pieces are from 2 or more (?) slightly different 2D images, not from one 2D image like in the triangle example.

[Bebu]

Why the cyan+red stereo pairs of the rabbit and dolphin?

Looks like the old fashioned kiddies' 3D picture books with accompanying cardboard glasses glazed with "quality" cellophane lenses. :)

Without reading the referenced paper I would guess the displays are attempting to use "transparency perception" to sneak depth cues into the unsuspecting brain. :)

I would also imagine it would be rather difficult to collect enough such illusions to reliably create the required 3D cues.

My suspicion is that the illustration has been half inched from some textbook and those believing that looking hard enough at two red-green rabbits is going produce a similarly tinted dolphin (rather than more rabbits) is as gullible as NTT's manglement's giving these chaps real money.

_{... now if it were that easy Guv', we wouldn't be asking for the money would we?}