[Gord B]

Several months ago I posted a message on a new 3D technology from Visualabs utilizing no glasses. This technology seems to be coming along well and an article in a recent (Vol. 6 Issue 4 - April 25, 2001) DisplaySearch Monitor journal provides more insight into how Visualabs does it. The article goes on to say that:


"The VisuaLABS implementation

links an image with depth cues that

control a layer of tiny varifocal lenses placed

over the screen, at the pixel level, so that each

image appears at one of 256 or more distances.

This array of micro-optics is overlaid on the

screen. Given the growing significance and

capability of the latest 3-D graphic controllers,

VisuaLABS' implementation allows images to

impressively "jump out" of the screen, creating

noticeable depth and realism in both full motion

video and with static images."


This company also has technology that allows panel displays to be joined seamlessly which may be an excellent solution for high-res large screens. The same article:


"VisuaLABS

also identified ways to optically stitch together

multiple panels, in what they call GroutFree TM

technology, providing large seamless images.

The process creates an overlay upon which is

laid a pixel-by-pixel magnification. When butting

together multiple LCD modules, VisuaLABS is

able to eliminate all "grout" so that the panels

are tiled together seamlessly. In theory, VisuaL-ABS'

GroutFree TM technology can tile together

numerous panels, at any resolution, up to any

size, (limited only by available video processing

power). Development efforts are currently

underway to create a 42" GroutFree panel at 12

megapixels. The GroutFree TM approach may

also lead to magnification solutions that will

allow small-size high-resolution displays to be

presented at much larger sizes. A small size

panel at UXGA resolution, for example, could be

magnified through optical lenses, to be a low-cost

solution of a much larger UXGA solution.

VisuaLABS' ultimate solution will be to tile

together panels and then apply their 3-D capa-bility.

Large, TFT-LCD images rendered in wide

viewing angle 3-D may become affordable home

entertainment visual systems."


The full article is at www.visualabs.com


What do you guys think? Does this technology have home theater potential anytime soon?


Cheers,


Gord

 

[JohnMarcus]

It should be a no brainer to put 4 800*600 displays in a

parallel arrangement to get 1600*1200 pixels. Then we need

some simple software to stitch the image together. Dilard

can do it with some mods? We would need a computer with 4

outputs from the video ports. Finally we would need some

gentle precise arranging of the images accurately placed at

subpixel precision.


Doesn't sound hard at all.


And we get 4 times the brightness to boot.


John.

 

[Alan Gouger]

Unforunetly we wont find any software or box that will do

what is needed for multi monitor output offering a great picture with no aritfacts for under 15k or more. I have been researching this for almost a year.

I finally bought a box from RGB spectrum. Its called the computer wall

and paid 10k for it. I am currently having trouble with the scaling image quality.

I have put 2 dlps side by side and scaled Gladiator to full screen 235 ratio. Stunning in brightness and resolution and color.


Gord

Do you have any info or web link to the Display Search Monitor magazine.

Thanks, great find.



------------------

Thanks Very Much!


Alan Gouger

AV Science
www.avscience.com

 

[Mark Hunter]

You guys are going to love this!


Take a look at this excellent video :



It's very clever in itself ("Internet Killed the Video Star"...a parody/sequel to "Video Killed the Radio Star"), but in the middle of the video, there is a view out to the 2025.


Take a look at the holographic projection system that they are using in the year 2025! I am pretty sure that is a future episode of Star Wars playing!


You will love this mini-movie, and the 3D projection is almost on topic http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif .

 

[Alan Gouger]

Hi Joe


That would be neat if it could be done.

I have heard the bad thing is the second display does not recieve

the same quality as the first display. I do not have one but this has been posted before!

Someday someone will have the right card!


------------------

Thanks Very Much!


Alan Gouger

AV Science
www.avscience.com

 

[Gord B]

The Displaysearch article on Visualabs is in pdf format at http://www.iredge.com/iredge/iredge....Report__81.pdf


The seams are always the problem with the videowall concept. If they have solved this, they could be on to something that has application sooner than later. I wonder if DILA could be tiled in the same manner?


Gord


Gord

 

[Gord B]

Alan,


It looks like DisplaySearch is not a free online publication but...
http://www.displaysearch.com/


Milori,


That parody video was great!

 

[JoeFloyd]

Alan,


While I was dorking around with a Matrox G400 Dual head card under Windows ME, I somehow got the card to display an overlay image from WinDVD across two monitors. I was switching back and forth between the different options for the desktop settings. The two modes were multi display and clone mode. Clone mode displays the same desktop video overlay on two monitors. When switching from clone to multi display there was one instance where the card was using multi display settings, BUT the overlay video was split across both monitors. Neat I thought, and then switched back to clone mode. That may have been a mistake. I only got this card to do this once, and I haven't been able to duplicate it.


I assume that I had somehow got the drivers into a "bad" configuration that allowed this one time video overlay split across two monitors. Perhaps a quick message out to Matrox asking about this ability would yield some benefits.

 

[indygreg]

i thought the issue was creating in overlay across two displays but i have a mattrox G400 dualhead on my w2k office machine and i have no problem creating an overlay across both. i just ran an mpg using media player across both displays perfectly. i can see no difference in quality.


greg


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-------------------------

Why does he shake hands with that guy right after he sexed the alligator

 

[Mark Rejhon]

Creating a video overlay over two displays is easy to do if both outputs are done by the same chip. Usually, no changes needed to the software programs. So definitely use a DualHead type card if you want the same picture quality over both displays. Do not use two separate graphics cards.


Creating a video overlay over two displays using two different video cards is fiendishly difficult to do. Even if DirectX exposes it, it requires a lot of exotic programming by the developers of the DVD players themselves, etc.


Future software and hardware technologies may make it pratical to have video overlays span different graphics cards, but it's not simple programming. If any of your programs successfully uses video overlays over two separate video cards running in separate slots, consider yourself very priveleged having a software program that's actually designed to do such a task!


------------------

Thanks,

Mark Rejhon
www.marky.com/hometheater
Lead Software Engineer for The TAW ROCK


[This message has been edited by Mark Rejhon (edited 04-30-2001).]

 

[MiltonH]

Jey

Your link to the Princeton project is invaluable. They appear to have solved most of the problems in using projectors in a display wall in such a way that hobbyist like ourselves could live with.


After reading their paper I find it easy to envision a videophile home theater with 4 of the least expensive home theater grade LCD projectors driven by a rack of about 4 Pentium IIIs PCs in 1U Koolance cases (water cooled cases to keep down the noise level) with a GeForce3 or Radeon in each PC. Such a theater should be able to show 1920 x 1080 images at 60 p (or even higher frequency refresh rates if you go to Pentium4s or GHz Athlons) with high lumen output.


Since I would guess that most of us already own camcorders, it is easy to imagine using a camcorder, a cheap color analyzer like the one Mark and Kevin Gilmore are about to introduce and some computer generated ultra high res test patterns to set up such a display system for maximum fidelity.


In addition, the Princeton guys appear to have improved on an open source software MPEG decoder so that, even without parallelization, they get several times the performance of the only open software MPEG decoder that people are working with in the Home Theater Computers section of the forum, the Elecard player.


Their work on using multiple cameras to produce high resolution images seems to be applicable to budget cinematography in that using 5 or 6 standard def cameras to produce HDTV might be quite a bit cheaper than using one HDTV camera (given current camera prices).


Anybody on the forum know any of these researchers?


Milton Henry

 

[akhaksho]

Hi Milton. I work for NCSA (the National Center for Supercomputing Applications) and we're building a similar wall. It's an 8 by 5 array of XGA projectors. The final resolution is 8192 x 3840. There are several groups working on walls like this (but ours is the biggest http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif . Besides Princeton, there is an effort at Argonne National Lab in Chicago, another at Stanford, and they're doing something similar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We all talk to each other and share code and ideas. The main problem with these things is getting the projectors aligned properly. It's much harder than you would think. I don't think this kind of thing is practical for home theater even if it wasn't so expensive. I can send you some links if you're interested.


Albert

 

[klutzo]

The visual labs solution definitely is an interesting one. I actually went to Calgary to check out their lab. Very interesting indeed. Their 3D is not JUMP OUT AT YOUR FACE type of 3d, but much subtler, but nonetheless effective. It is very much like looking through a window. Whereever you focus, the image becomes sharp. Focus far in field, you see the trees in the background. Focus in the forefront, and the fence post becomes clear... etc. etc.


Kudos for our Canadian boys.


------------------
Klutzo, the newbie HT Boy.

BA mains, Energy surrounds and sub.

Proxima DX3 main FP

Sharpvision Backup FP

Sony Wega aux monitor

Dalite 2.8 Gain screen

Sega Dreamcast (various controllers)

www.klutzoplex.f2s.com

 

[dlptheater]

Quote:

Originally posted by klutzo: The visual labs solution definitely is an interesting one. I actually went to Calgary to check out their lab. Very interesting indeed. Their

Hey klutzo,


Where did you see a demo? Do they have something setup where anyone can just go and see it? I live in Calgary so this would be neat to check out.





------------------

lance

I'm looking for a job!

Resume online at http://resumes.dice.com/lkstitch

 

[klutzo]

Ahh.. unfortunately not... But you can always buy one or two stocks, and ask for a demo since you would be a shareholder! =>


I went by invitation last year.


------------------
Klutzo, the newbie HT Boy.

BA mains, Energy surrounds and sub.

Proxima DX3 main FP

Sharpvision Backup FP

Sony Wega aux monitor

Dalite 2.8 Gain screen

Sega Dreamcast (various controllers)

www.klutzoplex.f2s.com

 

[Alan Gouger]

Hi Albert

Welcome to the forum and thanks for jumping in.

This is something I have been interested in for some time and just spent 10k on a box that allows me to split my computer image right down the middle allowing me to use 2 projectors side by side.

Unfortunately this box has some artifact.

Any links would be greatly appreciated.

I have had excellent luck with 2 dlps that have rgb adjustments for the top and lower end of the gray scale and can seam these units very well.

I would love to read in detail about the software used.

Thanks in advance for any info supplied.
[email protected]




------------------

Thanks Very Much!


Alan Gouger

AV Science
www.avscience.com

 

[Gord B]

Albert,

Do you know what is so difficult about tiling LCD displays that Visualabs touts this "GroutFree" technology as something special? Is it really unique technology or is your group (or the Princeton guys) doing the same thing?


Klutzo,

So you were impressed with the Visualabs 3D display? As a reservoir simulation engineer (at times) I have wondered what could be done with this technology in that field. Could it do movies? How does it handle fast motion? Do you have trouble focusing on the overall image?


Lance,

I will be in Calgary in June and would be willing to visit their facility. If you cannot get an invitation, I am sure that I can - perhaps we could go at the same time.


Cheers,


Gord

 

[MiltonH]

Albert

I would like to echo that "thanks for jumping in" and would appreciate any links you could email me on these projects.

I am at [email protected]

Thanks

Milton Henry

P.S. The Princeton paper sounded as if all they need to align their projectors is a camcorder and a way to pan it which doesn't sound so difficult that a determined amateur (=crazy videophile?) could not do it.

 

[Mark Rejhon]

Update....


Unfortunately, Visualabs has been found to be a fraud: Yahoo Article . The GroutFree 2x2 LCD display they demonstrated at the recent shareholder meeting, was, in fact a single 42 inch plasma display. It's sad to see things like this go with the flow of dotcom frauds in recent years. There is more information about Visualabs at a famous Internet dotcom deadpool site (f---company.com).


Anyway - some computer systems and scalers now permit the use of projector video walls in certain configurations (For example: two ROCK+'s, two DILA's side by side). Recently, there was a successful demo of a 20-screen Linux powered video wall.


------------------

Thanks,

Mark Rejhon
www.marky.com/hometheater
Lead Software Engineer for The TAW ROCK

 

[Sundar Prasad]

Just wanted to add to Mark's post. The CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Visualabs and his wife were fired some days ago for gross misrepresentation and fraud. The guy, a Sheldon Zellitt, claimed that he had developed a 'grout-free' method of tiling multiple LCD displays to make one large display. His method apparently produced seamless joins of smaller LCD panels without the usual divider lines between adjacent panels.


At a shareholder presentation some weeks ago, he showed off a 2x2 tiled display and everyone was impressed. However, the new president of the company got suspicious, and upon sniffing around discovered that what was claimed to be 4 LCD panels was actually a slightly modified 42" Panasonic plasma display which had been locally purchased a few days earlier.


The whole saga makes very interesting reading - look up Visualabs and Sheldon Zellitt in Google. Some of the oohs and aahs that reviewers were giving this pseudo-product a while back are downright funny. Goes to show how much most of these reviewer types know about the technology behind display systems and the associated difficulties with making them work. That's why I never trust professional reviewers of audio and video hardware in magazines and newspapers. I put more stock in the opinions of members in forums such as AVS.


Notch up one more fraud on investors from a Canadian company in Calgary. The first one involved gold (Bre-X), and this one seems to have moved on to high tech.


Oh yeah, I bet this guy's 3-D stuff is a hoax too. Apparently it is hidden behind the largest bank vault in the city.



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Sundar

Vancouver, Canada