3D is all the rage these days, whether that be displays or cameras, with Nintendo’s 3DS mobile gaming console one of the few to offer glasses-free 3D. Now thanks to research by Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group, Apple’s iPad 2 is getting in on the action.
As you can see from the video, the iPad tracks the user’s head movements via its front camera and uses that data – and not the accelerometer – to create the 3D effect. The iPad then alters the displayed image based on this information to create a 3D image on-screen. Clever stuff!
We track the head of the user with the front facing camera in order to create a glasses-free monocular 3D display. Such spatially-aware mobile display enables to improve the possibilities of interaction. It does not use the accelerometers and relies only on the front camera.
What’s perhaps the most amazing of all is just how well the 3D effect translates to video!
The 3D graphics effect has been done on iDevices before. Apps like Labyrinth for the iPad 2 and the Cydia 3DBoard tweak use the accelerometer in the device to manipulate graphics based on users’ movements. This is a neat circus trick, but the device must be moved to create the 3D effect.
Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay of the EHCI Research group have created an impressive tech demo of 3 dimensional graphics on the iPhone 4. Instead of using the accelerometer though, they use the device’s front facing camera. How’s that possible?
Using the iPhone 4′s front-facing camera, the engineers use head-tracking technology to judge where the user is in relation to the on-screen graphic. Movement from the user’s head then manipulates the graphic accordingly.
We track the head of the user with the front facing camera in order to create a glasses-free monocular 3D display. Such spatially-aware mobile display enables to improve the possibilities of interaction. It does not use the accelerometers and relies only on the front camera.
Still not impressed? Check out the video of the tech demo below. I’ve played games like HoloToy before, but those graphics pail in comparison to the ones these guys are producing. I wonder if we’ll see this technology adopted by major developers. Imagine playing Infinity Blade in 3D.
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