Colour Stereoscopy On The Hoof

Posted by on Oct 16, 2011 in Featured, Stereoscopy | 2 Comments

Okay, watching stereoscopic footage on your portable devices and mobile phones hasn’t really hit the mainstream yet. Several solutions exist, but they generally  require specially encoded footage and the available footage can be limited, especially when compared to the amount of 3d videos now available on YouTube.

One solution, which I have been testing out recently is 3deeCentral‘s 3DeeSlide.

3DeeCentral is a depository of 3D videos and image collections from different genres such as music videos, documentaries, animation and extreme sports. They also have a variety of indie and pro-labelled S3D content available. Their plan is to provide a 3D service to several new devices, such as Android and Internet-enabled 3D TVs, but they currently support desktop computers, iPhone and iPod Touch. The 3DeeSlide is basically a plastic case and lenticular screen that fits onto your iPhone, which can then be used to watch specifically encoded S3D videos that you can download from the 3DeeCentral store. They have several free titles as well as some pay for content. I recommend checking out Pump Action by Phil ‘Captain 3D’ McNally.

The hardware itself is pretty cheap (£10 for 3G and 3GS, £20 for iPhone 4 and 4S) , especially when compared to other, more high-tech portable 3D solutions such as the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer, which costs over £400. However, the viewing experience isn’t great. The slide can take some time to align correctly and even when you have it just right it is hard to stay in the ‘sweet spot’ to see the 3D effect properly. The lenticular can cause odd refractive speckles around high contrast areas and looks generally quite jagged, but it *is* in full colour (not anaglyph), and you don’t have to wear glasses. So even though the image quality isn’t great, it’s still a very impressive piece of kit. I’ve enjoyed watching several of the free videos that are available on the 3DeeCentral Store. I haven’t paid for any yet, and to be honest none of the pay-for content really looks that impressive and they’re way over priced. Nevertheless, if the right kind of films become available, I wouldn’t mind paying.

The problem with the incredible 3D streaming service that YouTube offers is that it doesn’t work on mobile devices. Rather than displaying the anaglyph versions, or just the full width 2D version, when playing 3D encoded footage on your mobile device, you see the original side-by-side, horizontally scaled version. This is frustrating as more and more people are using smart phones to view video content, and the viewing experience is significantly reduced by seeing stereoscopic footage in this way. If you can easily free view stereograms using the parallel method then you won’t need any technology to see the 3D image but most people find this technique very difficult to do.

However, I have discovered an alternative method to viewing the vast array of stereoscopic content on YouTube using a smart phone. It’s cheap, uber cool, and has been around for over a hundred years.

Using an antique stereoscope it is easy to turn your smart phone into a stereoscopic display. The stereoscope pictured above cost me £8 from Ebay and folds up neatly in my pocket, which means I can watch any of the thousands of stereoscopic videos on YouTube whilst riding my bike or buying a scone.

The main issue with this is that YouTube videos are in the horizontally scaled format, so everything appears squashed and has reduced depth. The resolution is also an issue. When you’re looking at the iPhone 3GS very close like this, it’s easy to see the pixels, the image and perceived depth is much better on higher resolution displays such as the Google Nexus S and the iPhone 4S. The main benefits to this solution is that it is in full colour, there is a huge selection of videos to choose from, you can easily upload your own videos, people are always impressed with the juxtaposition of century separated technology, it’s very easy to view and is very cheap.

The Samsung Galaxy being used in the stereoscope

2 Comments

  1. Bill
    April 19, 2015

    I really enjoyed your take on the “juxtaposition” of a century apart technology, I’ve been trying to put the perfect wording and there it is. I too am fascinated by the stereoscope. I had a very vague idea that they were before the view-master. It wasn’t until I purchased a box of various old film cameras and found two original stereoscopes and the first thing I did was find a stereoscopic pair on my Iphone and threw it on there and like you described a century and a half give or take and old meets new and it is perfect.

  2. Aaron
    April 21, 2015

    Hi Bill,

    I’d totally forgotten about this. As I’m working with Oculus Rifts and the such these days this old stereoscope is now going to be my vintage VR headset. I might just have to make some vintage VR to view in it too. Feeling inspired… Thanks

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