3D Television
3D Television is closer than ever to becoming a reality... and soon there will even be a commercial one. This is all going to come true because of a huge group of researchers that are working all over the world in places like Turkey, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Finland, and even Bulgaria; it is all coordinated by Mr. Levent Onural of the University of Bilkent in Turkey, he teaches courses on three dimensional television and has vast experience in the issue.
The constant flow of new things that this technology represents is a credit to the ample progress that mankind is making in this direction. The way it is now, the human eye cannot even with the help of 3D glasses experience the fantastic three dimensions with such amazing clarity and resolution. When we will be able to watch videos in such a way, we will see something that until now does not exist, things will be so much more interesting and captivating then they are now, and the possibilities for presentation and transmission will be infinitely bigger in number!
While we watch a game of football, we will be able to go in (virtually) onto the playing field and watch the game progresses and be able to feel as if we are really there, we will be able to even go inside the body of a favorite movie actor as the film goes on and experience the world through his eyes. This is not just something that is like the scenarios in a video game, this is going to be real and we will be able to do it any time we want, using just a television or a monitor that can transmit 3D video images.
The entire project for the development and research of this new technology belongs to 3D TV, which, by the way, is the biggest in the world up till now; they have big dreams and high technical goals set in place. The question is: will they pull it off? Until now they have been able to make prototypes in the laboratory that use multiple cameras and are able to present videos in 3D format. There has also been much progress in prototypes for the integration of audio-video for the internet and much more in the making of the 3D images.
The principle which was used in the making of the model for this technology is very simple. It all starts with how our eyes are made: we see in 3D, in other words we can see more dimensions than just right-left, up-down, far-close because we have two eyes; the image is slightly different and is analyzed and compared in the brain and because of the differences, we can see the diverse things around us.
The eyes have a distance of about 7 centimeters between them, what one eye can see the other cannot, so if you take just one eye you will have a 2D image, the brain works the two 2D images together to make one 3D image...that is how this technology is supposed to work. If we want to get a 3D image first we must have two normal images, kind of like the ones we have today when we take a picture. Only these cameras will be identical and be placed 7 centimeters away from each other...just like our eyes.
The same principle is used with video cameras; the only difference would be the fact that instead of using simple cameras, you would be using video cameras. So from here to television you have but one step and until you get to 3D internet you have one other step that is just as small...or as big(!!!) as the first.
The method used is the same they use today in the polarization of light, there is something similar to a contact lens that is specially made to only allow the light to go in a certain direction. In technical terms this type of lens is called a polarizer. If you put the two polarizers one on the horizontal and one on the vertical, on the movie screen there will be two movies playing, one horizontally and one vertically, and you will get a 3D image. Until now, this has been used in the making of the glasses that allow you to watch a movie in 3D. But they are working and researching and some day we will have the possibility to watch 3D in a way never experienced!
