Still more mixed reality coolness for your iPad: A free new app called i3D (store link here) uses a iPad and iPhone's front-facing camera to track your face in real time, then uses that data to dynamically update the position of the graphics on the screen. Result: the illusion of 3D without the need of dumbass eyeglasses. Watch:
Read more about it here. Toucharcade believes this technology could put a stake in the heart of Nintendo's 3DS. (Sounds about right to me.) Can't wait to see the new applications this tech will inspire.
The mistake the TouchArcade article makes is confusing this display with the 3DS, which provides a glasses-free stereoscopic image. This app doesn't - both eyes are seeing the same thing. The depth cues only come when you move it, otherwise it's a flat image.
Posted by: Yoz | Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 12:41 PM
What Yoz said; while the image will move as you look around, it's not actually going to pop in or out like the 3DS does.
It's still great technology. Thing is, the 3DS could do this technique as well on top of it's already 3D display...
Will be downloading this to my iPhone4 regardless... :O
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 12:48 PM
"...it's not actually going to pop in or out like the 3DS does."
It does for me. Yes, it's getting the depth cues in a completely different way from the traditional different image to each eye method, but just because the method is different doesn't mean it doesn't achieve the same result. For me, the perceptual experience it identical -- things really do appear to pop out of the display, or be sunk into it.
Posted by: Galatea Gynoid | Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 07:00 PM
Interesting. For product visualisation, or 3d virtual meeting I could see that having some utility, move the iPad to look around and feel much more as if the device is simply a 'window' to the space. I wonder if getting one 3D cue without the stereo cue will induce headaches?
Posted by: NeilC | Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 01:10 AM