3D ads to put virtual beers on bars
17:13 23 March 04
NewScientist.com news service
Three-dimensional foaming glasses of beer could soon leap out of TV screens and on to bars, to try to tempt customers into buying drinks.
The system, from X3D Technologies in New York City, allows the virtual drinks to jump up to a metre in front of the screen. They can be viewed with the naked eye from anything up to a 120 degree angle.
"People stand in their tracks, they are stunned by what they see," claims Myles Owens, chief executive officer of X3D. The first 3D alcoholic drinks advertisements were shown at the International Nightclub, Bar Beverage and Food Convention in Las Vegas earlier in March.
Until recently 3D displays that can be viewed without special goggles have been used to enhance high-end laptop computers and television sets, mainly in Japan. But now X3D Technologies is marketing its product to advertisers in Europe and the US as a new way to tantalise customers.
Red and green
To create an artificial perception of depth using a two-dimensional screen each eye must see a slightly different image. The brain processes the discrepancies between the images and fuses them to provide the 3D view.
Early 3D technologies projected two images in quick succession. One was blocked by a red filter, worn over one eye, another was blocked by a green filter, worn on the other eye. But the observer had to be wearing the red-green goggles.
More recently display makers have figured out ways to filter the light before it leaves the display. X3D takes an off-the-shelf plasma screen, removes the front layer of glass and inserts a grid of red and green filters separated by opaque lines on top of the screen's pixels.
The filters are spaced so that light rays leaving a certain pixel pass through a green filter to get to one eye, but a red filter to get to the other eye. The spacing is based on a measurement of the average distance between a pair of eyes. Software then splits the video to be projected into two slightly different images, one blocked by the red filter, one by the green.
Shampoo bottles
Electronics companies including Sharp in Japan have played similar tricks with liquid crystal displays to create 3D TV sets, but X3D is the first to market the product to advertisers.
Its 53-inch plasma-screens are already being used to make shampoo bottles loom in front of customers in shops in France, Italy and Spain.
Owens says even greater potential lies in making the technology cheaper so that most people have it in their homes: "We continue to strive for broadcasting 3D content. That is the future of advertising," he says.
for Nixy)
