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[kikassassassin]

I had an idea last night while I was playing WoW, of a way to create 3D images of the game by taking two screenshots, one slightly offset from the other, shrinking them down, and placing them side-by-side so they can be viewed in "magic eye" format. The results turned out rather well.

Comments

[martenb]

I remember a mod a long time ago that would run Quake 1 in this crosseyed steroscopic format. It's a neat concept, but supposedly the headaches were murder.

[kikassassassin]

Heh, I can imagine trying to focus on a moving image like that for awhile would hurt. I can only look at a still Magic Eye image for a few minutes before I have to rest my eyes.

I wish real VR would start making a comeback, though. We have the technology to do it a lot cheaper, more efficiently, and more conveniently than we did back in the 90's when it was supposedly going to be the next big thing (and then died). Software wouldn't be a problem as long as developers supported it--it's easy to add a bit of code to a game to have it output two separate images to two screens--it's the hardware that needs to be made before it can happen. I'm sure with today's technology, it'd be possible to make some nice quality VR goggles that aren't too heavy or unwieldly. Nobody wants to take the risk of developing it after it bombed in the 90's, though (and I'm sure Nintendo's failed attempt at it with the Virtual Boy didn't help eiter).

[martenb]

Well, I've seen a few attempts every now and then to bring true-3d back to the home environment. They tend to be expensive, and it's hard to fill a niche market if you have a high entry point. The other problem is still that you look like a giant dork wearing 3d glasses to play videogames. It's one thing to get together with some of your boys and throw down in Halo. It's quite another for all of you to be wearing expensive glasses with displays inside that wire you directly to the TV. And then, of course, there's the eyestrain problem. Current glasses-based displays can cause pretty wicked headaches after a couple of hours, just from having a light shine directly into each eye from an inch away.

[darkbunny]

I remember a video card that did something like that. It had a pair of LCD goggles timed to the refresh rate, and alternated left and right eye lens opacity while alternating left and right image frames. It was a little flickery, but looked pretty good.