The latest in active shutter 3D applications
January 15, 2011 3:37 PM   Subscribe

 
Holy crap.
posted by roll truck roll at 3:42 PM on January 15, 2011


That is....'ow do yoo zay.... unnervang... I zink I weel pasz.
posted by Samizdata at 3:45 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


Twitch-vision.
posted by crunchland at 3:45 PM on January 15, 2011


nffffghhh no no no no
posted by synaesthetichaze at 3:46 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I still think this is somewhat fake. Somebody pointed out on Gizmodo that this guy is a special effects expert.
posted by deacon_blues at 3:48 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Hey! Quit winking at my wife!
posted by bwg at 3:48 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


Cut to a frenchman in a ragged beard and dirty, torn labcoat, shaking a clenched fist at the heavens...

"When I revealed my revolutionary new technology for viewing 3D video without needing uncomfortable glasses, they all laughed at me. Well, I'll show them what my hyper-twitch technology can REALLY do. I'll show them ALL!"
posted by Slap*Happy at 3:53 PM on January 15, 2011 [5 favorites]


I watch TV and movies to escape from 3D.
posted by sonascope at 3:54 PM on January 15, 2011 [14 favorites]


I believe everything I see on YouTube.
posted by rusty at 3:56 PM on January 15, 2011 [5 favorites]


For some reason I thought the YouTube video would be in 3d and I was bracing myself for something horrible to happen.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:07 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


dude blink like that get put on meds in this country
posted by Postroad at 4:15 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


You could actually electrically convulse muscles that fast, and it's not that hard or that painful to do.

I mean, I wouldn't wear it to watch an entire movie or anything. Well, depends on how kinky the movie was.
posted by loquacious at 4:17 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I couldn't stop crying.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:19 PM on January 15, 2011


I hope it's not real. Otherwise, that guy's gonna end up with a forehead like Vegeta's.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 4:21 PM on January 15, 2011 [8 favorites]


It geeves you ze forehead of... how you say? The intellectual. Very attractive to très belle femme.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:26 PM on January 15, 2011


<blink>No.</blink>
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 4:31 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


I have an idea for 3D without glasses. It's called open your fucking eyes and go outside!

Regardless of the technical achievement, I hate it when crude replication of reality is seen as so amazing and we take for granted what we can see, taste, touch, smell, and eat in REAL LIFE. Get off the couch.
posted by thorny at 4:37 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


On the very off chance that this is real, I'd be extremely curious to know what the long-term health effects of this kind of repeated neuro-electrical muscle stimulation would be. Around this same time last year, I developed a stress-related case of Bell's palsy that resulted in the temporary paralysis of almost the entire left side of my face, including the inability to close my left eyelid. Fortunately, the paralysis went away after a few weeks of treatment, although I had weird phantom facial twitches for months afterwards. IANANeurologist, but I can't help but wonder if a device like this could potentially exacerbate or even trigger these sorts of conditions.
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:41 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


This video is blowing up right now on my Facebook friend network. I'm really keen to know if it's CGI used to get his eyes blinking. The whole feel of the clip is nicely documentary-style and it looks convincing, if utterly creepy. I wish more virals were as laid-back as this.
posted by skylar at 4:46 PM on January 15, 2011


I too wonder about the possible adverse health effects. I also wonder whether it would work atall on people with strabismus?
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:48 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


wink, wink. nudge, nudge.
posted by punkfloyd at 5:00 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think I'd rather just buy a 3DS.
posted by Amanojaku at 5:02 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Just just say say no no to to this this.

Now blink fast. The words, you can touch them, no?
posted by Splunge at 5:06 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


YouTube comments get a lot of (well-deserved) grief but the current highest rated ones really show, at least, the value of a rating system:

Does it work without beard?

made me chuckle and still does for some reason.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 5:11 PM on January 15, 2011 [6 favorites]


Iz zat room, ow you say, sound proof?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:11 PM on January 15, 2011


Sooo, can you use those devices to twitch other parts of your body?
posted by Sailormom at 5:14 PM on January 15, 2011


That is some truly funny stuff, right there. I'm still laughing...

IN 3D
posted by dbiedny at 5:15 PM on January 15, 2011


Sooo, can you use those devices to twitch other parts of your body?

Well... kinda... DISCLAIMER: links to posts I've made.
posted by carsonb at 5:22 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Who else is still cringing from the high-pitched tone that accompanied it?
posted by sambosambo at 5:26 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


There's a place near me that shows 3D films that don't require glasses. I'm not sure what technology they use, but you don't have to blink or focus your eyes weird or anything. It's remarkably effective, but right now for some reason most of the films have poor special effects. Recently they've shown Macbeth, Henry the IV and Death of a Salesman.
posted by justkevin at 5:32 PM on January 15, 2011 [18 favorites]


I also wonder whether it would work atall on people with strabismus?

If anyone does have a real version of this technology, I'm totally not volunteering to find out.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 5:35 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


This is totally real. You can tell because when he switches them off, his eyelids have to slowdown from twitching as if they were a mechanical motor of some kind.
posted by P.o.B. at 5:44 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


Ow, my eyes ...
posted by carter at 5:54 PM on January 15, 2011


Yes. You can twitch almost anything you want with a TENS unit. For obvious reasons those devices are extremely popular with kinky people for electrical play. I've heard about people sharing electrode contact pads while having sex. Ahem, the path of least resistance and all that. I have a friend who used to wear a two-channel model on his belt when he went out to industrial dance clubs and he'd do weird stuff like wire it to his arms or legs under his clothes and match it roughly to the beat of the music so he could dance more like a cyborg or something.

I'm pretty sure that the artist in this video is actually using a TENS unit and I'm basing it on the fact that those electrodes are actually adhered to his face and wired, and how a TENS unit behaves when you turn it on and then turn the dial to adjust the pulse length and intensity. His blinking starts out slow and then goes faster at different rates as he cranks it up. Every unit I've seen seemed to turn on with the dial that controlled the pulse length, as a safety feature I suppose, because more pulses per second means more voltage (and danger) per second.

On his face. Where you're really not supposed to affix the electrodes. However, I've stuck one of those things on my face before. Where he has the electrodes fixed is exactly where you'd want to zap to make your eyes twitch, and it looks like he's using very small electrodes that have a very short path to avoid twitching too many other muscles.

Also, if he was faking it with computer graphics it would look better. His right eye wouldn't twitch half shut and they'd be intentionally and perfectly synced to blink opposite of each other, instead of roughly the same speed and sort of phasing in and out of sync.

In conclusion, yeah he's zapping his face. It's not the first or last time someone has posted a video about doing that on the internet.
posted by loquacious at 6:02 PM on January 15, 2011 [5 favorites]


And if he's not using a TENS unit, you can also use a wave generator fed into a controlled DC power supply, or even audio tones/waves into an amplifier. There used to be a DIY TENS unit hack for home stereo amps. You could play music through it or custom made audio tone programs.

A TENS unit is basically the same thing as these, except ostensibly designed for medical use. You could theoretically use it as a synthesizer, because it's just a wave generator with pulse width and depth modules and maybe a switch or two for different wave shapes or LFO-like modulations.
posted by loquacious at 6:06 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Remember that Amy Sedaris advertisement with the bunnies-the one for the computer software? Her eyes were doing something like that in part of it.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:17 PM on January 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


wow! this is the finest examples of Graffiti i have ever seen, this also makes them Aholes with spray cans look like and are Amateurs, rank Amateurs
posted by tustinrick at 6:19 PM on January 15, 2011


Guys, it's computer graphics. It's a parody of how we'll do silly things that ultimately hurt quite a bit, in the pursuit of the 3D effect.

TENS units are cool but they're not going to give us extended 30FPS flickering of the eyelid! Come on :)

Ultimately what we need are light field displays, that can tightly control the angles of light emitted from a display. Mirrors are 3D, after all. We have some progress with "fly eye" designs but nothing great, yet.
posted by effugas at 6:22 PM on January 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


That's not a TENS unit. It's 'shopped because it's faketyfakefakefake.
posted by P.o.B. at 6:40 PM on January 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


This is my main dance move at raves. It's either a huge hit, or they try to burn my as a warlock.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 7:01 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think that guy is lying. Did anyone catch how much he blinked?
posted by Ritchie at 7:20 PM on January 15, 2011 [6 favorites]


seizure
posted by madred at 7:32 PM on January 15, 2011


I have emailed Jonathon Post and begged him to reveal the secret before this turns into a debate more heated than the Mythbusters plane-vs-conveyor debacle.

Preview: Rats. Bounced. Trying YouTube.
posted by loquacious at 8:15 PM on January 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Even if it's real, it seems clumsy. In my jet-pack, holiday-house-on-the-moon future I'd prefer it if something similar were done by triggering saccadic masking in the brain. Not sure if saccadic masking works independently for each eye though. I somehow doubt it.
posted by Ritchie at 8:47 PM on January 15, 2011


May I pay my $5 again? Because this post used up the first one.
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:48 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Spot-on satire.
posted by jnrussell at 9:16 PM on January 15, 2011


Ha, Ritchie! When I started watching this I was hoping it was going to be something like that, blanking eyes alternately using something like saccadic masking. I was disappointed.
posted by hattifattener at 9:50 PM on January 15, 2011


Actually youtube Youtube already supports 3d on a normal monitor, without glasses. You just have t select crosseyeed or paralax mode and cross (or defocus) your eyes.
posted by delmoi at 10:24 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Get off the couch.

It is always amusing when someone sitting in front of a computer exhorts other people sitting in front of computers to stop sitting in front of computers.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:30 AM on January 16, 2011 [8 favorites]


related
posted by triceryclops at 12:32 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


I ran into a metal post as a child and knocked myself out completely--my eyes kinda fluttered like this for awhile. I still seek to patent my method: "Null D, No Glasses".
posted by eegphalanges at 1:05 AM on January 16, 2011


After doing that for a while you would have really strong eyelids and could lift things. Be very handy
posted by the noob at 1:33 AM on January 16, 2011


punkfloyd: "wink, wink. nudge, nudge"

Say no more, say no more!
posted by bwg at 1:57 AM on January 16, 2011 [3 favorites]


Oh My God! It's full of stars!
posted by dougrayrankin at 3:51 AM on January 16, 2011


Recently they've shown Macbeth, Henry the IV and Death of a Salesman.

I think I know which system you mean. The 3d effect works great on the characters but the backgrounds look quite bit flat and unrealistic.
posted by radiobishop at 4:10 AM on January 16, 2011 [4 favorites]


justkevin and radiobishop -- I've heard they're trying to use that technology on big blockbusters now, though. They've got woman who directed "Frida" and "Across the Universe" helming the next Spiderman reboot, and supposedly the 3D is unbelievably realistic, although getting it to work at that scale has apparently been causing major budget overruns, technical problems, and even injuries.

People who've been to advance screenings have been kind of "meh" about the flick itself, though. Maybe it will do well on DVD sales.
posted by kyrademon at 7:10 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


Huh, I like how some people reckon this could be remotely real. The whole thing is obviously spoofing "nerd from startup shows off prototype tech" videos.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:06 AM on January 16, 2011


It could well be "real" in that his eye-muscles are being stimulated by electrical current - but I don't think that it enables any kind of 3d effect. The blinking would have to be very fast and regular for it work how he says it does, and I'm not convinced it would work even then.

He says that normal 3d glasses open and close very fast, but afaik that's not how any 3d systems work. I believe they mostly work with two differently polarized lenses.
posted by Blorg at 10:30 AM on January 16, 2011


Anatomical question: If the guy is using a TENS-like device, wouldn't we be seeing more twitching in the surrounding muscles? It looks like he places the electrodes behind his temporal fascia, but it seems odd that they'd remain unaffected while his eyelids went for-crazy.

The only times I've used a TENS device, it was with much larger electrodes, but my experience was that everything in the general vicinity of the pad would twitch.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:19 AM on January 16, 2011


Brilliant. I don't know which I like better, the humor, or everyone trying to argue for or against.

And frankly, if it turned out to be 'real' it would be no less hilarious.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:33 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


He says that normal 3d glasses open and close very fast, but afaik that's not how any 3d systems work

The current crop of 3D movies all wrk with polarized light, but there have been lots of shutter-based 3D systems in the past. Their advantage is that they don't require specialized projectors or screens, so they were common for gaming and CGI visualization / VR research. The technique is still alive, though: for example.

I think the commercial ones are all LCD-based, but I had a coworker once who was cobbling together a fairly clever mechanical-shutter-based set just for the heck of it.
posted by hattifattener at 1:12 PM on January 16, 2011


Anatomical question: If the guy is using a TENS-like device, wouldn't we be seeing more twitching in the surrounding muscles? It looks like he places the electrodes behind his temporal fascia, but it seems odd that they'd remain unaffected while his eyelids went for-crazy.

Exactly. I have a TENS unit and it doesn't work like this at all. First of all, I've never actually seen a small portable one like this but I'll skip that and make believe somehow he invented one just for this.
Okay, so the big give away. TENS units don't magically stimulate specific muscles like that unless someone is using some kind of imbedded needle intramuscularly. The conduction will work across the skin and end up stimulating other muscles, especially someplace like the face where you have some forty-odd different muscles. Even if you put it on large muscles like the glutes you won't have an even and overall stimulation of the muscle. Beyond all that, you have to use conductive gel or else it's just a fancy and painful skin burning device. I could get past that too and make believe he has some kind of conductive gel that is also sticky. Lastly, as I sarcastically referenced before, if you turn the machine on and off your muscles respond likewise. Sure there may be some resulting twitches but there isn't any "winding down" as if it was a mechanical motor.
But the real giveaway here, as Burhanistan mentions, is the placement. Go ahead and try to use the muscles where he's placing the "device". It's a whole lot of squinching of your face and not any kind of perfect eyelid flapping going on.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:14 PM on January 16, 2011


The bottom line is that any current that isn't directly stimulating a nerve bundle via an implanted electrode would cause a full face rictus. Even then, facial anatomy is not built for that. The blink reflex is not just the eyelid but the ocular muscles as well as the forehead and even the cheeks and labial musculature.

So no. Not real. Funny none the less.
posted by Splunge at 6:21 PM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


FWIW, On a Japanese variety show recently, the host pulled out a no-glasses 3D TV, and then showed the panel of tarento the image of a rose (or something like that), and the look of surprise everyone had was genuine (my bullshit detectors fully engaged, the dozen or so people on the show seemed truly blown away). I didn't get the maker and I don't know if it's for sale; the screen was pretty small--maybe 20 inches--and it looked strangely thick and a bit clunky, so maybe it was just a prototype.

In any event, it seems glasses-free 3D is not only do-able but coming very soon.
posted by zardoz at 6:22 PM on January 16, 2011


Was it anything like Hatsune Miku?
posted by crunchland at 6:28 PM on January 16, 2011


In any event, it seems glasses-free 3D is not only do-able but coming very soon.

Toshiba has been showing them them recently at various electronics shows. Their version is also a 20 inch screen so that is probably the one you saw.
posted by Gary at 12:12 AM on January 17, 2011


the host pulled out a no-glasses 3D TV, and then showed the panel of tarento the image of a rose ... the screen was pretty small--maybe 20 inches--and it looked strangely thick and a bit clunky

Was it about as thick as a pane of glass and a rose?
posted by CaseyB at 10:27 AM on January 17, 2011


Damn, if this were real, imagine how tired you'd be after watching a full two hour film, "Yeah, I went and saw Action Movie 3, the Explodining in 3D, and it was great, but I'm exhausted and starving. I'm going to go, eat a bag of sugar, sleep for about 15 hours, and hope like hell that this weird headache that's come out of nowhere goes away..."
posted by quin at 12:11 PM on January 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


Gary, that's it, it was Toshiba. It's not clear if they're for sale yet or not.

While on the subject of Japan and 3D TV, the electronics stores have big, huge, 50 inch plus 3DTVs on display with the glasses, and depending on the video, the 3D ranges from lame to awesome. Some footage clearly just takes existing 2D video/film and tries to make it 3D, and it is awful. On the other hand, I watched a bit of Avatar and it looked fantastic, almost as good as it did in the theater.

There was also a clip of Clash of the Titans, and I finally get what people mean by the 3D-ifying effect of taking a 2D movie and converting it to 3D. Remember the stereogram craze of the 90s? Look at this image long enough and it turns 3D? (Took me a year to figure out how to do it.) They somehow take a film and make a stereogram out of it, and whatever is to be in focus (say, the lead actor) protrudes towards the front of the space and whatever's out of focus is the back "wall" of the space. It's kind of neat, but after two hours might get old quick.

Bottom line for me: 3D is a good thing if done right. James Cameron did it right with Avatar (oddly, his worst script by far). For 3D to take hold, other directors will need to learn a whole new visual language, and they can start by copying Avatar.
posted by zardoz at 3:52 PM on January 17, 2011


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