British Developer Says It Has Nausea-Free 3D Camera System
British company Stereoscopic Optical Systems (SOS) is claiming to have developed a new 3D camera system that “removes” any concerns about audience members suffering headaches, nausea or other unwanted effects when viewing a 3D movie or TV. Samsung earlier warned that people in less than perfect health should avoid watching 3D TV.
"Health concerns have been raised by industry leaders in stereoscopic entertainment over the way 3D TV and films are viewed because of their flicker effect,” SOS said. “People with epilepsy, pregnant women, the elderly, children and those suffering from serious medical conditions are among a wide range of people said to be at risk. Potential side effects have been highlighted such as confusion, nausea, convulsions, altered vision, light-headedness, dizziness, and involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching and cramps."
But many years of research and development by an SOS team led by inventor John Christian “has produced a 3D camera system that works without showing flickering alternate images to each eye, therefore eliminating health concerns connected with 3D technology,” the company said. SOS has successfully tested the technology, called “JC3D,” in a camcorder to produce home movies shown on a 3D TV screen, the company said. There are few technical details in the announcement, except to say that the system doesn’t use two electronically or mechanically linked cameras to flicker left- and-right-eye images. Instead, JC3D “shows images to both eyes at the same time by incorporating two views from adjacent lenses that are manipulated into a single camera by passive optics,” the company said.
The announcement quotes SOS Managing Director Russell Wilson as saying: “Our passive optical arrangement produces continuous images in a simpler way -- which will avoid potential health damaging effects, improve image quality, and bring costs down for equipment manufacturers.” We queried Wilson for more technical information about how JC3D works, but he responded only with a general critique of existing 3D systems.
To fill in some of the technical gaps, we searched the body of inventor Christian’s patent filings from the last 20 years. We found his earliest filings were in 1989 and 1990 (GB 2,236,198) and 1992 (GB 2,283,877). They describe the basic idea of fitting spaced “periscope-type devices” to a video camera to produce left- and right-eye images that are optically reduced in size and rotated 90 degrees so that a pair of upended images can be recorded side by side in a single video frame. For playback, oppositely arranged periscope mirrors turn the image pair back 90 degrees. The viewer either looks through an optical binocular device, which keeps the left- and right-eye images separate, or wears passive polarizing 3D glasses.
Christian himself showed us an early prototype at the headquarters of telecom company GPT near Maidenhead, U.K., west of London, in August 1991, where he demonstrated two viewing options. One used a Sharp LCD projector and mirror box with polarizing filters to superimpose images for viewing through polarizing glasses. The other option involved looking at a conventional TV screen through a viewing box that looked like a pair of binoculars.
We asked Christian then what was new and novel about his system. Christian replied that unlike others, his used mirrors rather than prisms to minimize distortion. His also pointed the camera and projector sideways, “instead of directly, which saves on the cost of extra mirrors,” he said. Managing Director Wilson told us in an e-mail last week that the system has come “a long way since 1991.” SOS today seeks “a major partner” to commercialize the technology. The company released its announcement “to highlight the fact that there are alternative 3D systems without the health downsides,” Wilson said. “We stand by what we have said."
Patents filed more recently (US 2002/0186466 from January 2000, WO 2003/098321 from May 2002 and WO 2005/041591 from October 2003) show developments on the basic theme of capturing two images simultaneously, by rotating them 90 degrees with periscope or endoscope mirrors or prisms for recording in a single video frame. According to the patents, extra mirrors allow the camera to point directly at the scene, rather than sideways. For playback and display, the images are optically rotated back to normal landscape view. One option is display the image pairs side by side on a screen, with masking so that only one image is visible to each eye. The screen can be moved vertically to achieve masking or polarizing glasses used to separate the images for each eye.