Kodak said the Stereoscopic Imaging Display, currently in prototype, could be used in technologies ranging from video games to molecular and chemical modelling. The company is looking for technology partners and early-stage customers. It aims to license the product for integration into third-party products and systems.
This is the first initiative from the company's new Ventures Group. Kodak, long a mainstay of the traditional film photography industry, is trying to reshape itself as a provider of digital imaging technology.
To get its 3D effect, the display makes use of a wide field of view and virtual images from two high-resolution liquid crystal display screens, Kodak said. The desktop device has a field of view that measures 45 degrees by 36 degrees and a 1,280-by-1,024-pixel resolution.
"Unlike other 3D imaging systems, which rely on a barrier screen placed over an existing monitor, the Kodak display is an entirely new concept," Lawrence Henderson, vice president of Kodak Ventures Group, said in a statement.
Last year, several high-technology companies, including Sony and Sanyo, unveiled a consortium to create technical and safety standards for 3D displays, desktops, laptops and cell phones. Sharp at the time was already selling a cellphone with a 3D screen in Japan and showing off a notebook that could play a 3D version of the video game "Quake."
Talkback
About bloomin' time too. 3d has been available in some sorts or other for years but for some strange reason has never become the norm.
First we had the photograph, then the moving image, then colour. All these are now the norm. But for 3D it never seemed to happen.
3D without glasses? Whats new? The concept has been around for years: It works on the same concept as the movie film; take stating images that are all slightly different to the next and tyhen display them individualy one after the other using a gate to seperate. The same concept can be adopted to produce 3D. You use the gate to show let and right images, but this time at double the rate. Nothing more sophisticated is needed. You can display playback through your TV, monitor or record to video or DVD.
Pete