January 25th, 2008
Turning any monitor in to a 3D VR display
After seeing the above video sent to me by Justin James, I only have one thing to say: Give Jonny his PhD! Johnny Lee is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University who took a standard Nintendo Wii remote and turned a monitor in to something special. You can check out the video above and actually find a sample program here on his website. You can find Wii Remotes for $40 at places like Amazon.com and you may also need a Bluetooth USB dongle for $10.
This is one of those things that you just have to see to believe, it is that amazing. Forget those silly looking 3D glasses that mimic stereoscopic vision, this is way better and I want it on all my computers yesterday!
One thing that I’d like to see is a webcam version of this and I’m going to send a note to Mr. Lee. My Logitech webcam already has software in it that can track bare eyeballs so it removes the need for funky eye glasses with infrared emitters and you can just sit in front of any monitor with a webcam and use it as a 3D portal. I just salivate at the mere thought of playing any 3D game in front of this thing but I’d love to be able to do it without wearing anything on my face.
If you check out some of Mr. Lee’s other projects, he has some pretty cool stuff in there like turning any display in to a multi-touch display. The man is now my new hero and he is a stud amongst geeks.
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
