Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The world in 1080

1080. Nowadays it has to by 1080 or 720. Anything less than that will be deemed as low quality. Even 720 is being outsourced right now. Recently, just 1080 is not enough, it had to be 1080 3D.

Note : For anybody who has no idea what these numbers mean, they're screen resolution for HD displays. (I wanted to say go read the 2010 newspapers oh ye who lives in a cave, but that would be a tad harsh...)

Technology has advanced in such a fast rate that almost everyday we hear of new advancements. Especially in the 3D and HD department. Gone are the times where people had to use red/blue glasses to view pictures or movies in 3 Dimensions and not to mention the splitting headache that came after that... I still remember that when I was still about 5 years old that cereal boxes used to come with a pair of red/blue glasses and a 3D-fied image behind the boxes. Oh I used to enjoy watching the pictures come out of the box, even though the projection was barely 5mm.



And then came the polarization glasses, which are commonly used in todays Digital 3D cinemas. This works when two images of different wavelengths are transmitted to the viewers. The glasses has two different Polaroids on the left and right lens, causing each eye to see a specific image, thus tricking the eyes to believe that the image is in 3D, minus the splitting headache. Use of this concept requires special projectors and is widely used in todays cinemas.


There is also the more advanced version of 3D glasses, the LCD shutter glasses. These glasses are used for home 3D systems. Where the glasses and the display must be in sync in order to view a 3D image. In this case the glasses does most of the work by shutting the left and right eyes respectively while the 3D HD TV flashes different images at around 240 to 680fps, causing each eye to see a different image.  

Pretty soon even the game consoles will be taking up 3D and we will be able to enjoy games in HD 3D.  Even now game graphics have already done what was thought impossible just 20 years back. With games such as Assassins Creed 2 , Bioshock 2, Modern Warfare 2, Devil May Cry 4 where the graphics are so advanced that a graphics card bought last year would not be able to run it at maximum fps.












As good as graphics get, sometimes it seems good to give them a rest and go back to classics such as....


more on the next post!

Monday, May 10, 2010