Eastman Kodak Company
Kodak Demonstrates Revolutionary 3-D Display System
Ideal System for Gaming, Entertainment and Other Intensive Visualization Tasks
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Mar. 15 -- Eastman Kodak Company today showcased a significant innovation that allows video-game players, earth scientists and a host of others to experience three-dimensional images without glasses or headgear of any type creating the sensation of actually being a part of the image.
Kodak will introduce a commercial prototype of its Stereoscopic Imaging Display system at the Exhibitor Show 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 15-17, in Booth #1514 at the Mandalay Bay Exhibition Center. Kodak also plans to demonstrate the Stereoscopic Imaging Display system at the upcoming Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, March 24-26, in Booth #944 at the San Jose Convention Center.
The Stereoscopic Imaging Display system produces a wide field of view, three-dimensional (3D) stereo image. The superior quality of the Kodak system provides an ideal display for intensive visualization tasks, such as oil and gas exploration, molecular and chemical modeling, computer-aided design, entertainment and gaming, and many other applications.
The system represents the first initiative from Kodak's New Business Ventures Group, which is responsible for commercializing break-through technology developed by the company's Research & Development organization.
"Unlike other 3D imaging systems, which rely on a barrier screen placed over an existing monitor, the Kodak display is an entirely new concept," said Lawrence Henderson, vice president and director, new business ventures, Eastman Kodak Company. "Kodak's Stereoscopic Imaging Display system maintains full image resolution and creates a very wide field of view. The display brings a new level of realism to the 3D visual experience, capitalizing on Kodak's extensive research and development."
Kodak is currently seeking partners and early-stage customers for the system, and will provide licenses to the technology for integration into third-party products and systems.
How it Works
The user sits in front of a system that creates a virtual image of two high-resolution LCD displays, one for each eye. The user looks into two "floating balls of light" that provide each eye a view of a magnified image of a display. The combination of the wide field of view and virtual image eliminates the sources of eyestrain found in other autostereoscopic systems. Kodak's Stereoscopic Imaging Display system also has a unique viewing zone, which makes it easy to see the "sweet spot" of an image while maintaining image quality across the entire viewing zone.
The desktop display has a field of view that measures 45 degrees by 36 degrees, and a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. The user peers through a large, 32 mm viewing pupils that gives the viewer the feeling of floating in a movie theater about 1.5 screen heights away from the screen. Kodak can adjust the scale of this system to increase or reduce the display resolution to meet various applications.
The Kodak autostereoscopic display breaks new technical ground in the field of stereo imaging. The unique Ball Lens Technology behind the display is summarized in a paper presented at the 2003 Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference. This paper is available upon request.
About Eastman Kodak Company and infoimaging
Kodak is the leader in helping people take, share, print and view images for memories, for information, for entertainment. The company is a major participant in infoimaging, a $385 billion industry composed of devices (digital cameras and flat-panel displays), infrastructure (online networks and delivery systems for images) and services & media (software, film and paper enabling people to access, analyze and print images). With sales of $13.3 billion in 2003, the company comprises several businesses: Health, supplying the healthcare industry with traditional and digital image capture and output products and services; Commercial Printing, offering on-demand color printing and networking publishing systems; Commercial Imaging, offering image capture, output and storage products and services to businesses and government; Display & Components, which designs and manufactures state-of-the-art organic light-emitting diode displays as well as other specialty materials, and delivers optics and imaging sensors to original equipment manufacturers; and Digital & Film Imaging Systems, providing consumers, professionals and cinematographers with digital and traditional products and services.
The Kodak New Business Ventures division develops independent commercial businesses that emerge from strategic research and development initiatives within the company's concept labs. The charter of the New Business Ventures unit is to create new revenue streams from Kodak intellectual property, complement existing Kodak business units, and develop new markets for Kodak customers and partners.