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3-D on the Cheap: $50 Makes iPhone Stereoscopic

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 03-09-10 | Comments

Who says 3-D has to be expensive? An autostereoscopic adapter for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch converts the handheld into a stereoscopic display for $50, plus a free app lets you take 3-D photos, too.

If you are not ready shell out a premium price for a Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG or Mitsubishi 3-D TV, all of which are slated for 2010 debuts, then why not get started with an autostereoscopic adapter for your iPhone or iPod Touch that only costs $50? (Soon to be available for laptop screens, too.)

Hunter3Dee is a free stereoscopic game app for the iPhone/iPod Touch from Spatial View, which can be viewed glasses-free with its $50 3DeeShell.

The Wazabee 3DeeShell autostereoscopic adapter from Spatial View (Toronto) consists of a lenticular lens that fits over the display to divert two images in a stereoscopic pair to the right and left eyes. And voila -- instant 3-D viewing and without the dorky glasses!

Spatial View has teamed with Sony Music Entertainment to convert its Blu-Ray movies for viewing using the Wazabee 3DeeShell, although none are available as yet. For now, the company has created a free 3-D game (Hunter 3Dee), plus it offers a free app you can use to take your own stereoscopic images and display them to friends.

3DeeCamera ($.99) assists you in using the iPhone's camera to take stereo pair images, including easy-to-use tools for aligning and adjusting the distance between the right and left images (which controls how "deep" scenes appear). After shooting, the images can be stored as pairs in the photo library and quickly recalled for viewing in autostereoscopic formats or as anaglyphs (using red-and-blue glasses), or in side-by-side or cross-eyed formats (that, with a little practice, can be directly viewed).

The iPhone's accelerometer, which is used to automatically switch the screen between landscape and portrait modes, will switch between side-by-side and cross-eyed views by rotating the landscape mode to the left or right, respectively. A nice addition is the ability to adjust the distance between pairs, and thus the depth of the scene, by dragging with one finger to align, pinch with two fingers to resize, and spin with two fingers to rotate.

For viewing 3-D images that you�ve already taken and stored in the iPhone's image library, Spatial View created 3DeeVUsion ($.99), which allows you to select image pairs for displaying. If you want to store your 3-D images on Facebook, then download the free 3DeeFriends app. If you prefer Flickr, then use the 3Dee!oadr app ($1.99), which allows stereo pairs to be stored at Flickr as side-by-side images then converts them on-the-fly to either anaglyph or autostereoscopic formats (for viewing with red-and-blue glasses or glasses-free, respectively).

Spatial View has also teamed up with Google to support its 3-D modeling program, called SketchUp. Use Spatial View's 3DeeWarehouse ($3.99) to convert models made in the SketchUp 3-D modeling program for viewing glasses-free via the 3DeeShell.