SANTA CRUZ -- A research team from UC Santa Cruz has developed a prototype, "3-D+2-D television," which it will present at the SIGGRAPH 2013, 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interaction Techniques.
James Davis, associate professor of computer science in UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering, heads the research team along with graduate students Steve Scher, Jing Liu, Rajan Vaish and Prabath Gunawardane.
At the conference on Thursday in Anaheim, Liu will present the project along Scher.
The team started this project more than two years ago and the members are excited to present it, said team member Liu.
"It's great to see what people think about it," said Liu. "That's my first publication in my study."
This product allows viewers to watch the same image on a screen with or without 3-D-stereo glasses. Those not wearing glasses see a two-dimensional image, and those wearing glasses see a 3-D image. "There are a lot of reasons why it would be desirable to not need the glasses," Davis told the UCSC office of public affairs.
The prototype shows separate left eye and right eye images when viewed through the stereo glasses, but those without the glasses see only the left image, instead of the blurred image on an original 3-D image.
The image is blurred is because there are two images being projected on the screen. "It's like a magic act, once you know the tricks, it easy," said Liu.
The researchers also conducted experiments using the "Pulfrich effect" which distorts the depth perception of moving objects, according to the publication written by Liu and Scher.
Davis's concept came from a previous project, Liu said.
The researchers so far have only proven their theory on a projector, yet the same function should translate to television. "We use the prototype on projectors because we have no way to modify the hardware inside of TV," Liu said. "But we are now working on changing the hardware to TVs so they can also work."
This modification is causing some snags in the finished project. "It should just work, two difficult colors add up together could cancel out each other," he said. "In practice, it's not working."
More engineering is needed before it works in television sets, Lui said. "There is a large gap between prototype and real product."
On the Net
For information on 3D+2D TV go to, http://graphics.soe.ucsc.edu/papers/3d2dtv/.