1.29.2011

The future "will blow your mind"

Seen any 3D movies recently? By 2012, things could be quite different. 3D movies and comic books have been around since essentially photography has been around. But with advances in both facial recognition seen everywhere and eye tracking that Intel has been supposedly been doing behind the scenes, a combination of the 2 technologies will be quite impressive, if not a broad technology shift.

Most games, if not all current games by popular gamehouses have 3D support, add BluRay to that and you can see where this is going. Even YouTube has had a 3D support widget for some time. All of these require glasses for non-fatiguing viewing but doesn't excuse the sunglasses indoors look.

In the coming months though, Nintendo will release it's 3DS, which if you can figure from the name is a 3D version of their famed DS. (Maybe even their 3rd Gen DS at that.) Luckily though, it's Auto Stereoscopic, meaning no glasses are needed. The only thing is, odd viewing angles rid the screen of any world in the 3rd dimension inside of it. Perfect for a small hand-held game console screen, where only one viewer and viewing angle is common. Even more amazing is that, like the App Store has done for iTunes and the DS, 3D pictures and video will be capture-able and viewable from a DS. Making little kids everywhere have the power to have the world presented exactly as their friend recorded it.

Computers and even the increasingly popular iPod Touch and Phones have the processing power, especially so with the next-generation of iPods to track your eyes through it's cameras. Combining this with an adjustable version of the optics used in the 3DS and you have a new world defining medium. One that scary enough, because of the already high pixel count of screens these days, may actually start pulling people into that 'reality' rather than the one we all still live and breath in everyday (hopefully).

I'm going to be somewhat impressed by this feat, as well as the transition that is already taking place for implementing 3D file formats used everyday. When 3D pictures and videos become standard, how will the storage of these images/films be preserved to outlive a 'Digital Dark Age' if devices like these are lost. And besides the preservation of history and information, what will happen to the generation that is born in a world where there is not one reality, but several if not thousands interactive worlds through digital windows. Anyone else curious where civilization will go from there? Or even more so, from where we are now?

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