VisualWare's 3D glasses

From Tech Japan


A company called VisualWear will be the Japanese representative for Icuiti of America's "Video Eyewear" display system.

Icuiti will likely be releasing this same product here in the USA, but as the product has not yet been announced domestically.

VisualWear o­n the 25th presented their "Video Eyewear" glasses-style wearable display system that supports 3D display to members of the press.

This product, developed by Icuiti in America, will be sold in Japan and Asia through VisualWear. It will be officially announced and displayed at the "3D Video Exposition 2004" to be held from December 1st at Pacifico Yokohama, and sales will begin that same day -- but before that, they held a preview event today.

Video Eyewear is consists of a glasses-style display part and controller unit about the size of a pack of smokes. The controller unit features NTSC video and audio inputs, as well as analog RGB input, and can display up to 640 x 480 dot (VGA) resolutions.

The displays themselves are two 1cm square displays, which provide the effect of a 42" display when seen from a distance of 2m. They also feature stereo earphones.

Also, the displays feature 3D display capabilities, and can represent 3D video from any standard parallax source. However, they cannot convert conventional video to 3D video. From two AAA batteries, the glasses can operate about 5 hours.

Video Eyewear is listed as Open Price, but the actual retail price is said to be less than 70,000 yen. Sales will be conducted o­nly o­n Visualwear's website.

Additionally, Visualwear is developing a shutter system to allow conventional DV cameras to record 3D video, as well as a 3D video editing kit for PCs; both will be sold to contents makers.

Mr. Masashiro Yamachi, CEO of Visualwear, said that Video Eyewear "is a new display that compares with the auroras." He said that the 3D technology could be applied to sightseeing video, introduction videos, and sports videos.

Also proposed is a system that can be combined with the video output o­n cellular phones, and a demonstration of this concept was conducted.

Future plan s for Visualwear include a single-eye type (no 3D support) display, as well as inserting storage and/or memory card slots into the controller unit.