ChromaDepth

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ChromaDepth glasses with prism-like film Farbfilterbrille mit Minilinsen.png
ChromaDepth glasses with prism-like film
A ChromaDepth demonstration image. Chromadepth.png
A ChromaDepth demonstration image.

Chromadepth is a patented system from the company Chromatek (a subsidiary of American Paper Optics since 2002) that produces a stereoscopic effect based upon differences in the diffraction of color through a special prism-like holographic film fitted into glasses. Chromadepth glasses purposely exacerbate chromatic aberration and give the illusion of colors taking up different positions in space, with red being in front, and blue being behind. This works particularly well with the sky, sea or grass as a background, and redder objects in the foreground.

Technical details

With computer-controlled etching, the technology to create thin plastic sheets with thousands of microscopic ‘prism’ lenses that can magnify or diffract light can be made. Since violet light has more energy than red, and bends more when refracted, some lenses can distort an image if they don’t focus all of the colors at the same point. This distortion is called chromatic aberration.

One type of film etching creates lenses that deliberately exaggerate this aberration, separating the colors of an image into different convergence points in the visual field. It’s a patented process called ChromaDepth. Glasses with ChromaDepth diffraction lenses create an artificial visual depth. “Warm” colors, toward the infrared end of the spectrum, appear closer, and ‘cool” colors toward the violet end appear further away.

Any 2D media piece in colors can be given a 3D effect as long as the color spectrum is put into use with the foreground being in red, and the background in blue. From front to back the scheme follows the visible light spectrum, from red to orange, yellow, green and blue. This means any color is associated in a fixed fashion with a certain depth when viewing. As a result, ChromaDepth works best with artificially produced or enhanced pictures, since the color indicates the depth. (Natural images diminish the ChromaDepth effect because they reflect colors across the full spectrum, creating imaginary contours without explicit contrast. Artificially constructed or deliberately enhanced images exploit the forced color separation.)

Unlike anaglyph images or polarization, creating real-life ChromaDepth pictures without manual enhancement is practically impossible, since cameras cannot portray true depth; most other 3D schemes use the concept of stereopsis. However, this also gives ChromaDepth images a distinct advantage: unlike stereopsis-based schemes that require two images, ChromaDepth contains depth information in one image, which eliminates the ghosting seen in other schemes when one attempts to view them without 3D glasses. Thus, ChromaDepth images can be viewed comfortably and legibly without glasses, even though the 3D effect will not be perceivable without them.

History

ChromaDepth 3-D was invented by US researcher Richard Steenblik after he noticed that the bright colors on the screen of a TEMPEST video game seemed to lie in different depth planes. In the course of eight years of after-hours experimentation, Steenblik created plastic prisms, glass double prisms, Fresnel prisms, and liquid optics using glycerin and Chinese cinnamon oil held in wedge-shaped glass cells. These liquid glasses worked, but were not suited for mass production. Steenblik and his business partner, Dr. Frederick Lauter, were about to give up when a new optical development came to their attention. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had developed binary optics; a way of making very thin diffractive optics with the efficiency of refractive optics.

Optical devices use reflection, refraction, or diffraction to move light around. Optics which use refraction, such as lenses, are usually designed to reduce refraction. The binary optics found in ChromaDepth 3-D glasses, combine refraction and diffraction to make thin optics that act like thick glass prisms. After two years of development work with MIT, the ChromaDepth 3-D production solution was found.

ChromaDepth lenses were first used commercially in June 1992.

In 1997, American cable TV network Nickelodeon distributed Chromadepth glasses at Blockbuster Video and through some Kraft products, which could be used for special 3D segments on new programming that September, terming the glasses "Nogglegoggles" and the 3D format "Nogglevision". The Rock band KISS utilized the Chromadepth process for an alternate version of the music video for their 1998 single Psycho Circus , releasing it on VHS at that time with a free pair of glasses for viewing. Chromadepth glasses were also utilized for the VH1 series I Love the '80s 3-D , with free pairs of glasses available at Best Buy locations.

The 1996 computer game Stay Tooned! featured three mini-games designed for Chromadepth (named "Toonvision" in the program & manual), with new copies of the game coming with a pair of Chromadepth glasses.

Chromadepth glasses have been used and distributed for some haunted house and Halloween attractions for added visual appeal, often featuring custom glasses for patrons. Numerous books, special publications, promotional giveaways, and children's toys have been released with or intended for use with Chromadepth glasses as well, notably including Crayola and Melissa & Doug's lines of 3D art and toy products, and Disney's line of 3D Toy Story 3 products, among many others.

The House of Eternal Return walk-in art installation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA has fluorescent murals and sculptures that are intended to have interesting effects when viewed through ChromaDepth glasses.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical aberration</span> Deviation from perfect paraxial optical behavior

In optics, aberration is a property of optical systems, such as lenses, that causes light to be spread out over some region of space rather than focused to a point. Aberrations cause the image formed by a lens to be blurred or distorted, with the nature of the distortion depending on the type of aberration. Aberration can be defined as a departure of the performance of an optical system from the predictions of paraxial optics. In an imaging system, it occurs when light from one point of an object does not converge into a single point after transmission through the system. Aberrations occur because the simple paraxial theory is not a completely accurate model of the effect of an optical system on light, rather than due to flaws in the optical elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lens</span> Optical device which transmits and refracts light

A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (elements), usually arranged along a common axis. Lenses are made from materials such as glass or plastic and are ground, polished, or molded to the required shape. A lens can focus light to form an image, unlike a prism, which refracts light without focusing. Devices that similarly focus or disperse waves and radiation other than visible light are also called "lenses", such as microwave lenses, electron lenses, acoustic lenses, or explosive lenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optics</span> Branch of physics that studies light

Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chromatic aberration</span> Failure of a lens to focus all colors on the same point

In optics, chromatic aberration (CA), also called chromatic distortion and spherochromatism, is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. It is caused by dispersion: the refractive index of the lens elements varies with the wavelength of light. The refractive index of most transparent materials decreases with increasing wavelength. Since the focal length of a lens depends on the refractive index, this variation in refractive index affects focusing. Chromatic aberration manifests itself as "fringes" of color along boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereoscopy</span> Technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image

Stereoscopy is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word stereoscopy derives from Greek στερεός (stereos) 'firm, solid', and σκοπέω (skopeō) 'to look, to see'. Any stereoscopic image is called a stereogram. Originally, stereogram referred to a pair of stereo images which could be viewed using a stereoscope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prism (optics)</span> Transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light

An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are not prisms. The most familiar type of optical prism is the triangular prism, which has a triangular base and rectangular sides. Not all optical prisms are geometric prisms, and not all geometric prisms would count as an optical prism. Prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed. Typical materials include glass, acrylic and fluorite.

Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monochromator</span> Optical device

A monochromator is an optical device that transmits a mechanically selectable narrow band of wavelengths of light or other radiation chosen from a wider range of wavelengths available at the input. The name is from the Greek roots mono-, "single", and chroma, "colour", and the Latin suffix -ator, denoting an agent.

<i>Opticks</i> Book by Isaac Newton

Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a book by English natural philosopher Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704. The book analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Opticks was Newton's second major book on physical science and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution. Newton's name did not appear on the title page of the first edition of Opticks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apochromat</span>

An apochromat, or apochromatic lens (apo), is a photographic or other lens that has better correction of chromatic and spherical aberration than the much more common achromat lenses.

The Pulfrich effect is a psychophysical percept wherein lateral motion of an object in the field of view is interpreted by the visual cortex as having a depth component, due to a relative difference in signal timings between the two eyes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenticular printing</span> Technology for creating optical illusions

Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as they are viewed from different angles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">3D display</span> Display device

A 3D display is a display device capable of conveying depth to the viewer. Many 3D displays are stereoscopic displays, which produce a basic 3D effect by means of stereopsis, but can cause eye strain and visual fatigue. Newer 3D displays such as holographic and light field displays produce a more realistic 3D effect by combining stereopsis and accurate focal length for the displayed content. Newer 3D displays in this manner cause less visual fatigue than classical stereoscopic displays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anaglyph 3D</span> Method of representing images in 3D

Anaglyph 3D is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye's image using filters of different colors, typically red and cyan. Anaglyph 3D images contain two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. When viewed through the "color-coded" "anaglyph glasses", each of the two images reaches the eye it's intended for, revealing an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into the perception of a three-dimensional scene or composition.

Stereopsis is the component of depth perception retrieved through binocular vision. Stereopsis is not the only contributor to depth perception, but it is a major one. Binocular vision happens because each eye receives a different image because they are in slightly different positions on one's head. These positional differences are referred to as "horizontal disparities" or, more generally, "binocular disparities". Disparities are processed in the visual cortex of the brain to yield depth perception. While binocular disparities are naturally present when viewing a real three-dimensional scene with two eyes, they can also be simulated by artificially presenting two different images separately to each eye using a method called stereoscopy. The perception of depth in such cases is also referred to as "stereoscopic depth".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dispersive prism</span> Device used to disperse light

In optics, a dispersive prism is an optical prism that is used to disperse light, that is, to separate light into its spectral components. Different wavelengths (colors) of light will be deflected by the prism at different angles. This is a result of the prism material's index of refraction varying with wavelength (dispersion). Generally, longer wavelengths (red) undergo a smaller deviation than shorter wavelengths (blue). The dispersion of white light into colors by a prism led Sir Isaac Newton to conclude that white light consisted of a mixture of different colors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microlens</span> Small lens, generally with a diameter less than a millimetre

A microlens is a small lens, generally with a diameter less than a millimetre (mm) and often as small as 10 micrometres (µm). The small sizes of the lenses means that a simple design can give good optical quality but sometimes unwanted effects arise due to optical diffraction at the small features. A typical microlens may be a single element with one plane surface and one spherical convex surface to refract the light. Because micro-lenses are so small, the substrate that supports them is usually thicker than the lens and this has to be taken into account in the design. More sophisticated lenses may use aspherical surfaces and others may use several layers of optical material to achieve their design performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chromostereopsis</span> Visual illusion whereby the impression of depth is conveyed in two-dimensional color images

Chromostereopsis is a visual illusion whereby the impression of depth is conveyed in two-dimensional color images, usually of red–blue or red–green colors, but can also be perceived with red–grey or blue–grey images. Such illusions have been reported for over a century and have generally been attributed to some form of chromatic aberration.

Low-dispersion glass is a type of glass with a reduction in chromatic aberration. Crown glass is an example of a relatively inexpensive low-dispersion glass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EnChroma</span> Eyeglasses designed to help color-blind people

EnChroma lenses are specialized glasses designed to address symptoms of red-green color blindness. Studies have shown that these lenses can alter the perception of colors that were already perceived, but they do not fully restore normal color vision. Some initial claims made by the manufacturer have been subject to criticism and described as marketing hype,while research suggests that the lenses may have a limited positive impact on individuals with red-green color blindness.

References

    ChromaDepth images

    3D ChromaDepth Animated Music Scores