Do you think the top LCD on the IZ3D monitor could act as the parallax barrier for the bottom LCD? Maybe even have a webcam to track head movement to shift the barrier on the fly for better view angle. But I bet the pixel/barrier width won't match

I am not sure the iz3D panel can go completely opaque. I believe it is designed to act as a polarizing filter.

i have an idea on resolving the ghosting issues you're having.

Theoretically, there should be NO ghosting at all when you're in the hotspot, so it might be the printer leaving a "fuzzy" edge instead of a straight one. this fits with it printing a higher resolution in one direction than the other. Have you ever studied your barriers through a loupe? Regular binoculars turned the wrong way can often be used as a make-shift loupe on very close ranges if you dont have one

if i'm correct, all you'd need is wider barriers! This would, however, shift the image towards green, since you're effectively blocking off more of the red and blue subpixels. So, to combat that you just lower the intensity of the green channel(either in the monitor settings or in the driver). In effect, you'd sacrifice some brightness for decreased ghosting.

the barrier-to-spacing ratio in the image you print could be 3:2 or 4:3(so there's 4 black pixel columns followed by 3 white and so on) or something. Just make sure you still get the same distance between barriers on the printed sheet! 2:1 would btw theoretically only leave one color visible, but i doubt that's the case in the real world.



you could also try printing it rotated 90 degrees, if you haven't already.
maybe that would fit the DPI better.

wow. this is incredible work. great job!

The suggestions you make have been tried and I believe I even posted some experimental shots some pages back in this thread. Basically I can only increase the duty cycle (ie increase the width of the barriers) with the monitor in portrait orientation. If I do this in landscape mode it causes horrible distortion of the color due to sub-pixel masking. Ghosting is reduced, yes, but the color is completely killed. In that case anaglyph would be preferable. Portrait mode is still a possibility (colors are fine, just brightness is lost) but most games will not run with this format and even if they do you can only use about 30% of the screen when playing them. So that kinda kills the whole point of this project for me personally. So I have come to the conclusion that it will only work with uniform barrier to spacing. And I don't have a loupe, but looking at the barrier with my bare eyes, it looks pretty straight to me. You can also look at those 1080P shots I posted, the lines look straight. I don't think thats the issue. You are right, though, theoretically there should be no ghosting at all. But it seems this is very difficult in practice. The biggest problem is that light bleeds from behind the barrier lines. This is most apparent when viewing my black/white ghosting test image. The black side is nowhere close to black, its more of a redish/blue dark gray color. The white side is tinted yellow/cyan but it is much closer to white perceptually. But what I believe is happening is that light is escaping from off angles (ie not the two angles that will meet your eyes perfectly and match with the pattern). The light can, and does, emanate from potentially infinite different angles within the visible range. Some of those angles are not what we intend, and are what I am referring to as bleeding. This is sort of like ambient light, its not necessarily a straight line to your eye, but you can see it. I had some success by attempting to collimate the light using multiple parallax barriers overlaid onto each other. This forces the light to emanate more perpendicular from the screen (and discards the ones at extreme angles, the ones I believe are bleeding). This did reduce ghosting, but also decreased brightness and significantly dropped the overall picture quality. I felt the current solution in the video was superior to this, even with more ghosting. But maybe there is something else that could be done.

Okay, sorry, haven't read the entire thread

using two overlaid but distanced-apart barriers you should(in theory, as always) see a yellow/cyan color shift towards the left/right side of the screen, is that the loss of PQ you mean? With three identical barriers spaced equally apart, the center of the screen would be unchanged, and both the sides would have a green tint. If you want to overlay barriers, you should only put them print-to-print, since the lines from each eye only cross in one(for each viewing distance) fixed distance from the screen. This only becomes clear once you draw it out on paper.

Using wider barriers would probably be better since the entire image would be uniform(green yes, but uniform ). Maybe you made the barriers TOO wide? just a little bit might work! The green color shift is totally expected in any case, and you should be able to correct it by pulling down green in your graphics control panel.

By doing that though, you'll lose more brightness "per eliminated ghost" compared to using the same wider barriers in portrait mode, but the difference is you could actually use it for something. If you have two prints of your current type barriers(you probably do ), you could make a simple variable-width barrier for testing purpouses by putting them print-to-print and offsetting them veeery slightly. If it's the "fuzzy edge" problem you should see an improvement in ghosting. otherwise, if light is bending away from the straight line or something, apparent ghosting might actually be worse Maybe the printer heats up the plastic behind the dots, making it melt and form a lens?

There could also be light bouncing off the surface of the barriers, and then again on the screen surface before going out through the barrier spaces(ambient light like you said). Do you have a matte or shiny screen surface? i'm thinking it would be worse on a shiny one. (Subpixel ghosting should be worse with wider barriers in this case too)

Anyway, i'm sorry i don't have a printer, otherwise i would have actually tried everything myself before posting all my "theories"..

Hey Cyber. Got an idea but you're the man to try it.
What about making the barriers at least 4 subpixels wide and then make an algorithm (which requires calibration) to display images? Lets say one "barrierelement" after calibration has two blue, one red and one green subpixels. By reducing the intensity of the blue ones in the specific "barrierelement" you should be able to have a somewhat balanced image anyway. I do think some vertical moire would be expected but who knows... The task to make such an app shouldn't really be too difficult either.
The advantage would be wider compability with different displays. Disadvantage is of course the necessary calibration process...

This would certainly work, but it won't be compatible with existing stereo drivers anymore and you'll need to implement the interlacing yourself for images and videos. In this case using a slanted barrier would be a better choice as I said previously, because you'll have less moiré effects and the resolution loss distributed in both horizontal and vertical directions instead of just in the horizontal one.

Yeah. That's of course also a huge miss.

@AntiCatalyst: Yeah, I can try with maybe just doing a slightly wider barrier. The tests I did had a significantly wider width. The parallax barrier I used for the video needed to be placed with the printed side against the screen. So if I use a second barrier, the minimum distance from the first barrier would be the thickness of the transparency film. This might be OK, and even desirable. The second barrier need not be exactly the same pattern. It could be a thinner pattern as to reduce the sub-pixel masking. I have also thought that maybe the light was bouncing off the underside of the barrier and then re-bounding off the screen (I have a glossy screen). This may be the cause of the bleeding. Its also possible that the barrier line itself is not 100% opaque, and the light is simply bleeding through the barrier (which is almost the most obvious answer). In that case, the double barrier might help.

@Likay: That is an interesting idea, but I am not really sure it solves the problems with ghosting. It would simply mask the problem. If there is bleeding, there will still be bleeding if its 3 sub-pixels per barrier or 5 sub-pixels per barrier. It doesn't seem to address the core issue (which is still somewhat of a mystery at this point). It would also break compatibility with existing software, so only really useful for custom applications.

oh, you're right, thinner barriers on the second sheet would solve the color tint while still blocking out stray light. Ideally they would be thinnest on the edges too but that is probably hard to print.

and light could very well be leaking through the barrier as you said, but since the ghosting is purple in colour it seems more likely that the red and blue subpixels aren't getting completely blocked by the barrier.

Unless of course it's the ink itself that's purple-tinted. try printing a black little "blob" and looking through it



You could btw use a double barrier print-to-print if you moved further away from the screen.

It doesn't solve the ghosting in any way but it do give a general compability with different screens. As a bonus the algorithm can be adjusted for different black/transparent widths of the barriers and gives more parameters to experiement with. And yes, of course: softwarewise there's need of a new algorithm. Even if not too complicated, softwaredevs needs to support it.

First thank you cyber for a great free solution.


I was wondering the same thing. How does the polarizing filter work? it's controlled by the second port right? Do you think it's possible to emulate shutter glasses or zalman with the filter?

The front panel layer works as an adjustable retarder. However it's an lcd-panel as well so there's noway it can be used with shutterglasses (to high internal delay of the display). Emulating the zalman would theoretically be possible if the iz3d was just two panels stacked together. However there's also a diffuserlayer between the panels to minimize moireeffects. This extra layer also reduces the possibility to physically emulate the zalman.

So the front panel cannot be used to block one eye per frame?

Should be pretty easy to remove the diffuser, unless it's attached to some thing?

Any one try making parallax barriers for their laptop?

[Yes, if you wear the iz3d glasses. However for shutters it's impossible because of the usual (lcd) high internal lag of the monitor. The front panel can't be used as a parallax barrier either because it's transparent for the eye but is altering the polarization properties of the light. One occasion might be using polarizers in front of each eye, removing the diffuser and running the zalman mode on the back panel and at the same time send the white/black lines to the front... Question is why someone should want to do this.

Don't know. Haven't tried and isn't curious enough to do so.

Would work just as well as Cyberealitys setup if using a good printer.

So I could get a 3D colored image instead of a 3D ghosting effect? Unless the glasses only works on the front panel.

Is the polarized filter on top of the front port lcd or is it the diffuser?

This would make a neat project and I have a cam.

I wonder if you could use the photo exposure paper they use to develop pictures, tape it to your monitor with the template displayed fullscreen to get a hard copy template for your parallax. Then, photocopy that on to a transparent sheet.

industrai; that's a wonderfully old-school idea, but sadly the barriers need to be a tiny bit smaller than the pixels.

cybereality, have you gotten around to trying the wider barriers thing again?

Well this weekend was the first free-time I have had in a while, but I spent the entire day converting my Apple DRMed music collection into standard MP3 format for use on my new Android phone. Really annoying, but I got it all done. Probably just gonna buy my music on Amazon MP3 from now on, the prices are better anyway. Maybe I will take a look at this parallax barrier thing tomorrow...

DRM? oh yeah it's the stuff non-torrenters have to deal with.

Watched the vid, very impressive stuff! I know there are 17 pages and it was already discussed but, I looked at your screenshots and while I could see 3d there were also a lot of lines n stuff- so my question is, if I already own an iz3d should I bother with this? from what I understand I might get less ghosting in exchange for the line artifact thingies.

Just an FYI, the iTunes store does not DRM music any more. Plus, they upgrade the quality to 256kbps. It is actually a pretty good deal.

I still use Amazon when I can, though, out of principle.

@yuriythebest: Well I can't really say if this DIY solution would be any better than iz3D, since I've never seen the iz3D. I know that my Zalman is still better quality than the DIY parallax barrier, but the DIY solution is still decent. I mean, there is a good amount of ghosting. If you look at the 1080P images I posted, you will see that there can be noticeable ghosting in extreme cases (ie the trees in the Resident Evil image). In other cases the ghosting is pretty low (for example in the UT2004 video I posted). And of course you are getting only half the resolution. But the colors are actually a little brighter since you don't have to wear glasses. For me it is mostly just a curiosity thing, and I like to tinker with stuff. If you enjoy tweaking and hacking stuff, then this will be a fun project. If you just want a top quality solution that works, then you need to spend the money and get something like Nvidia 3D Vision. Not sure what to tell you.

@PalmerTech: Yes, I know iTunes does not use DRM anymore. If they did then it would have taken me several days to convert my collection instead of just one day. But the M4A format they use is still not as universal as MP3 (for example, it won't work on Xbox 360), although it does at least work on the Android phones without a problem. But, like you, I would rather support Amazon just on principle.

I created yesterday a parallax Barrier myself following cyberealities guide, my monitor is a LG 22" 1680x1050 (similar to cybereality's monitor) and I used a printer 1200dpi. I coundn't find the dot pitch of my monitor so I used same as cybereality in my calculations. The result looked very good, I was really suprised from the quallity of 3d picture I got. It had some ghosting but it was ok.
I also tried galo's programm but it gives very strange results pattern looks very strange, the line were not in some places thicker and in than in other.
Finally I tried to make a parallax barrier for my android phone (vodafone joy). I used the same I created in photoshop a new image in the size of my phone's screen and I used the same pattern that I used for my monitor to fill the image but I reduce the scale of the pattern to 35% (I played around I bit with the setting before I found out that 35% scale gives me the best results). I get some nice depth with it but on so good as on my monitor. I'm not sure if it possible to get better results on a 2,8" screen.

@fildubek: Awesome man! I'm glad someone was able to replicate my results. Despite what some people might think, I'm not just making this stuff up. I also have plans to try this technique with my Android phone (and maybe an Android tablet at some point). The results aren't going to be as impressive as a monitor due to the limited depth possible on a small screen, but the 3D should still look good. I bet with a properly optimized pattern it could work nice.

That would be nice.

@cybereality: I personally never had any doubts that it could work, since it seamed very logical and and you explain very good in your tutorial. I get the feeling that some people replied to your video on youtube without watching the video at all. Anyway testing it on a tablet sounds like a good idea many I will try it out when I get one.

Agree and this would be perfect for small devices but I think if you want a perfect no glasses experience the film/filter would have to be sold by the screen manufacture.

hello, im new here =)
I'm here because i read about cybereality. I'm really interested in having a 3d monitor. My monitor is 1280 x 800, i used galo's programm but it isn't working good for me... my dot pitch is 0'258 and i have an 1200 dpi printer... according to all i have read my patern must have 13 pixels in black and 13 px in white. i printed some parallax barrier but they are not working very well... i tried to create a patern using photoshop but i have never used photoshop and i'm really really bad at it. So... cybereality... could you post a page with some diferent patterns... in order to print them and try all of them? or instead.. could you give me something to start all this?

PD: lines are always spaced by same spaces??
PD2: sorry for my bad english, i'm spanish ^^

I think your barrier should be more like 12 pixels wide (or a little less than 12.1889764 to be exact). If you do 12 pixel of black and 12 pixel of white, it might work. If you read the tutorial again, I explain how to do this (I might need to go back and fix it up a bit, maybe its too confusing). Anyway, here is a 12px pattern. Just print this image in Photoshop without any scaling at all. It might be close to what you need.

wow! you were really fast! thank you! i'll try and post

thank you again =)

you were right! it is very close! it is not 3d yet, but it's the closest pattern i have printed =D thank you! I have one question: now i only have to try different patterns close to this one, right? how did you do that? you tried 17 px insted of 16? or what? I mean.. how do i print more patterns having this one?

PD: with the alignment test image i got blue-red (with your pattern) with the others i got red-blue so i guess it might be a little bit bigger... (your alignment test image is very useful) thank you a lot for all this =D i cant believe im having 3d in my monitor this week xD

You have to make a more complex pattern in order to fake a higher resolution. For example, you can have five 12 pixel lines and then one 13 pixel line. That would give you a barrier with the approximate width of 12.1666 pixels. The one you need is going to be close to that one (and it might be a good place to start). If you follow my tutorial I show how to create pattern files in Photoshop, its very easy.

well, couldn't he just scale it down slightly in photoshop's print properties? then it's all automagical, and he won't have to worry about 12/13 pixel lines and whatnot.

I got strange results when I tried using the Photoshop scaling, but this was also back with my 600dpi printer so maybe 1200dpi will handle this better.

Wow, this sounds a bit complicated! I think it would be great it it could be done to create 3d glasses for next to nothing though! With the emergence of 3d televisions now, it would be really great to save some money on creating the glasses yourself, but only if they are up to par. I'm hoping that glasses will go down in price in a few years as the technology becomes more common place.

i got better results with the new pattern (5x12,1x13), thanks, it still is small, but it's very close, because i got only one line, blue-red. And at the center of the pattern it is white (or black) But i cant see the 3d image... Is this normal? should i be able to see 3d images with this pattern?

Yeah, it is somewhat complicated. I am looking to find a method that is easier but I've just been busy. But I am not done with this, its an evolving project. If you are interested, I am actually sending out free 3D glasses. They are just the cheap paper red/cyan ones, but they work OK. Certainly a good option if you don't have a high-end 3D solution. Just PM me with your name/address and I will send them right out.


It is very difficult to get the perfect pattern. I might have printed over 50 tests just to get the right pattern for that video. So don't be discouraged if the first few are not right. Unless is is extremely close to the right size, then you are going to have trouble seeing in 3D. Also, try flipping the barrier around (so the printed size faces the monitor) and also try moving your head forward and back. That changes the way it looks. You will probably have to learn how to customize it yourself, as it takes a lot of trial and error.

Good Job Cyber

Unfortunately I have Transparency Film for Laser printer but I only have injet printers. I tried anyway but the ink make some sort of bubbles. I wanted to convert my old smartphone to a brand new stereo smartphone I'll have to buy special filter ^^

Yes, you must make sure you get the correct transparency film for your printer (inkjet or laser) and also read the instructions because you usually can only print on one specific side (usually the rough side) and may need to put it in the printer a specific way. Also, stay away from overhead transparencies, acetate transparencies, or anything else that doesn't specifically say its meant to be printed on by consumer inkjet or laser printers. Although other types may work, you might just waste your money if it doesn't print right.