Zecotek Demonstrates Auto-Stereoscopic Multiple Views

[metalqueen]

Zecotek Demonstrates Auto-Stereoscopic Multiple Views 3D2D Display System to European OEMs

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE -- 01/19/10 -- Zecotek Photonics Inc. (TSX VENTURE: ZMS)(FRANKFURT: W1I), a developer of leading-edge photonics technologies for medical, industrial and scientific markets, today announced that its Real-Time 3D2D Display System is exhibited in Zurich, Switzerland to a select number of European display manufacturers. The demonstrations in Europe follow demonstrations to Asian and North American display manufacturers, and come as the Company looks to conclude a manufacturing or licensing partnership with a major OEM.

"There is much hype regarding stereoscopic 3D, which requires special eye wear and in most cases, an extended cable connection from the glasses to the monitor is needed," said Dr. A.F. Zerrouk, Chairman, President, and CEO of Zecotek Photonics Inc. "However, in order to have a natural and realistic 3D effect, this can only be achieved with systems such as Zecotek's unique Real-Time, Auto-stereoscopic, multiple-views, 3D2D Display System. No special glasses or peripheral equipment or sweet spots are needed. As part of our global search for the best mix of licensing and manufacturing partnership we have moved our 32 inch prototype to Zurich to demonstrate to very keen European OEMs. We look to conclude our discussions with Asian, North American and European manufacturers in the very near future and move ahead with a single partner. The demand for true 3D viewing is growing and consumers and manufacturers alike are discovering the challenges and limitations inherent to standard stereoscopic viewing with eye wear."

Protection of Zecotek's 3D unique technological innovation is a priority and is being achieved through multiple stage patents in all countries where significant demand for the Company's 3D products is expected. Applications have been submitted first in the US, followed by PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty), regional and national applications. Patents have been granted, or are pending, in the US, Japan, China, Russia, Australia, Korea and major countries in Europe. This will increase our opportunity to capture a significant share of the market.

Zecotek's Real-Time 3D2D Display System is based on the auto-stereoscopic principle, but with substantial innovative and patented improvements and represents a new and unique generation of 3D displays. In September 2008, Zecotek's 3D development team announced significant improvements in overall clarity, a doubling of concurrent perspectives (from 40 to 80) and an increase in the effective 3D viewing angle from 25 to 40 degrees. The Company is also introducing flat screen 5 to 16 inch 3D displays for the transportation, personal computing and gaming industries, and a 54 inch 3D display designed to meet the expected demand for industrial, advertisement, medical and home entertainment markets.

Zecotek also announced the granting of 820,000 stock options to employees and consultants for their contributions to the Company. The exercise price is set at $0.71 and will expire in five years. The stock options are subject to regulatory approval.

About Zecotek

Zecotek Photonics Inc. (TSX VENTURE: ZMS)(FRANKFURT: W1I) is a photonics technology company developing high-performance crystals, photo detectors, lasers, optical imaging and 3D display technologies for commercial applications in the medical diagnostics and high-tech industry. Founded in 2003, the company has three distinct operating divisions: imaging, lasers and 3D display and labs located in Canada, Singapore and Russia. Zecotek commercializes its novel, patented and patent-pending bio-photonic technologies directly and through strategic alliances and joint ventures with multinational OEMs, distributors and other industry leaders.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual future results and trends may differ materially from what may have been stated.

[foop]

No sweet spots? Wider viewing angles? 40 to 80 views? Glasses are going to die before they're even established. I guess the only question at this point is how does Zecotek plan on getting around the technical impossibility of showing 40 to 80 views at once, shy of decimating the content into pixelated oblivion.

[foop]

Zecotek's 3D/2D Display provides a new level of user interface aimed at a wide range of applications:

* No glasses or other special equipment required for viewing
* No head tracking
* Multi viewers, with each viewer experiencing different perspectives depending on position
* Viewers will see a changing image when moving within the viewing angle
* Same high resolution in 2D and 3D modes

Zecotek's patent pending 3D/2D display fulfills these requirements and offer these additional benefits and features:

* Extremely small angle between adjacent views resulting in absence of viewing discontinuity or perspective "gaps"
* Display utilizes off-the-shelf components making it cost effective
* Scalable design making it customizable depending on application requirements
* Simultaneous display of 2D and 3D with no loss of details
* Dynamic control of number of views, viewing angle, and colour depth

A 32-inch prototype display is being demonstrated at our Vancouver offices. The performance specifications demonstrated are:

3D Image Resolution, pixels = 1024x768

Number of perspectives = 100

Screen size, inches = 32

Viewing angle, degrees = ~ 40

Number of colour channels = 3 (RGB)

Seems like this will be another 2d+depth display, which effectively makes it animation only until depth sensing cameras become better developed. The plus side is that it can interpolate as many full res views as its hardware can handle.

[cybereality]

How can it have 100 views and not reduce the resolution? I don't get it.

Anyway, if this thing is for real maybe it will work out great for advertisements/slot machines and get people more interested in 3D. I don't see how it would be useful in the home just yet. The whole infrastructure is being built around dual-stream stereo video, not 2D+depth. But in a few years, who knows?

[foop]

T'will be the future. No one likes having to wear glasses to see an effect.

[Likay]

It sounds very similar to philips wowvx technology. In practic it's useless in regards of 3d-gaming. It's cool when it comes for commercial stuffs and gimmicks but it doesn't seem suitable for stereo-3d as we know it.

[DmitryKo]

Actually, Zecotek Photonics Inc. (formerly Zecotek Medical Systems Inc.) have been demoing this technology for the last 3 years; they received an Australian patent in 2006.

As evident from their patent application, http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/aub/ ... ple_search" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

it's actually not auto-stereoscopic like WOWvx, but auto-multiscopic projection system which actually reproduces up to 80 different views. Quick facts:

• DLP, LCOS or LCD image matrix with LED or laser illumination source with sequential colors
• viewing screen consisting of at least 3 lenticular arrays of cylindrical vertically-aligned microlenses, placed in the focal plane of each other;
• the light from image sensor is either projected through an objective lens, or guided by optical fibers;
• the viewing screen features 2D shifting mechanism for the 2nd and 3rd arrays;
• the shifting mechanism attaches to the outer 2 arrays or the middle array, allows to sequentially scan different horizontal viewing angles
• images representing different viewing angles are sequentially projected by the 2D display, which works in sync with shifting mechanism.

So this display would only work with a matched camera system which features similar scanning microlens array and very high frame rate - no less than 1920 Hz are required for scanning at least 80 different views at 24 frames per second, which would take about 45 Gbps of bandwidth, triple the current maximum rate offered by DisplayPort 1.2


I can't even think how much this 32" 1024x768 pixel display would cost, not to mention that gaming on this display would probably require the game to render a dozen very detailed 2D+depth representaions which could be further procesesed in the display to render these 80 different views (as opposed to current technology which only renders 2 stereoscopic views).

I'd say come back to us in 2025, when future free-viewpoint TV technologies such a discussed in EBU-ITU-SMPTE 3DTV Workshop will hopefully become a reality.

[Likay]

I'm to lazy to find an eventual philips patent on this but it feels like a very long time ago ( ) i've read about wowvx. Patents unfortunately seems to be quite easy to circumvent in most cases since just a small difference somtimes makes room for a new one...
And same for wowvx about aspect of stereoscopy. It's not really autostereoscopic since the viewed image is a result of a lot of different views. The problem with wowvx is the same as for the Zecotek solution. A huge number of different views needs to be rendered to function properly. Since games always will be close to max out computers hardwares for just rendering one view these kind of hardwaresolutions won't suit stereogaming and hardly any pure stereoscopic purposes over all.

[cybereality]

I'd like to see a computer that could render a game in 80 views in real-time. I mean, even if it were Quake1 I think that would be impressive.

[DmitryKo]

You don't need to render all 80 views on the PC, they could be traced in the display using some form of 2D+depth format, like in Philips WOWvx; still, I'd imagine that for a viewing angle of 40 degrees you'd need a a dozen high resolution 2D+depth maps for tracing these 80 views in high quality.

[foop]

So what sort of power are we talking about here to trace out a 100 full res views? 20 GTX's? 50 quad core's?

[crim3]

So what sort of power are we talking about here to trace out a 100 full res views? 20 GTX's? 50 quad core's?

That depends on what you want to render. How many 10 years old hardware would you need to put in parallel to render a 2010 game? Surely a lot. But 10 years ago a single videocard was enough for a game of those days.

[Likay]

Summa summarum: This is a very unefficient way of using resources. In monocscopic view both eyes shares one image. In stereoscopic vision both eyes sees an individual image. With these and similar technologies you only see a little part of the totally rendered images. If it's 80 views in all (and i can imagine that each eye at sees 1-2 of these images of the time in best case) it means that a lot of rendering power is only "fire for the crows". Of course it gets better when there are more viewers who can share more of these views. Besides: If 80 views are rendered there's only at a certain distance where each eye gets only one view for each eye. It shouldn't be a huge issue moving closer to the screen until each eye sees 3 overlapping images because the difference between those images is quite small.

Good sides: The result from a screen like this is a more holographic nature than with using standard stereoscopic. If you move side-to-side in front of a screen like this you can look at the object from different sides. Trying to do a similar thing with a stereoscopic setup gives an impression the the object instead is moving... A solution of stereoscopy+headtracking solves this but works only for one viewer while zecotek works for several viewers with the same result. Each and every sees an unique angle of the object.

It's an interesting tech but in regards of stereogaming/moviewatching etc it's useless. We'll maybe be able to play crysis on a zecotek in 15 years but imagine what kind of games (and their hardwarerequirements) we play by that time. As cybereality says it's like playing quake1 using this tech today. I can personally find this great but of course the miss of never being able to play somewhat current games is more than distracting.

[DmitryKo]

Well, those people who pan glasses-based stereoscopic solutions should have certainly thought about the limitations of glasses-free technology. I call it "one-dimensional spec shopping" - most consumers tend to choose one particular feature as a "must have" and just go for a product with a higher number in the specs, without really understanding all of the implications. Talk about megapixel race in digital photography (I heard Sony have now achieved 18 megapixels on that tiny 5x7mm CCD sensor, the noise levels must be crazy).

Current autostereoscopic solutions are limited by 720x480 resolutions and 2D+depth coding, which makes the scene look like a cardboard cutout. That's probably OK for kiosk advertisements where the viewers don't typically wear any polarized or active glasses, but certainly not enough for watching high-quality movie content. And yet those Gizmodo, Engadget etc. journo-lamers constantly whine about "dorky glasses" and the cost for multiple viewers and are touting autostereoscopic displays... it's as silly as thrashing all current automobiles because of some future tech like hydrogen electric cars.

Now, here is your ultimate glasses-free, multiple-views 720p autostereoscopic solution. It probably won't be in production for the next 15 years, the cost will probably compare to a sports car (or two), and there will be no high-quality multi-view content to feed this beast with. But yes, it lets you invite 25 people on a one-time 3D event and become the hero of the neighbourhood for some time. Everyone else will be happy to enjoy their "dorky-glasses" solution with a better image quality for a fraction of the price. To continue the analogy, hydrogen fuel cells may be may be the future of transportation, but the infrastructure is just not there yet and the costs are prohibitive; enjoy what you have today.

[Likay]

I agree. And since games and applications always seem to use the full power of the hardwares there will never be room for something that requires such extra juice. I think it's cool with such technique but regarding gaming and stereoscopic homeuse this tech and similar has no place and will probably never have unless something revolutionary is invented (just to leave the gate open. )

[cybereality]

I totally agree. Clearly one day there will be the "holy grail" holographic projector we all want. But until then I will happily game with my small collection of "dorky glasses".