NFL’s Cowboys Plan Texas-Size 3D Demo

NFL’s Cowboys Plan Texas-Size 3D Demo
Will use giant stadium display to show HDLogix technology
By Glen Dickson

The National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys plan to demonstrate this Sunday how conventional two-dimensional HD video can be converted to 3D HD through sophisticated software processing, using technology from Edison, N.J. start-up HDLogix.

During their game against the San Diego Chargers at Cowboys Stadium, the Cowboys will use the giant (160 by 72-foot) video wall that hangs 90 feet above the field to show 3D “anaglyph” images that will be created using HDLogix’s 2D to 3D conversion system, ImageIQ3D. It will take feeds from the teams’ in-stadium cameras and convert them to 3D for display on the giant LED video wall. The Cowboys will distribute the red & blue glasses required to watch the anaglyph 3D images to the 80,000-odd fans attending the game, and plan to begin showing the 3D images during halftime and throughout the second half.
HDLogix, a privately-owned firm started a year-and-a-half ago by veterans of Sun Microsystems, IBM, Clique Communications and AgileVision, has developed a variety of image processing software for upconverting standard-definition video to HD and other applications. According to chief technology officer Will Gaddy, some of the “super-resolution” technology the company developed, such as sophisticate motion estimation algorithms, is also applicable to creating 3D images from 2D video. By closely analyzing each individual pixel of video, the HDLogix software can generate highly detailed information about a scene’s depth of field, and then modify the image to create the 3D effect.

“We’re doing motion estimation for every pixel, with one-hundredth of a pixel accuracy, and we’re [tracking] occlusion and disocclusion—when you’ve an got object moving in front of a background, you’ve got a leading edge that is hiding pixels and a trailing edge that is revealing pixels,” explains Gaddy. “In combination with camera motion, that gives you a lot of information about the depth of scene.”

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