MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, released the prototype of a 3D display technology, for use in movie theaters, that doesn’t require glasses. Other glasses-free 3D displays have been available, most notably with the Nintendo 3DS, but they are designed for use by a single user and only work when the content is viewed at a specific angle. A research paper on the technology, dubbed “Cinema 3D,” will be given at the SIGGRAPH conference this week. Continue reading MIT Prototypes Glasses-Free 3D for Motion Picture Theaters

Computer scientists at UC San Diego have developed an efficient technique for rendering the sparkling, shiny and uneven surfaces of water, various metals and materials such as injection-molded plastic finishes. The team has created an algorithm that improves how CG software reproduces the interaction between light and different surfaces (known as “glints”), a technique the team claims is 100 times faster than current state-of-the-art methods, requires minimal computational resources, and is effective beyond still images to include animation. Continue reading Researchers Develop Efficient Way to Render Shiny Surfaces