Virtual 3D

[Denbigh Gabbitas]

I posted this question about two years ago (here?)...nobody responded, I hope we can do better.

I am talking about photos which are clearly 2D, our beloved flat earth: particularly including old photos; group or situation photos; photos which are very unlikely to have stereo siblings.

On the BBC particularly, these 2D photos appear with the trappings of 3D/stereo so that, as the camera apparently shifts laterally, or zooms in, the background covered by the foreground shifts accordingly.

It is clear that these must be run through some sort of AI process.

Can anyone who knows illuminate?

 

[Asher Kelman]

I will do some checking!

 

[Jerome Marot]

There have been several systems presented which turn a 2D video signal into something that looks like 3D to your eyes. I remember having seen this in a mainstream Sony TV when visiting a friend at the time when 3D was still in fashion. Indeed there is some form of "artificial intelligence" in the sense that software is involved to determine what is the foreground and what is not. If I remember well, the effect, although convincing to the unsuspecting eye, indeed only differentiated between 2 planes: foreground and background, but would not really work on a 3D volume. I suppose Sony simply used the motion vectors from mpeg compression.

There have been lots of research in 3D cameras in the past years as several systems are used for identification (think Apple face id) and automotive applications. You are not likely to see the resulting images, though, as 3D displays never really caught on and development of 3D displays for human vision is more or less halted. The system use either projection of an arrays of IR spots, LIDAR time of flight or plenoptic cameras. Some simpler systems simply use the phase AF pixels of camera sensors.

 

[Denbigh Gabbitas]

Sounds a lot like I was asking about.

At any instant, putting the TV on pause, one sees a simple 2D image, there is no double imaging 3D as seen in cinemas through polarised lens. It is only by moving the apparent camera viewpoint that the 2D image changes, as in a foreground/background relationship. It may well be that there are just the two planes represented. There is nothing to be lost on pausing, it is a perfectly normal 2D image.

Really clever. Sounds like the AI you mention, but it is working in real-time.