Humans experience the real world in 3D – so it’s no surprise to learn from the experts that people prefer their virtual experiences in 3D, too. Here, Gus Desbarats, Chairman of trailblazing product and interaction design company TheAlloy, ponders the latest developments in virtual 3D interfaces, and looks ahead to the challenges of the future

Desbarats: ‘Something that uses 3D to enhance a proposition in an intuitive way can add color and richness to an otherwise poor experience.’

‘Human beings are DNA programmed and educated to interact with a three-dimensional environment. 3D sensitivity plays a key part in driving subconscious decisions on issues like priority, danger and discovery. It governs our perspective on a situation. If we were not programmed this way, we would see many more car crashes and be unable to walk through a railway station without bumping into almost every person we encounter.

‘This natural warmth for the 3D environment can be both an advantage and a burden. Through 3D simulation we are able to experience worlds that we would have no chance of encountering for real. Much of our understanding of molecular biology, for example, comes from our ability to recreate virtual 3D environments that are big enough for us to fully understand and inhabit.

‘The counter to this is that the 3D effect can be almost too compelling. Studies in Asia have already shown that 3D gaming is proving to be highly addictive, and the more immersive the experience, the harder some users find it to segregate the virtual from the real world.

‘This highlights a challenge in creating virtual 3D interfaces, one that the designers at TheAlloy face every day when designing product and interfaces in 3D: they need to create an immersive experience that is natural to humans. Anything counter-intuitive or poorly applied will be seen as a gimmick or irritating. Something that uses 3D to enhance a proposition in an intuitive way can add color and richness to an otherwise poor experience. Just as 3D movies are now creating immersive experiences people can enjoy throughout (rather than using the technology simply to have a villain burst out of the screen for shock effect), 3D interfaces are less about graphics and more about creating natural and intuitive experiences.

‘Given the potential power of combining virtual worlds and our 3D instincts to deliver a richer environment, it is surprising that, for much of the early part of the 21st Century, our desktop experience has been dominated by a broadly flat 2D screen. We can expect this to change quickly. The IT agenda, once dominated by commerce’s demand for low-cost computing, is now being driven by the consumer’s desire for phones, games consoles, cameras and multimedia devices. Consumers are demanding a richer and more immersive user experience: iTunes ‘Cover Flow’ is an early example.

‘Digital content that can be browsed and discovered is a natural environment for 3D interfaces, since it enables humans to replicate the experience of browsing in a shop or a library. In this sense, home servers and IPTV will be natural homes for 3D interfaces.

‘Users value browsing, and discovering and selecting digital content – just as they can in the real world. The creation of rich virtual bookshelves, record stores or video libraries, made up of both users’ own content and content available to buy, is likely to form the cornerstone of future digital entertainment hubs in the home. The richer the experience, the more likely the user is to purchase. TheAlloy recently developed a concept called ‘Woosh!’ to add exactly this kind of immersive richness to an IPTV service.

‘In a similar vein, websites will also display more 3D characteristics. I expect that online book, music and DVD stores will try to create 3D interfaces online, to add a level of richness to what is otherwise a rather dull, list-based, approach to content discovery. We recently reworked TheAlloy’s website to include a 3D feel to it: depth is added by the way the user interacts with the content therein.

‘The real potential for 3D interfaces lies one or two steps down the technology path with the development of augmented reality, and the ability to use gestures to interact with a virtual world. Augmented reality is currently used by fighter pilots, and works by overlaying synthetic images over the natural landscape, providing a richer environment without distracting from the real picture. Obvious applications are within vehicles, to display navigation and warning information directly onto the windscreen.

‘Once this is combined with gesture-based controls (a great example is the Nintendo Wii, where real movement is replicated on the screen), people have the capability to view a real landscape, enhanced with relevant virtual information, controllable by the user simply and effectively with the flick of a hand. Hand picking music in a virtual library, physically poking a friend’s avatar in Facebook, throwing old files on a PC into the recycle bin by hand; just a few examples of future 3D interfaces.

‘Critical to success, though, will be providing interfaces that people love to use. As always, the technology is not the primary challenge: that lies is applying it in such a user-friendly, intuitive way to add richness and value.’

Researchers working for 3M have announced that they have perfected the technology to produce a 3D mobile phone

Autostereoscopic technology offers 3D that can ‘escape the screen’.

The system, which uses autostereoscopic display technology, will be the first time that 3D technology has made it to a mobile for commercial use, and is capable of full resolution, according to Bill Bryan, technical manager of 3M’s St Paul, Minnesota-based Display and Graphics lab.

‘We expect to see a consumer electronic device by autumn in Asia, and you will see more products in the next 9-18 months,’ said Bryan, adding that 3M expected the development to drive a new market in 3D content to mobile devices.

‘This is going to be a new area for filmmakers and other content providers. Disney is now shooting all of its new films in 3D. We are already seeing 3D in the living room and the gaming room: the next differentiator in the handset market will be 3D.’

The autostereoscopic technology that 3M has opted for with its 3D screen sits between the light guides and LCD screens that are used in conventional mobile phone displays.

For those interested in the minutiae of the process, the screen is made from a double-sided micro-replicated film, which has microstructures on the bottom and the top. A directional back-light system is then used to generate the 3D effect.

Using a time delay, LED lights load an image onto the left side of the screen and then five milliseconds later, do the same for the right side of the screen. The whole process runs at 120Hz, so it does not generate screen flicker.

However, running the screen at such a rate could be a drawback according to some 3D experts, who see it as a limitation, because the screen uses four times more energy than the ones in use today.

The 3D screen can only be viewed when the screen is held at a particular angle, generating what is known as a ‘sweet spot’ – something that did not annoy those using the device, maintained Bryan.

‘The thing that we have noticed is that because mobile phones are handheld, people tend to naturally move them around until they have got it in the right place.’

The result, according to 3M, is 3D that can escape the screen it is generated on.