Live 3D videoconferencing with Light Peak

 

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By Darien Graham-Smith in San Francisco

Posted on 24 Sep 2009 at 19:16

IDF 2009 has closed with a demonstration of live, life-sized 3D video conferencing technology, using technology from Intel partner 3ality.

Inevitably, the 3D effect requires glasses, but is as effective as the rendered 3D animations now common in cinemas, and very free of restrictions: 3ality’s stereoscopic cameras can be freely panned, zoomed and focused in real time.

The technology has been a decade in development: to give this freedom of movement, not only must the cameras remain in perfect alignment as they’re moved and adjusted, but images must be corrected to account for issues such as variations in lens grind.

“To maximise the quality of realtime video, we have to work with sub-micron accuracy,” announced 3ality CTO Howard Postley.

First application for Light peak

Postley explained that each of the two cameras used in the demonstration was streaming information at a rate of 3Gbits/sec, along with 5Gbits/sec of metadata. Currently this bandwidth is carried over thick multi-cable runs to a central server. He estimated that filming a sporting event in 3D with 40 cameras had required running over 5,000 feet of cable.

Intel CTO Justin Rattner lost no time in recommending Intel’s Light Peak optical interconnect, unveiled yesterday, as a replacement for the bulky electrical cables.

He demonstrated how all the data from each camera could be carried by one thin Light Peak strand - with enough bandwidth remaining to concurrently stream 2Gbits/sec of data in the opposite direction over the same cable.