The 25th annual meeting of the Stereoscopic Displays & Applications (SD&A) conference, part of the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging 2014 symposium, brought together researchers and practitioners of 3D capture, display, processing, and perception from around the world.
Topics of the more than 75 oral and poster presentations spanned: the design and applications of stereoscopic 3D displays, autostereoscopic displays, quality assessment, depth map processing, and human factors. Of particular interest were two keynote presentations. Jeff Joseph, producer of World 3D Film Expo, discussed the history and lineage of numerous early stereoscopic films. Gordon Wetzstein of the MIT Media Laboratory offered inspirational recommendations for new directions in 3D display research, grounded in the combination of fast computation, optics, and mathematical optimization.
This year’s Discussion Forum was a candid inquiry into the state and prognosis of 3D in entertainment. Moderated by Lenny Lipton, panelists included: David Cohen (Variety Media, LLC), Barry Sandrew (Legend Films, Inc.) and Chris Ward (Lightspeed Design, Inc.). One question that the panelists explored was, “If the audience must pay a fee for to see the 3D version of a movie, will they expect significant use of stereoscopic effects?”
Every year, SD&A attendees have the opportunity to catch up informally over a special SD&A Banquet dinner. For our 25th meeting, we enjoyed fine dining at an Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s Union Square while reminiscing over the conference’s history. One treat was that Conference Chair Andrew Woods (Curtin Univ.) – who attended virtually via live video link from Australia – enumerated the depth and breadth of the most frequently-cited SD&A publications over the 25 year history of the conference.
The SD&A conference also presented its annual awards in stereoscopic cinema, 3D technology, and best use of stereoscopy. The stereoscopic cinema session is always a big hit, with contest entries judged by Bernard Mendiburu, Julien Flack, and Lenny Lipton. Winners received a copy of the SD&A DVD-ROM which contains over 1,500 technical manuscripts in the 3D sciences.
The SD&A 3D Theater Best of Show Award in the Live Action category was awarded to: “Soir de Fête” by David Robert (France).
The SD&A 3D Theater Best of Show Award in the Animation / CG category was awarded to: “Morpheos Trailer” by John Hart (USA).
The SD&A Award for Best Use of Stereoscopy in a Technical Presentation was awarded to: “Stereoscopic cell visualization: from mesoscopic to molecular scale,” by Björn Summer, Christian Bender, Tobias Hoppe, Christian Gamroth, and Lukas Jelonek of the Univ. Bielefeld (Germany).
The SD&A Award for the Best Technical Demonstration by a conference author was awarded to the zSpace System of zSpace, Inc., in conjunction with the presentation “Description of a 3D display with motion parallax and direct interaction,” by Mark Flynn and Jerry Tu.
Finally, the conference experimented with a unique activity for SD&A’s Silver Jubilee: a “Magical Mystery 3D Bus Tour” of prestigious Silicon Valley companies engaged in stereoscopy, organized by committee member John Stern and Andrew Woods. Conference attendees enjoyed impressive technological demonstrations at Intuitive Surgical and NVIDIA Corporation, such as a tele-operated laparoscopic surgical system, and the advanced rendering feats behind the real-time animated human, “Digital Ira.”
Many of the technical presentations at SD&A 2014 were recorded and these will be made available via the conference website over the next few months as processing is completed. The technical manuscripts from the conference will be published in the conference proceedings volume which will be available in April:
Woods, Holliman, Favalora (eds) (2014) “Stereoscopic Displays and Applications XXV,” Proceedings of SPIE-IS&T Electronic Imaging, SPIE Vol. 9011, San Francisco (February 2014).
Planning for the 2015 Electronic Imaging and SD&A events are already under way, and will be held during the week of 8-12 February 2015, in downtown San Francisco.
– More information about the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications (SD&A) Conference…
