How stereoscopics will change web design and the internet?

Stereoscopics have been slowly emerging into the mainstream. Since the advent of virtual reality there has always been new new incremental technologies such as the Sega VR, Virtual Boy, R-Zone, and TDVisor. A careful look of the technology shows society has never taken a break from 3D. More recently there has been several like Oculus Rift, Zeiss Cinemizer, Sensics Natalia, and HMZ-T2. Stereoscopics is definitely becoming mature and it comes in many forms.

Oculus Rift

There has been another major push for stereoscopics  in gaming. With major names behind project such as Gabe Newell, Cliff Bleszinski, John Carmack, and Mark Bolas this product will accelerate the development and adoption of stereoscopics. [1]

Zeiss Cinemizer

A great currently available headset is the Zeiss Cinemizer. It has two 870 x 500 OLED screens and costs $749. [2]The headset uses an HDMI connection for video and supports Side-by-side, Top-Bottom, and Line interleaved Frame Packing 3D formats. There is also an iphone adapter.

One major advancement in stereoscopics is the Sensics Natalia. The Sensics Natalia is a head-tracking 3D goggles headset that can work alone or with PCs, consoles and phones. The Sensics Natalia by default comes with Android 4.0, a 1.2GHZ dual-core CPU, 1GB of memory and with wifi. [3] This type of HMD will differently change web design. With internet ready 3D goggles consumers will demand more 3D content online.

The website Engadget viewed by the inspect element in 3D in Firefox

3D has already affected the development of web sites. Development tools such as Firefox’s  inspect element is commonly used  to make sure. Tools like these will help websites create stereoscopics content by allowing web developers to viewed the layered content in websites. There is also dedicated Firefox extensions that has more robust features such as Tilt 3D. [4] Because of these tools web developers are getting used to thinking about websites in 3 dimensions.

A Youtube engineer explaining the development of 3D stereoscopics on Youtube

Youtube engineers such as Peter Bradshaw believe 3D will be an important part of the internet and to youtube. [5] Youtube is an early example of what websites will have to implement when supporting stereoscopics. For videos with 3D, youtube has added a 3D icon in the video control bar. When the 3D button is clicked a menu is brought up to set various 3D settings. This shows that websites that implement stereoscopics will have to create icon and menu space for this emerging technology.

Stereoscopics will change several key elements on the internet such as images and video. Stereoscopics camera have become so ubiquitous that they are even in low end gaming handled like the 3DS. Many consumers have started creating their own 3D content that they want to post online. [6] 3D content will also affect load times, development times and user experience. Just how websites have a mobile format for small screens websites will have to create new layout and implement new technologies to have stereoscopic content.

Stereoscopics technology will affect how visitors interact with websites because it is highly enmeshed with other technologies. If a user is wearing a 3D set of goggles they can’t pinch the screen to zoom because the screen is on their face. But if the goggles have cameras then many different gestures can be viewed and incorporated to interact with websites. Touchscreens are constrained by the limited ways you can touch a screen, but a 3D headset with camera allow for many more gestures. Websites like Pottermore offers to play games, but the games are only moused based. In the future websites like Pottermore can offer gesture based games in stereoscopic 3D. There has been a lot of graphics accelerated for Google Chrome. This will allow for the creation of better 3D environments for websites. [7] In the future website visitors may want to see more content by tilting their head rather than using a mouse or touchscreen.

References

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/28/oculus-rift-march-2013/
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/15/zeiss-cinemizer-head-mounted-oled-display-wends-its-way-into-stores/
http://smartgoggles.net/products/natalia/
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/tilt-3d-view-website-in-3d/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ANcspdYh_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GcLW0g_c1s
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/04/guest-post-3d-graphics-in-browser.html

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