Paging 3D fans

[ffutures]

There is apparently about to be a Viewmaster app for iPhones etc. that will let their owners download classic Viewmaster 3D reels and see the pictures in 3D. Eventually to be available for other platforms, apparently including Windows.

http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/view-master-fisher-price/

Shame that Viewmaster images were so tiny. Hopefully the master negatives are a bit bigger and higher definition. We will see...

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

This uses a lenticular screen; competes with the Grilli which is a barrier screen (like on the Nintendo 3DS) and the My3D which is a very functional viewer (but a dorky viewer nonetheless). It will be interesting to see how all this develops, especially as rumours abound of Apple giving the next iPad a glasses-free 3d screen.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Format wars... well, if Apple choose to do that it will win. Since I don't currently own compatible hardware it will have to wait for me anyway.

[armb.livejournal.com]

cf. http://gizmodo.com/5788160/hasbros-goofy-my3d-goggles-are-better-than-they-look

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, the My3D is awesome. I was handing it around at last year's Eastercon with some of its little games, but it's even better as a viewer for 3d photos. In some ways preferable to my Cyclopital viewer, which cost huge amounts of money.

I get tired of this 'goofy goggles' thing. Nobody suggests that microscopes are goofy.

In other 3d news, Brian May's putting together another book of Victorian stereo cards -- this time the fantastic Diableries.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Vtech currently sell a kiddy digital camera which has a built-in game that sounds a lot like the shooting game mentioned in the article, though not 3D, with little blobby aliens flying around the room. Now if Nikon started to do things like that...

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I've often wished that somebody would scan some View-Masters (both sides) for web pages. I've never been able to find the Winchester Mystery House reel(s?), for instance. Maybe it's time to look again.

But yeah, if they were to scan them from larger negatives, EVEN BETTER.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they used large negatives for the originals, then microfilm technology to reduce them on high-resolution film.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add that this is why pictures from the Viewmaster 3D cameras were never nearly as good as the professionally-made slides - the cameras were a truly bizarre format which I'm remembering as slightly tilted 1/4-frame 35mm, and on standard 35mm slide film were as grainy as hell.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Yes. My only fear is that they'd farm the job to somebody who would cheap it out by scanning the commercial reels, in somewhat the same way the National Lampoon DVD is hastily scanned pages from the magazine at an unimpressive resolution.

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

Time to break out my old reels again. Superman versus Computer Crook, where are you?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think I must have given mine to nieces and nephews.