The new 3D technology gives old games a new lease of life

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a stereo picture application for 3D games.

The new plug-in, called StereoGames, transforms the existing 3D games to games by creating in depth stereoscopic vision. The added depth dimension gives the old games a new lease of life.

The easily installable plug-in is suitable for PCs, mobile phones, game consoles, digital television applications, animations and online games. Negotiations with several software development companies have begun, and the launch of StereoGames for PC games is expected within the next year. This plug-in makes it possible to add stereo information to mobile phone camera pictures, too.

Usually, such stereo effects are incorporated to a game or a video during the production phase. The StereoGames application automatically makes all adjustments to create the same effect with existing games.

While there are several different techniques for producing stereo pictures the method developed by VTT uses the so-called anaglyphic technique. The advantage of this is that it does not require heavy and expensive peripherals for viewing. The anaglyphic technique is a filter technology that builds on the complementary colour scheme. This means that two differently coloured images are produced, one for each eye. As the viewer looks through filter glasses, the brain fuses the images into a three-dimensional stereo composition.

VTT's says its StereoGames technique has numerous other applications, for example, in architecture, product design and molecular modelling.