I have been waiting to get my hands on one before I blogged this. Clearly I have one, a demo unit from ShaperTechnology, and it lives up to its hype. This is a 800×600, 1600 Lumens DLP projector that can project active stereo images at 120 MHz. This means that when used in conjunction with a stereo capable graphics card and a pair of stereo glasses & emitter you perceive the view in 3D. Traditionally, this would require a large $60k projector or the use of 2 projectors but the DepthQ is a portable $4k projector.

How is this related to Geography? Both in my research and at work we use a significant amount of 2.5D (surface based) geovisualization. By viewing a scene in stereo it allows for a more immersive experience than the traditional 2D views. Any kind of stereo can give this perception, but active stereo is often considered the best for many situations. The other stereo options are passive stereo, 2 projectors with a polarized filter, and anaglyph stereo, generally the red and blue glasses.

So far we have just been using the standard stereo in ArcScene, but we will test it with a few other apps, but I think it is pretty cool.

DepthQ