I was at SIGGRAPH in Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday and 3D was everywhere. There were monsters with tentacles in odd places wriggling through hyperspace, warriors with full armor and axes chopping up trolls in caves, and virtual cars driving through familiar cities. 3D was everywhere, except on the displays.

SIGGRAPH is the primary trade show of the computer graphics industry. The before-show estimate was there would be 25,000 attendees. There were 205+ exhibitors and numerous special events including an art show, an electronic cinema theater with the latest Sony 4K SXRD projector and the world’s largest Etch-a-Sketch, technical papers, training sessions and more, including endless networking.

This is the first year I have gone, and I went to learn something about 3D for a report on the 3D industry Insight Media is working on in conjunction with the USDC. I went to the show knowing that 3D was a minor sideline for the display industry. I assumed that 3D was also minor branch of the computer graphics industry. How wrong I was.

The table, generated by Jon Peddie Research and provided as part of the SIGGRAPH press kit, shows that the 3D graphics industry is about 12 times larger than the 2D graphics industry. At $122B in 2005, forecast to grow to $218B in 2010, 3D graphics is not a small business by any measure.

The worldwide based of SIGGRAPH exhibitor were all competing for the jaded eyeballs of game developers, movie animators and other graphics professionals. They all had big displays showing off their latest product, which was often a 3D drawing, modeling or rendering package that was better than the guy’s in the next booth. Or maybe it was a server farm or a graphics card that could render high-resolution 3D images in real-time. You would think that they would be using 3D displays to show off their 3D products. They weren’t. I counted 5 booths with one or more 3D displays in them. Some of these 3D displays looked pretty good, including ones from Philips, Planar and Barco. Others, to put it politely, didn’t look so good.

It is not that the people in computer graphics don’t want 3D displays. While working on their latest creations, they spend a significant amount of their time grabbing their virtual objects with their mouse and twisting them around in space so they can get an impression on their 2D display of what they look like in 3D. I asked a couple of these people if they would like to have a 3D display and they said "Sure!" But…

The 3D display needs to be as good as the 2D display for all its important characteristics, including resolution, brightness, color points, bit depth, contrast and refresh rate. Left/right eye separation needs to be good. And by the way, the 3D display cannot cause eye strain, headaches or vertigo: some of these graphics people work long hours.

Until 3D displays can match 2D displays in all the things 2D displays do so well, plus provide 3D images, the 3D display business is bound to remain a minor and not very important sideline for the display industry. –MB