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A full-screen graphic puts the viewer in a theatre front-row seat looking at an elevated stage—a gold-tiled floor delineated by green lines and small diamonds at the corner of each square.
The front ledge, suggestive of an Elizabethan
motif, is convex and curves to a center point.
On each side pillars arch toward
the top of the screen, enhancing the 3-D aspect of the scene. The rear of the
stage is dominated by a drawn theater curtain, the same one dropped last night
to close Uncle Artie’s rotunda appearance. It is a feat of graphics skill, with
every ruffle and fold clearly evident to the eye.
Now
come the sounds of an orchestra tuning up and the stirrings and murmurs of an
audience anticipating a performance. There are no on-screen directions. You
intuitively know that a mouse click will raise the rear curtain or bring a
costumed actor on stage.
After the curtain rises, Christopher brushes the mouse back and forth on the pad, but doesn’t click on
anything just yet.
He
puts his finger directly on the screen, tracing a line from the lobby’s marble
floor across the tile of the stage.
You had noticed they were on the same
plane, perfectly aligned. The manor scene is photorealistic while the stage is
rendered artwork. Yet the boundaries of the two images are seamless. It seems
possible to step effortlessly from one world to another, from reality to
illusion, and back again. The depth of field increased tenfold after the
curtain rose.
“This
isn’t 3-D,” Christopher whispers. “It’s 3.99-D.”
(from Chapter 13)
