Now, turn 2D videos into 3D in a jiffy

New York: By using software that powers sports video games, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) have developed a system that automatically converts 2D video of soccer games into 3D.

The converted video can be played back over any 3D device -- a commercial 3D TV, Google's new Cardboard system which turns smartphones into 3D displays or special-purpose displays such as Oculus Rift.

Today's video games generally store very detailed 3D maps of the virtual environment that the player is navigating.

When the player initiates a move, the game adjusts the map accordingly and, on the fly, generates a 2D projection of the 3D scene that corresponds to a particular viewing angle.

They set the very realistic Microsoft soccer game “FIFA13” to play over and over again and used Microsoft's video-game analysis tool PIX to continuously store screen shots of the action. For each screen shot, they also extracted the corresponding 3D map.