Pocket pictures: mobile phones are the next new venue for 3D graphics.

In the days of old--15 or so years ago--you had to have high-powered, specialty hardware and software to run 3D graphics. Nowadays, 3D graphics on ordinary desktop machines are a matter of course, and even laptops can run high-end modeling and animation programs. Game consoles have proceeded apace and are known for their ability to handle rich 3D imagery. What now? Embedded devices, say most people in the industry--gadgets such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones--are the next frontier

The first question that comes to some folks' minds is: Why? Of what possible use would 3D imagery be on those tiny screens, especially with mobile phones growing more diminutive with each product cycle? You wouldn't want to, for example, apply walk cycles to a digital character or composite a movie scene on a phone, even if you could. It turns out, however, that quite a few uses exist for 3D on communications devices, uses at once more and less ambitious than the sorts of applications we're accustomed to associating with 3D.

Tiny Messengers

Gaming is the first and probably the most obvious wireless 3D application Since people are already accustomed to playing games on their portable phones, it stands to reason that an interest in games with prettier and richer graphics would exist. Even if you don't yet know that you want 3D games, you will, according to Paul Beardow, CTO of Superscape which develops software for the 3D wireless market. "The emergence of 3D [for mobile phones] is a situation very similar to that of game consoles--once end users have seen 3D, they no longer want 2D games," he says.

Wireless 3D graphics are also being developed to enable message delivery via animated characters. Think Darth Vader mouthing your instructions to come home immediately on the screen of your daughter's mobile phone. Users' desire for such technology would seem less of a sure thing, but companies such as 3dMe, which is developing a series of characters that not only deliver words, but do so in a mood appropriate to the message, are banking on a sizeable market for just such applications. In Japan the land of the bleeding edge when it comes to wireless graphics, these kinds of characters are already popular, especially among teenagers.

Other potential uses for 3D on phones include avatars or virtual spokespeople who deliver news, horoscopes, and financial information, and e-commerce applications that would allow users to examine objects at all angles before purchasing them.

And there are endeavors that aim to increase the physical functionality of the embedded devices themselves. Last spring, for example, start-up company Canesta announced the concept of the "projection keyboard" for wireless devices. Canesta's 3D image-sensing and image-projection chips, incorporated into a cell phone or PDA, would make it possible for users to type onto a projected full-size keyboard while their finger movements are tracked in three dimensions, and the keystroke information relayed back to the device.