Gaming is moving off the screen and into a new world of 3D immersion. Leia’s recent Lume Pad 2 launch is ushering in a new and seamless eyewear free 3D•AI experience, offering more accessibility to both players and developers.

Much like the breakthrough technologies of the past, such as interactive audio, gyroscopes and haptic feedback, which have leveraged our senses to create deeper experiences. Leia’s new 3D•AI tablet adds visual tangibility and literal depth that must be seen to be fully appreciated. The technology offers breathtaking realism, is highly immersive, and incredibly easy to work with.

3D magic is created using proprietary Diffractive Lightfield Backlighting (DLB™) nanotechnology, which projects multiple high quality views to the user. Simulating the true parallax, occlusion and visual nuances a person would experience when viewing real world spaces. These multiple viewing angles, in combination with a powerful AI assisted head tracking system, create a seamless 3D viewing experience for every user. Although similar in some ways to other stereoscopic and VR technologies, Lume Pad 2 produces a high quality 3D experience and does away with the need for cumbersome eyewear and accessories.

What exactly does this mean for a game developer? In the development world, not much changes. Some adjustments to your game’s camera setup and you’re ready to go! The guts of the process relies on generating multiple views, a common paradigm in XR pipelines, then switching the display from 2D to 3D at will by calling services on the Android powered device to enable the 3D backlight and AI optimized head tracking. Much of this is done in the background and Leia provides tools to assist in this process, as well as a few apps to preview, convert and generate (leveraging a custom AI generator) 3D images and assets. A Leia SDK for Unity is currently open to the public and available on their tools page, and one for UE5 is coming soon. The SDK caters to both new and existing projects, which makes for easy development and deployment using the cross platform game engine.

To get the most out of the Lume Pad 2’s 3D capabilities, the content team at Leia have a few tips:

1. Start with the obvious and optimize your scene’s general 3D depth cues. Focus your efforts on lighting, composition and framing. Having these design fundamentals correct will have the greatest impact.
2. Use appropriate backgrounds, effects and colourways which subtly draw attention where you need it.
3. Think about how you would like the scene presented to the user in 3D. To help with this the Leia camera setup has three values to tweak, a 3D focus distance, an overall 3D strength and a value which adjusts the head tracking’s influence over your camera.

Designing for 3D is a new paradigm, so there are some unobvious nuances you will need to take note of:

1. Avoid violating depth cues where possible. For example a 2D UI overlay element which sits on top of or passes through a 3D model which should be perceived visually in front of the UI.
   1. The mismatch of depth would cause visual confusion and create an uncomfortable experience.
2. Another example could be the use of a plain featureless bright background. 3D objects placed in the foreground of such a scene would be muted in effect.

Although these concepts may seem new, it’s nothing to fret over.

Developing on the Lume Pad 2 allows you to experiment, visualize and iterate quickly, tweaking your designs as you go and create the best 3D experiences. You’ll also be at the forefront of how the platform will shape game development in the near future — maybe a game where a character can peer around corners before shooting enemies? Puzzles that push 3D perception, or jump scares which really come out and grab you! The only limitation is your imagination.

Not only does Lume Pad 2 add another useful tool to a game developer’s arsenal in creating amazing gaming experiences, but it’s also easy to use.

Now available for pre-order, and shipping from early April, Lume Pad 2 will have you building 3D•AI experiences supported by a host of developer tools and a community of creators in the Leia Developer Forum. 3D•AI content can be viewed exclusively on the Lume Pad 2.