Please tell me I can view images in a web browser automatically converted to 3D?? For example: I want to open a Marvel website and read comic books in 3D. Is it possible? It’s honestly my purchase point. There’s no way I’d save each comic page as a jpg and use the app to convert it manually…
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Hey @profzelonka, there’s no way for the tablet OS to access inside other apps that don’t use the SDK, otherwise the OS would be able to read your banking data and other private information. Obviously that’s bad, and security is a top priority.
The web browser is Google Chrome, which is obviously made by Google. If Google added the Leia SDK to it, it would work the way you describe, but until they (or someone else) makes a web browser using the Leia SDK, there’s not really a safe way for us to do what you’re saying.
Now, you can share web VIDEO streams to LeiaTube and it’ll work, but video streams are a specific data type and it doesn’t really work that way for anything else. It’s the equivalent of saving each page as a JPEG, like you mentioned.
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@Nima Thanks, I appreciate the explanation! I feel like this question will come up time and time again. So to explore solutions:
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Could Leia at all be looking at producing a browser solution? Whether it be chromium or a sort of use of android’s WebView? While I’m sure someone would want to see their bank account number in 3D, most wouldn’t bank on a 3D Leia Browser app made for the purpose of viewing images in 3D.
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This may have been answered elsewhere but for an app developer, what would it take to incorporate Leia’s 3D function on images displayed by the app?
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Yeah, we’ve got the question a lot over the years, and we always give the same answer, but despite that it doesn’t seem like anyone who asked has followed through on building a 3D browser for the platform. That’s definitely a solution!
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We are not currently looking to build a browser solution ourselves, but are open to anyone else making, supporting, and shipping one on the platform.
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In any Android app, you can use the Leia SDK (Native, Unity, or Unreal) and there will be a texture you can render to, and as long as that image is in a 3D format, it will display in 3D on the device. If the image is 2D, you can convert it yourself or work with us to potentially use our conversion tech to turn media into 3D.
Thanks! Makes sense, and it would definitely need to be a use of the Leia conversion tech which I’m gonna assume wouldn’t be easy to implement, or at least beyond my understanding since I’m not even a dev unfortunately.
Alternatively, is there a way to open .cbz files for on-the-fly 3D conversion in one of the existing Leia apps? A cbz file format is just a zip of jpg files, typically used as a comic book format of digital renders or scans. So the idea is to open a cbz file in the player to view the first jpg in the zip and click next for next page. I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s not supported to which I then wonder, more laboriously, is it possible to bulk convert a ton of jpgs to 3D?
Sorry for all the questions, I’m fascinated by the technology and potential. Bringing a whole new advanced way to appreciate comic book art is such an exciting idea I want to be a reality.
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That format is currently unsupported. It’s really easy to convert JPEG images to 3D. When you open them in LeiaPlayer, there’s simply a 3D button, and you tap it, and it instantly becomes 3D. Once you do that, you never have to tap it again, just go to the 3D file next time.
You could in theory just make a folder in your file system called “The Amazing Spider-Man” and then make folders inside of that say “Issue 1”, “Issue 2”, etc. Then put the images inside those, and you’ll be able to convert them to 3D and just swipe between the different pages to read them.
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This is definitely a nice feature to have. The Nintendo 3DS’ web browser is capable of displaying 3D images, and is even capable of playing 3D web videos on the New 3DS. It’s running a custom web browser based on a very old version of Webkit.
But @Nima, I don’t understand the assertion that the OS doesn’t have access to third party applications. Aren’t the various system interfaces utilized by said apps provided by, and thus able to be manipulated and monitored by, the OS? For example apps typically receive input events not directly from the hardware, but forwarded from the hardware by the OS. And aren’t the graphics rendering apis also likewise provided by the OS?
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Sort of. The concept is called “sandboxing”. Only VERY specific data can move back and forth between the OS and apps or between apps, which is documented and/or explicitly agreed upon by the user (e.g. Camera Permissions). Even though Leia works on and distributes the OS/firmware, we can’t access any of the data or “sniff” the data in non-Leia apps. Which is good, because the alternative is not good for your security.
So since Android is open source, is that just a requirement of Google’s certifications?
Also, sort of. It’s not exactly correct to say Android is open source. AOSP is open source. When most people say “Android”, they actually mean Google Android, which is not open source. Chrome is part of Google Android, it is NOT a part of AOSP.
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What about a web extension? Firefox supports extensions on Android.
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@Daniel That’s a very interesting idea! We’ll look into it.
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I think a browser extension could end up being a cornerstone device selling feature if done right. Check out Kiwi Browser. It is basically an upgraded Chrome browser with access to all the Chrome extensions and others as well.
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On desktop you can connect to native services running on the computer, but I’m not sure that works on Android due to the security model.
The native messaging extension APIs are not supported on Android, but you can make a localhost server in an Android app and then a web extension can make HTTP requests to it.
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