6413295
story
Comments: 151 +- Hardware: First Look At Acer's 3D Laptop on Wednesday October 14, @01:03PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmonitors.gif); width:52px; height:53px;
displays
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgui.gif); width:69px; height:53px;
gui
Barence writes "Acer today revealed the world’s first 3D laptop, the Acer Aspire 5738PG, which will launch alongside Windows 7 on October 22. It uses a combination of software and specially coated glass on the 15.4in screen, along with a standard set of polarised glasses. Initial impressions were a bit iffy, and whether anyone actually needs a 3D laptop is another question entirely, but we'll find out this month."
Related Stories
One person's error is another person's data.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
Games (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder whats the use for 3D laptop, and if this works better than the existing tech?
NVIDIA 3D Vision [nvidia.com] is great with some games, but laptops aren't usually used for that and you would probably want atleast 17" screen if you'd get it for gaming. So whats the use?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Build it and they will come.
Just because we don't know what the uses are, doesn't mean it's useless.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this kills Sony's shutter glasses for 3D TV. It appears I've been vindicated; when that FA was on slashdot I wondered why they would use shutter glasses instead of polarization (more $?), and was assured by many here that it was impossible or too hard.
Not "3d": *stereo* (Score:5, Interesting)
A 3D display produces a 3D representation; that is, if you change your angle of view, what you see changes accordingly. Likewise, if the display is turned 180 degrees, you'd be looking at the back of the scene being displayed.
Stereo displays provide a fixed perspective generated by providing two single-angle images of a scene that are designed to replicate the angles your eyes would achieve from the (single, unchangeable) desired vantage point. Moving your head will not reveal other portions of the scene in any way, nor will moving the display.
Stereo image technologies can become 3D when they use the actual angle of view of your eyes and change the stereo angle appropriately. This requires far more interaction with your eyes and physical orientation, not to mention actual 3D media to display. A half-measure most of us are familiar with can be observed in a game like Mechwarrior (XBox), where you can change your angle on the scene by moving your mech's position or rotating its turret; here, we have the 3D media that is required, but we still don't have the eye and body tracking that would give you the sense that you're looking at something in full 3D.
There's a huge push right now to get the public to call stereo, "3D." As proper geeks, we should resist this strongly, not only as a matter of incorrect (highly exaggerated) terminology, but to make it clear that there is a long way to go yet before we actually get 3D displays, and that we're interested in getting them.
Quite aside from the issue that until or unless we're all normally wearing display capable contacts or something similar that conveniently and as a matter of course feeds us dual images, the entire "here, put these glasses on" approach is a sorry mess. No matter what technology the glasses use.
Parent
Correction (Score:2)
I meant to say "MechAssault", rather than "MechWarrior." Sorry. Mechwarrior is a similar (for the purposes of my example) PC game.
Re: (Score:2)
My first laptop, an NEC versa, was 3D. I mean, it had length, width, and depth. A REAL innovation would be a 2D laptop! Give me a foldable thin sheet with the power of an i7, with >4GB of RAM and 500GB of storage and THAT will be an innovation!
OK seriously though,. There are plenty of uses for 3D: 3D movies, gaming, architects' showing clients 3D models of their proposals, MRIs, "virtual" surgeries, etc. You'd want a 17" laptop for serious graphics work, but when/where portability is key, along with dece
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder whats the use for 3D laptop, and if this works better than the existing tech?
NVIDIA 3D Vision [nvidia.com] is great with some games, but laptops aren't usually used for that and you would probably want atleast 17" screen if you'd get it for gaming. So whats the use?
In the last year I've worked on two different movies that were filmed stereoscopically. There were times where being able to play back a stereoscopic .mov would have been awesome.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder whatever happened to this, circa 2002:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-978499.html [cnet.com]
No glasses required. I think some other big company did the same thing.
3D laptop? (Score:2)
Aren't all laptops already in 3D?
Oups, sorry.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, Apple is trying their damnedest make a laptop that you misplace between two sheets of paper.
Re:3D laptop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I have one. The stylus input device works quite well for drawing, but the UI sucks. There's not even a delete function.
The erase function only works with Apple's special stylus that features a carbon-based tip. And *then* you have to fork out more for the "erase" tool itself.
What a load of lock-in crap.
Some people are even complaining that the carbon styluses appear to be wearing down after a relatively short time.
Re: (Score:2)
Better Idea on a Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
Using 3D glasses in the privacy of your own home (on your desktop PC) makes far more sense.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to wonder why wearing glasses makes you "a pretty big nerd".
Regardless, as soon as Apple comes out with a product that requires special glasses they will become cool, no matter how dorky the exact same glasses looked the day before the Apple product was introduced.
Re: (Score:2)
But the Apple glasses won't look dorky - they'll look like not-quite-designer sunglasses, which is perfectly acceptable.
Then 2 weeks later, somebody finds this site... ...and will claim that the Inition's glasses look *just like* the Apple ones, despite being quite different, and accuse them of just copying Apple.
http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/product.php?URL_=product_stereovis_inition_glasses&SubCatID_=3 [inition.co.uk]
Of course 10 months later some Mac website uncovers some obscure magazine interview with some..som
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed; it would be great for watching 3D movies.
When do we get holographic displays?
If you already have to wear special glasses (Score:2)
Why do you need a laptop? Put a CPU several times more powerful than iPhone in glasses themselves and use a webcam/microphone to let you "type" on any flat surface or give voice commands. Sounds like another case of trying to glue in a new technology without thinking how to integrate it.
Re:If you already have to wear special glasses (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why do you need a laptop? Put a CPU several times more powerful than iPhone in glasses themselves and use a webcam/microphone to let you "type" on any flat surface or give voice commands. Sounds like another case of trying to glue in a new technology without thinking how to integrate it.
You're right. Your solution really does sound like trying to glue in a technology without thinking how to integrate it.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you have the right general idea, but we're a ways off on the glasses tech.
Indeed! (Score:3, Insightful)
And have the Li-Ion battery to power all that in the form of a hat.
It will be great in the upcoming winter months. Not so great in the summer when it explodes and catches fire on top of your head.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And have the Li-Ion battery to power all that in the form of a hat.
No, a propeller on top of a beanie hat
Sounds fine, but not for me. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm on my third Acer laptop in 4 years (one for work, one for personal use, and a spare). I do not by any means consider myself an Acer fanboi -- they just keep coming up with the features I want at a good price point, and they seem to last a good long while (yes, I still sometimes use the one I bought in 2005).
This 'feature', however, is not likely to be among them. Might be cool for gamers and/or designers, though.
Re: (Score:2)
What you mean is that they create useless features and make you think you need them.
Um, no. No. And no.
Dual-core/64-bit/4GB RAM. I work for a company that produces database and related software, and my job requires a portable platform (even when I don't travel, I regularly work in either of 2 offices in neighbouring cities, as well as my home) for doing daily builds and testing of software intended for deployment in a distributed environment (I sometimes need to be able to run 2-4 VMs simultaneously) and on several different operating systems (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Windows); lots of
Pointless and stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
This is pointless and stupid : here's why.
First of all, 3d gaming requires some serious tinkering. It's still a very immature, rare technology that works best with better displays than you can fit into a laptop. Right now, the DLP HDTVs that support 3d are the best available display with the least amount of ghosting.
Second, rendering 2 viewpoints puts far more load on the GPU than rendering just one. You need the fastest available single GPU nvidia graphics card in order to play recent games. It has to be single GPU because so far nvidia drivers don't support 3d and SLI at the same time. It has to be nvidia because only nvidia currently offers 3d drivers. There's a way to get 3d on an ATI card but it's limited.
Gaming on a laptop is already a bad bargain, 3d gaming is even worse.
Without all that said : I think 3d gaming is freakin' awesome. I even built myself a custom planar display a couple years ago in order to play games in 3d.
Re:Pointless and stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think that gaming is the only possible use for this?
How about: Medical imaging, military imaging, warehouse inventory control visualization, education, biological research, chemistry, physics modelling, and etc.
Really, you just aren't even trying to be imaginative.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There have been 3D games out for years. Magic Carpet had red/blue 3D modes, and I think there were 3D builds of Descent as well. Those games date back to the days of DOS/Win98 in real mode.
why would anyone need a 3d laptop? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not the world's first--misleading summary (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
First 3D? (Score:2)
WTF!? Every laptop is 3D. Every tool we handle is 3D.
I really hate when people dumb down and say stuff like this. If you want to talk about a stereoscopic display call it what it is.
It's like the cyber this, virtual that....
And they even mention the "3D laptod" stupidity in the FA. Why do they insist in using the term? Aaaahhhh
ps: And the summary is wrong, this is not the first laptop to have a screen capable of 3D. Sharp had one before IIRC.
Wolfenstein3D (Score:2)
Actual display technology, even the ones provided by this kind of laptops, fall into that category. Will be have to wait still several years to see "
3D porn? (Score:2)
3D = Novelty Technology? (Score:3, Interesting)
I do 3D modelling, and I'd love to do it at the beach.
Otherwise, gaming in 3D would be fun.
Novelty technology? Okay, maybe for most folks at this time.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Warning! Do not wear outside!" Dunno if it was for spatial awareness or if the polarizing messes with your eyes in higher sunlight.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember the warnings on those polarized glasses?
"Warning! Do not wear outside!" Dunno if it was for spatial awareness or if the polarizing messes with your eyes in higher sunlight.
Most sunglasses have UV protection. 3D glasses have none.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Polarizing glasses look like sunglasses (they cut out ~50% of the light to each eye). Therefore, some people would have thought "cheap sunglasses". But darkening the visual light you can see, so that you can pick up more details/be more comfortable is only one purpose of sunglasses. A more important purpose is to protect your eyes from UV light, of which sunglasses block far more than 50%.
Hence the warning not to wear them outside.
Afterthought, wearing them outside would also cause your pupils to dialate
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Fetch yourself one of those cheap cardboard polarized stereoscopic 3D glasses, and wear them all day.
I can almost guarantee you that the constant shifting in brightness in odd cloudy patterns on any surfaces that happen to polarize the light (a door at a shallow angle, a piece of fruit, the entire sky when the sun is low-ish) will get to you real quick.
That's for linear polarizers, however.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
merge 2 points of view with X values about 3 inches apart and then you would be looking at a 3d model (btw this is what you would need to do for the glasses to work)
Re: (Score:2)
I did not realize 3d modeling was invented on and solely applies to 3d computer modeling software. Maybe all those clay and wooden models that have been around for hundreds of years are just 2d with a wierd "extra" dimension to them? I dunno.
Oh wait...
You do realize people still make 3d models of products and such, right? As good as computers are, it's hard to get a good feel for a 3d object when viewing it in 2d space. Products are often -designed- on computers, but they still make real-world mockups an
Re: (Score:2)
I never said anything about the model not having all 3 dimensions. I said simply that you see a 2D representation. Your eyes are focused on a 2D display. With 3D display technology your eyes actually do change focal planes.
In both cases, I am not wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Remind me never to use your designs since you don't know the difference between a 3D model and 3D vision. When you're making a model, no matter what computer you're using, you're still looking at a 2D representation of it on screen.
3D apps are starting to support stereo displays. He may already have a stereo LCD and can't leave the office with it.
We'd very much like to have 3d representations of our models.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My
Re:tomax7 (Score:4, Funny)
Ben Affleque suqued in that flique.
Parent