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Portables Hardware Technology

Sharp Announces 3D Laptop 266

Posted by CowboyNeal from the laptops-of-the-future dept.
wembley writes "The Associated Press is running a story about a forthcoming Sharp laptop with a 3D screen. I can't find any pictures, but it requires no glasses, so you don't have to walk around looking like Biff's sidekick in Back to the Future. It comes with WinXP, but it's only a matter of time before we're arguing here about what looks better in 3D, Gnome or KDE."
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Sharp Announces 3D Laptop More

Sharp Announces 3D Laptop

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  • All laptops are in 3D.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:22AM (#6940819) Journal
    Unless theyve been run over by a steamroller..
    • Wouldn't these laptops technically be 4-D? I mean, it's not like the monitor displays a static image. You have 4 variables here: x,y,z, and then t for time.

  • Ducking and Dodging (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mholt108 ( 229701 )
    Can you imagine how sick you would get playing the original DOOM onthis??

    • Re:Ducking and Dodging (Score:5, Insightful)

      by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:28AM (#6940849)
      not a chance of that... all apps will have to be specially written to take advantage of the screen... it's NOT a magic "use this and everything you've got's 3D" driver...
      • actually if it's real smart it can make it without 'spesific' support from the software, by some wacky directx driver that would use the depthness information it has for the polygons(for zbuffer), and create two bit different pictures by that. but of course there's a quite large chance that it gets screwed up.

        iirc some of the alternating shutting lcd-glasses thingys did this.

        -

      • no they don't (Score:4, Informative)

        by RMH101 ( 636144 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:17AM (#6940995)
        the 3d information's all contained within the opengl layer, you just need to write appropriate video drivers.

      • My final year project was an AWT modeled on a 3D graphics card. The theory was you can use this second processor, the GPU (that's doing nothing normally) to move windows, render fonts and images, etc. You'd get alpha blending and all sorts of cool effects for practically free. Windows were hanging in 3D space and could cast shadows, even button shading was done properly using camera angles and lights.

        It occurs to me that, with this technology I could dig out that old executable and find it actually in

    • Note that the 3d effect requires that your head is positioned properly with respect to the screen. Hence, if you really do "duck and dodge" while playing some game, you will loose the 3d effect everytime your head moves too far to the left or right of the center-line.

      On a related note, you can buy Stereo LCD projectors [stereo3d.com], but most require special glasses that alternate between the left and right eye. On the normal LCD flatpanel display the light is polarized, so you can't use the polarized glasses trick.

  • pornography (Score:5, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:23AM (#6940825) Homepage
    but it's only a matter of time before we're arguing here about what looks better in 3D, Gnome or KDE

    It's a sad day when you hear the words "3D display" and the first thing that comes to mind is desktops wars, not pornography.

    • Re:pornography (Score:4, Funny)

      by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:32AM (#6941053)
      Yeah, I was thinking of pr0n too, then suddenly I remember one that I just watched 2 weeks ago where the guy, after "hacking" 3 girls at the same time, and turned to shoot at the camera... and I'm like.... NOOOO!!! I'm not going to imagine this scene in 3D!

    • Re:pornography (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dolo666 ( 195584 )
      I think pr0n looks better "over there". Seriously, do you really want some nasty thing coming out of your laptop? This kinda reminds me of the scent-maker hardware product that would simulate smells. We all commented about some smells that would be possible at pr0n sites, and how certain spam emails would better be left unsmelt.

      Personally, I think 3d displays are still fads. Now if it were a 3d hologram display that replaced the flat screen, like the chess boards in Star Wars, then I think there is definat

  • Details (Score:5, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:25AM (#6940833)
    If you can read Japanese, here's Sharp's explanation of how it works [sharp.co.jp].

    If you can't, look at the pretty diagrams and the stupid faked 3D photo.
    • I just can't imagine this not giving the user a pounding headache after a few hours. It's one thing to create 3D using perspective on a 2D screen but to implement it by using the shift in the focal points, better keep the bottle of aspirin handy.

  • No, please no. (Score:4, Funny)

    by RMH101 ( 636144 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:25AM (#6940836)
    Can you imagine how bad Powerpoint presentations are going to be with this sort of technology? It was bad enough when we gave them clip art...

    • Re:No, please no. (Score:4, Funny)

      by simong_oz ( 321118 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:46AM (#6940919) Journal
      clip art was nothing compared to watching every bullet point flying in from all sides of the screen or flashing on and off or dimming or dissolving or ... having to listen to the constant mouse clicking/pgdn because someone has just discovered the animation feature.

      • The worst thing about watching most powerpoint presentations is listening to the presenter slowly read the whole thing WORD FOR WORD. With 3D displays, though, they could add enough animation to make it bearable, like having bullet points actually shoot bullets at each other and using huge explosions for transitions. Any word on the possibility of a 3D projector?

  • I really liked those glasses.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by peculiarmethod ( 301094 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:27AM (#6940841) Journal
    Those red slatted glasses (that came in a McDonalds happy meal) were just the thing I needed to further ostrisize myself from my schoolmates in Oklahoma, as if running something called a Pirate BBS and actually reading the BTTF books (which all sucked except part III) didn't do that well enough already. Now kids can be singled out from the next car on public transports for mugging, thanks to Billy and his newly co-produced 3D minesweeper.

    I for one welcome my 3D natalie portman.

    -pm

  • A measure of geekness (Score:3, Funny)

    by min0r_threat ( 260613 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:28AM (#6940856)
    "...it's only a matter of time before we're arguing here about what looks better in 3D, Gnome or KDE."

    Oh what joy! Proof I'm not a geek! My first thought was 3D pr0n. Gnome and KDE were the last things on my mind when I read about this.

  • OperatingSystem Question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jlemmerer ( 242376 ) <xcom123@yCOFFEEahoo.com minus caffeine> on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:33AM (#6940876) Homepage
    Does the OS have to support this screen? I cant't imagine current operating systems of being able to handle this 3D effect native. Of course, they will supply windows drivers, but to really decide if gnome or kde look better you will propably need a linux driver. i just hope that they will release the architecture and drivers so that also the linux community can participate in the glorious 3D features. furthermore it would be of interest if (provided no drivers are present) the image looks blurry or if it just looks flat 2D.

    I mysql would appreciate a laptop featuring this "smoke screen" that was posted here in /. a few weeks ago, imagine, no display you have to flap open, a REALLY slim notebook and the geek factor to have a image to come out of virtually nothing..
    • If you activate this feature on a normal OS, you will basically
      just loose half of the horiz. resolution as soon as you turn 3D
      on.

      But I think it's interesting that MacOS X uses, and Longhorn
      will use, 3D acceleration for their desktops. It should be
      relatively easy to extend the widget set with adequate
      depth buffer information and have it rendered in 3D.

      (Although it's not too fast to draw directly into depth buffers.)

  • I already have my KDE desktop in 3D (Score:4, Informative)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:33AM (#6940877)
    I use 3D-Desktop [sourceforge.net].

    It's is an OpenGL program for switching virtual desktops in a seamless 3-dimensional manner on Linux. With this program your desktop looks futuristiiiic and you can impress your friends!
    • This is really lame. It is only giving you an animation of switching between desktops, not a real 3D desktop. This has been done (much better) a long time ago by SGI, where they would have such an animation everytime you opened a folder. Makes your eyes dizzy after a while. These kind of animations don't add anything useful, just a gadget to show of to your friend. I bet that you could do the same in Windows.
      • theres the 3d window manager(3dwm.org) which does stuff like this(runs on linux, irix and nt at least). Also, the ggi project did some stuff with it too. This can actually do primitives and is being used to create 3d enviroments and virtual reality type stuff.
    • Unfortunately it almost does the right thing. Instead of each desktop appearing to be on the outside of a shape, the desktops should be on the INSIDE of a multi-sided spherical shape.

      That way you could "back up" to see multiple desktops arrayed adjacent to each other, which in itself would be more meaingful if the surfaces of the spherical shape fit some multiple of desktops (like 4).

  • So how does it know ..... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peterpi ( 585134 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:36AM (#6940886)
    .... what do display at what depth? Do windowing systems use the Z-buffer?

    Maybe I should just RTFA.

  • Picture of Mebius (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:38AM (#6940891)
    Found it here:
    http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2 020/

  • I have this secret design (oops, posted it to Slashdot, now it can't be patented anymore) for a new workspace design, which depends on a 3D display.

    Basically you throw down objects you're working on, into concentric piles. The most important stuff stays 'hot', near you, while stuff you use less often gets gradually pushed further and further back.

    To open a document or web site you just click it, and it becomes 'hot' again. There's a little text box I can type keywords in, to find matching documents.

    That's about it. Replaces the hierarchical file system with something much closer to the way I work (and AFAIK, many creative people work).
    • So, in effect, it's like Microsoft's "My Recent Documents", only with multiple levels of "recentness"? Sounds like a neat extension to the concept that would actually work quite well in conjunction with the vanishing seldom used menu items idea. You could have a menu with the "hot items", wait a second or two and the list expands to include the "warm" items. Add a couple of options at the top/bottom of the menu for "Search" and "Show all" and you're done.

      Do you know Python? Sounds like this would be a

    • I work that way a lot, too. One place where it's obvious is in me rarely using bookmarks for web pages. Instead, I use the url dropdown in my web browser where my most commonly and frequently visited websites are nearly always near the top without me having to actively bother saying I want them to be there.

      It falls over a little for less frequent things, like interesting websites that don't get updated very often and so I forget to go back to them.

    • Replaces the hierarchical file system with ... the pile system? :)
      • Yes, pretty much.

        If I had a free week and some skill with any graphics library, I'd hack it together.

        Imagine your desktop, piled with lots of random documents. Each document is a URL referring to a resource somewhere on the net, most of them local to you, some on your LAN, others on the Internet.

        When you create a new resource, the cluttertop simply throws a new icon somewhere on top of a pile. You can move it around as you like, especially in 3D space (closer, further from you).

        When you look at the sp
    • If you patent the Most Recently Used algorithm, we're going to have some problems. That and my old comp sci. prof is going to hunt you down with an rpg.

      Interesting idea based on a fundamental comp sci theory.

    • Basically like a cache

      Which you would have a hard time patenting.

    • I'm afraid that's already been done. I read about it last year somewhere -- might have been a Xerox PARC development.
    • oops, posted it to Slashdot, now it can't be patented anymore

      Why not? Didn't someone patent the wheel recently in the US?

  • Pics here!!!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by geektux ( 706634 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:42AM (#6940904)
    Some pics can be found here.........

    http://www.sharp.co.jp/mebius/index.html

  • Some links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:44AM (#6940912)
    Just finished a writeup on this, so here are some links:

    my humble piece in norwegian [hardware.no]

    some pictures down the page [digit-life.com]

    English explaination of the "parallax" technology [sharp-world.com]

    Sharps own specification page [sharp-world.com]

    It's only supprted by Windows XP sp1a, by the way.

    penhead

    • Batteries provide 1.3 hours of operation.

      1.3 hours. I think they missed the meeting on what the holy grail of laptop design is.

  • About time too... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ContemporaryInsanity ( 583611 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:46AM (#6940918)
    ...those 2d laptops, put the bloody things down, you can't find 'em again. That extra dimensions gonna make all the difference.

  • Sigh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jesus IS the Devil ( 317662 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:46AM (#6940920)
    but it's only a matter of time before we're arguing here about what looks better in 3D, Gnome or KDE."

    Methinks CowBoyNeal has been deprived of sex for too long...

  • Why a laptop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by L-s-L69 ( 700599 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:52AM (#6940934)
    Why has this been implemented in a laptop? If its as good as it seems I'd much rather see it been used in tv's/flat screen moniters first and surely this would be a far larger market than laptop users alone? Maybe im missing the point but a huge, 3d widescreen tv sounds pretty good to me!

  • Half horizontal resolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rexguo ( 555504 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @05:58AM (#6940940) Homepage
    Be reminded that in 3D mode, the horizontal resolution is halved. That is, a 1024x768 display will show only 512x768 effectively in 3D mode. This is simply due to the implementation, where half of the pixels are sent to the left eye, and the other half sent to the right eye. The first to commercially offer autostereoscopic (the proper term for this) LCD is probably DTI, www.dti3d.com.
    • Whilst this is true; in practice it will look better than that- the human visual system is good at combining two slightly fuzzy images and coming up with apparently sharper images. In other words, even though the resolution each eye sees is halved, you have two different sets of halved resolution so you will almost get the full resolution back.

      The big problem comes if the software doesn't antialias- then hard edges will be seen with one eye and not the other, and you will get headaches and stuff. Still, t

  • I understand that the resolution will be halved in one direction when using the 3D display mode. That might make it rather useless for normal use. Or can the 3D-effect also be switched on for certain regions of the display?

  • Gnome or KDE? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:26AM (#6941025)
    It has to be KDE. Who wants to see a big grey foot poking out at them?

  • Great! Now all we need is a way to control it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gldm ( 600518 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:30AM (#6941039)
    So what's going to be the breakthrough control interface for 3D like the mouse was for 2D? And don't point at one of those "3D mice" with the little eraser pointer for scroll on them either. Maybe one of the gyroscopic mice but I think I'd get tired of having to hold the damn thing up in the air 8 hours a day. Maybe something like the SpaceOrb 360, but I couldn't get any decent precision with that when I had one.

    Maybe someone should dust off the old NES U-force and find a way to integrate it into the laptop.
  • From the dti3d website:

    "In fact, if you just sit directly in front of the display at about 30" away, as you normally do with any display, you will be in a position where you see 3D."

    Thirty inches (75 cm)? I don't know about you, but I'm more like fifteen inches from the screen. At 30 inches, I couldn't read the damn thing.

  • Impact on eyes? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:33AM (#6941057)
    Just curious as to what, if any, impact this would have on your eyes since each one would be seeing a separate image therefore working a bit harder to make sense of it.

    I'm remembering the strain of looking at stereoscopic images and this sounds a bit like that.

    Any ideas?
    • Just curious as to what, if any, impact this would have on your eyes since each one would be seeing a separate image therefore working a bit harder to make sense of it. I'm remembering the strain of looking at stereoscopic images and this sounds a bit like that.

      It doesn't matter that the images are different for both eyes. Your eyes normally see two different images anyway (that's how you perceive depth). What matters is how good the software is at generating two different images that the brain will
      • Only the perceived depth of the stereoscopic effect
        is different from the distance of the display - which
        you have to focus on.

        I'm not sure. That that could cause some kind of strain.
    • >>what, if any, impact this would have on your eyes since each one would be seeing a separate image

      Erm, that's what happens anyway. It's your brain that puts the two different images together to create a 3-D single image. All 3D imaging systems (including reality) work by presenting each eye with a slightly different image. Except for those wierd stereogram postcards. No idea how they work, but they really give you eyestrain.

  • Why this will NOT be popular (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:40AM (#6941076)
    Most of the various current incarnations of 3-D displays contain an ugly, hard-to-resolve flaw. The display rendering routines must make assumptions about the location of each eyeball. Thus, they only create a proper 3-D picture when the person's head is front, center, level, the proper distance from the screen, and of normal eye spacing. Deviations in the position of the eyes from this sweet spot cause distortions in which the two views are inconsistent with the 3-D scene at best, and infusible at worst.

    Worst of all are deviations in the angular orientation of the viewer's head WRT the screen. 3-D displays assume that the separation between the eyes is left-right. If the person tilts their head, the images do not fuse properly and cause eye strain or double vision. The only solution is a 4 or 5-axis head tracking system, although a head-mounted 3-D display does provide a first-order correction to the angular orientation problem (it causes other problems, though).

    A secondary problem is that only one viewer can ever be in the "sweet" spot of the 3-D system. To create a proper 3-D view for the second person, the system needs to create a second pair of images that are different from those seen by the first person. Add another pair of eye and the need a second pair of images.

    3-D has been around for a decades in 3-D movies, computer displays, and VR, but it has never caught on. Its not that it does not work well enough to interest some of the people some of the time, it just doesn't work well enough to interest most of the people, most of the time.

    On the other hand, I could be wrong -- I never thought Window's would be popular either.
    • From the article linked to in the post
      Tokyo-based Sharp has been selling cellphones with 3-D displays for NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, since November last year. They were so popular the feature is being introduced in notebook computers, Nakayama says.
      If it works with cellphones (come on who holds a cellphone at eyelevel, its almost always at chest or waist level when you read a text message) It should work for laptops, wouldnt it ? And the market is Japan rememeber ? They made pokemon popula
    • This particular screen technology has been around for a *VERY long time. It was purchasable over three years ago. If it's not popular by now, I'm certainly not holding my breath.

      2-19-2000 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/19/12172 5 4&mode=flat&tid=137 [slashdot.org]

      *And here's a quote from the first comment to the article:
      "Interesting side point: The press on this form of 3d vision on their web site dates back to 1994 so it's not exactly cutting edge (unless they've recently undergone a quantum leap f
    • Very true, and there's another problem with most of these 3-D technologies... they assume the viewer has equal vision in both eyes. In my case (and the case of lots of people I would think), this isn't true.

      My right eye is FAR stronger than my left, and so in most situations, my brain doesn't use my left eye unless there's peripheral information or confusing depth geometry. Hence, those 3D glasses never work on me, and I suspect this display will appear flat and fuzzy to people with similar uneven vision
  • A BSOD in 3d will still end up looking flat...

  • Lots leading up to this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @07:14AM (#6941205) Homepage
    There have [slashdot.org] been [slashdot.org] lots [slashdot.org] of [slashdot.org] articles [slashdot.org] leading [slashdot.org] up [slashdot.org] to [slashdot.org] this [slashdot.org], and most of them are from Sony.

    My only question is "Why didn't they create a standalone LCD panel first?"
  • Actually, it just gives me headaches.
  • Lenticular Displays.

    You know those pictures that change as you tilt them or walk by. These displays were all the rage at SIGGRAPH this year, but IMHO, they weren't very good at displaying true "3D".

    Some various pics [stereoscopic.org].

  • I saw a demo recently (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrispl ( 189217 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:48AM (#6941848) Homepage
    I saw the Sharp 3D laptop on display at the 2003 IFA in Berlin. It works on the same principle, lenticular imaging, that has been used for years for 3D collectors cards and posters etc. The screen is covered with thin vertical stripes that redirect light coming off the screen, showing each eye a different image.
    The 3D effect is quite convincing however it has a few drawbacks. The biggest problem is you have to look at it from precice angles for the effect to work i.e. if you move your head from side to side you will see the screen go from real 3D to a blur, then inverted 3D, blur... This is especially troublesome if more than one person is trying to look at it at once. The second problem is that to show two images at once each image has only half the resolution of the entire display, making it look fuzzy compared to regular 2D displays.
    For some reason the demo they had running only cycled through still pictures of 3D rendered scenes, no video or UI shots which makes me suspicious that these problems are even worse in those applications. It is cool technology no doubt, but it still has some problems to work out.

  • Ouch! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SharkJumper ( 651652 ) <sharkjumperNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:54AM (#6941898)
    The computer display produces 3D images by sending a slightly different image to the right eye and the left eye at once by bending them in different angles

    AAAH! MY EYES! IT'S BENDING MY EYES!!

  • I'll wait (Score:2, Insightful)

    by HomeGroove ( 527053 )
    Nevermind that I don't have the money, but I'm weary to buy first editions of anything. The reason for the weariness is because I bought a 2000 Ford Focus (US first edition) and have had about 7 recalls on the car so far. So let 'em work out the kinks on this new technology and in the same time, drop the price a bit. Oh and get it on the Mac (then again, if it comes to Mac, the price will still be high).

  • Proprietary 3D format? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @09:11AM (#6942056)
    Mebius now only has a small sample of 3D applications, such as an image of fruit and flowers and an animation of dinosaurs. But Sharp is hoping other companies will design 3D games and videos

    So, it uses some proprietary 3D format? It's junk then. Why not have it support OpenGL and DirectX?

    I Had a TNT2 when they came out that had 3D glasses and worked perfectly with any OpenGL/DirectX graphics... why should this be different?
  • The $3,000 (U.S.) laptop switches back and forth between its 3-D feature and a regular display by a push of a button.

    The question remains: Will the 3D-mode button only work with Windoze. The article says that it ships with Windoze XP.

  • That's nothing (Score:2, Funny)

    by popo ( 107611 )

    3D Screen? Pwash! That's nothing!

    My entire laptop is 3D! You can walk around it and see it from different angles and everything!


  • This is almost certainly related to this story [slashdot.org] from last year. Who thought they would actually bring it to market?

  • Maybe this was the last piece of the "puzzle" to create Duke Nukem Forever! True 3D. Maybe I'm wrong!

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