Acer To Launch 3D Notebook In October? 135
An anonymous reader writes "Acer is planning to announce a 3D notebook computer by end of October. If Acer indeed comes out with a 3D laptop then it'll be the world's first manufacturer to do so. The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it requires no special glasses. The 15.6-inch notebook features built-in software which can convert regular 2D movies to 3D and directly support 3D movies." Update: 06/08 23:18 GMT by T : According to the linked story, the no-glasses version is still in the works; the current iteration does still require special glasses.
Been done. (Score:5, Funny)
CSI already has these. I know because I saw it on TV. They were also able to get High Res photos out of a .5MB security camera and spin it around in 3D.
CSI technicians... (Score:3, Funny)
Is there anything they can't do?
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Last I heard they still haven't been able to tighten up the graphics on level 3.
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Stopping David Caruso from doing his stupid pose in EVERY SINGLE SCENE?
Re:CSI technicians... (Score:4, Funny)
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They were also able to get High Res photos out of a .5MB security camera and spin it around in 3D.
They stole the technology from Blade Runner. Bastards.
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I think you are referring to "which can convert regular 2D movies to 3D " .... I also kept wondering about that feature! Must be like one of the virtual surround sound devices that can take mono and turn it into a nice effect which makes you feel like sitting in a coke can...
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Actually, it is real - Sharp made them years ago - no glasses required, so if Acer indeed comes out with a 3D laptop then it'll be the world's second manufacturer to do so. Sharp even got to a second generation of them. Here's a link: http://www.physorg.com/news3296.html [physorg.com]. It was so successful you can't buy them anymore. The problem was lack of content and you needed to hold you head in the hot-zone of 3D-ness. Even if Acer manages to release a decent 3D screen, and we start watching the latest 3D movies on
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Currently stereoscopic glasses are needed to view the 3D content. Stereoscopic glasses [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy] work by exposing a "left" image to the left eye and a "right" image to the right eye - so that the brain puts the two together and it appears 3D.
How on earth is Acer planning to replace the stereoscopic glasses? Divide the screen in two and display the images in corresponding halves? Might be more possible if the images were replaced by interlaced panels with some sort of curved
Re:Been done. (Score:4, Interesting)
Err, 3D without glasses has been done before and is still a hot topic these days.
Look for "autostereoscopic" screens. (despite the name, actually more than 2 pictures are used to generate the 3D effect, more like 8 pictures)
Sharp already commercialized a 3D laptop some years ago.
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Obligatory PHD Comics reference: If TV Science was more like REAL Science [phdcomics.com].
WTH is a 3D Laptop??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WTH is a 3D Laptop??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love a 2 - dimensional laptop. I envision something like a sheet of paper that accepts input from my fingertips or from a stylus or from a virtual keyboard.
Don't even worry about being able to fold it or roll it. If I can just slip it into a folder among sheets of regular paper.
Yes, I know that a sheet of paper is still 3D, but I've been waiting for the electronic "paper" for like 15 years now. I remember when I worked for a university as a director of computing and went out to Cupertino for a week. This is back when Apple was still interested in the educational market, so they took real good care of us, put us up in a nice bed and breakfast. But no hookers, damn it.
Anyway, they had some spooky Apple hardware developer talk to us about the things they were planning and told us we'd definitely have electronic paper by "2001". I always thought that guy might have been on 'shrooms or something equally entheogenic. When I asked him about the Newton, he developed a slight, but noticeable eye-twitch. My guess is that today that very hardware developer is working at a Potbelly's sandwich shop after completing court-ordered rehab.
Anyway, if anybody from Apple is reading this: Stop fooling around with the fucking iPhones and get me my iPaper! Or ePaper, or whatever you want to call it.
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I'm just thinking.... how would you plug a usb drive into a sheet of paper?
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Anyway, if anybody from Apple is reading this: Stop fooling around with the fucking iPhones and get me my iPaper! Or ePaper, or whatever you want to call it.
But, but... Surely you can get an iHooker from the AppStore with your iPhone... Or at least a hooker locator app. Wasn't that what you were originally complaining about ?
See ? Apple *does* care !
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I've been waiting for the electronic "paper" for like 15 years now.
Well then you only got 5 more years to wait.
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That comment is pretty two dimensional. Don't be so shallow.
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aguably 2D: the thickness of the laptop has no useful purpose, just because the keyboard is not in the same plane as the display does not qualify it as 3D. You could represent any useful point of the laptop using just two coordinates.
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You must be in some strange orthogonal plane. 1 s^2 is a rate?. It doesn't hold up to scaling arguments. Try 1s/s.
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That's 1 universal second per local second, I assume.
Please people, label your units!
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When I divide a second by a second I just get the number 1.
YMMV though.
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Exactly my point: Time is relative, and a rate of time/time must be a rate of local time / some non-local time (or the reciprocal) to make any sense at all.
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That doesn't make it 4 dimensional.
It has to span multiple points along the time axis to be dimensional in that regard.
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And how do you know it doesn't? Prove it.
"convert regular 2D movies to 3D" (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Re:"convert regular 2D movies to 3D" (Score:4, Funny)
We already have that. (Score:2, Insightful)
The majority of 3D movies are such that you know that they're awful before you see them. No time-travel necessary.
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The majority of 3D movies are such that you know that they're awful before you see them. No time-travel necessary.
But after you've seen them you really wish you could travel back in time.
That's why 4D would be a breakthrough.
But... (Score:1)
does the knob go up to 11D?
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will it fukup my Memento playback?
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I believe when I see one with my own eyes.
Is that with or without the special glasses that this system "doesn't" include? ;)
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Really, it doesn't include the glasses? So when do the glasses become available, because it is in a few years, then I already have a laptop that does this.
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I second that. I'll believe it when I see it with my one good eye!
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I played a "no glasses" arcade game back in 1991. No scan lines, flicker, or color bleed, just high def that puts my 43 incher to shame. Of course, it was in the PX at the Army Signal School. More geeks per square foot than anyplace else I've ever seen. Literally THOUSANDS, and not an English major to be seen!
Hmm... Possibly something like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fotowoosh? [techcrunch.com]
Highly unlikely that it could work in a way acceptable for viewing movies. Cardboard cutouts instead of actual 3D at best...
The easiest way to get a stereo 3D movie... (Score:3, Informative)
The easiest way to get a stereo 3D movie is actually by taking advantage of camera motion.
1. Detect camera motion
2. Detect the direction
3. Detect the velocity
4. display frame t=N for one eye
5. display frame t=+-x for the other eye, depending on 2, and x depending on 4.
If you've got the movie Swordfish, you can apply this technique to the action sequence in the beginning where a camera orbits the scene. In fact, try here*:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2a6tw82&s=5 [tinypic.com]
It's in cross-eyed stereoscopic format,
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Well... you don't really need to have it down to 1/30th of a second unless you want real time 2D-3D conversion and playback.
You could convert it to a 3D video for later viewing, but it would have to work faster than 15 minutes per a second of the movie (30 seconds mentioned above times 30 frames per second).
The REAL problem in such a case would not be the length of time it took to "3D-ify" the movie.
After all... faster processors and dedicated hardware would cut that down in time.
Making a 3D copy of the mov
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yup - that's why 3D live action movies are a ways off for now.. CG is easier (See another post of mine on that; it's still a lot of extra work); with live action you have to deal with physical cameras.. whether or not you can even place them in the spot you want, or whether that would place one camera halfway into a wall, etc.
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lol, I love this snippet from that post:
Wow, apparently Arrington is completely unaware that VRML is a 15 year old spec that's been ignored by "future browsers" for over a decade because it's crap, and is practically unused.
Just what "future browsers" need -- a bloated 3d presentation format that targets a prob
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Highly unlikely that it could work in a way acceptable for viewing movies. Cardboard cutouts instead of actual 3D at best...
Works great for movies with Roger Moore.
Re:"convert regular 2D movies to 3D" (Score:4, Interesting)
I have seen a demo of realtime conversion - it actually works, but only about 80% good. Occasionally you'll see some problems. I saw a demo at NAB in April at Samsung's booth that blew my mind because it was actually that good, but it's still nothing compared to real stereoscopic capture. Basically it looks like a series of parallax planes, a step down from the real thing. But shockingly, it DOES work. My best guess is that it takes into account a variety of factors including haze and color, detail, dimensions and inference from motion.
I consider it to be a gimmick that distracts from real 3D content. It's -very- clever, but it is no substitute for real stereoscopic content.
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It's probably like one of those posters where you stare really hard and the desktop suddenly pops out at you.~ I was never very good at those.
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One of the key pieces in video compression is detecting motion vectors automatically from video. Once you have motion vectors, there are algorithms to turn sequences of motion vectors into 3D models [actapress.com]. I've seen video with an automatically generated wireframe on it before, but I couldn't find the link.
Small, 3D screens that don't require the use of glasses are already commercially available. I saw ads for 3D screen cellphones all the time on Japanese TV and on the train. I thought it was interesting, bu
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> Why not?
Because the information isn't there.
> We already have software that converts stereo music to true surround sound.
No we don't. The information isn't there.
> Extracting parallax information and converting movies to 3D should be easy.
The information isn't there. What next, software to convert a still picture to a 90 minute movie?
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Oh, but it is there. A movie is not a collection of independent still photos. The motion of objects relative to each other and to the camera between frames provides a wealth of depth information. By way of illustration, the next time you are a passenger in an automobile, cover one eye and observe the passing scenery, and you will notice that you are constructing a pretty good 3D model.
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It's not "true" surround sound, it doesn't mystically divine information that isn't there anymore. That is, when you turn your head you don't hear what you would have heard if you've done so with the actual source, if applicable.
So, no, it's impossible for them to have something that can guess to any believable sight what depth every part of an image it should be.
I second that call on bullshit.
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But there is still vital information missing; you're only reproducing whatever the recording recorded from certain positions. It's impossible to assume new locations for the sounds and get an accurate position of the instruments.
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The eye is only stereo
When did eyes start processing sound as well as light?!? Or is this some sort of next-generation eye that will work with these glasses we won't need for the 3D laptops which don't yet exist?
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When did eyes start processing sound as well as light?!? Or is this some sort of next-generation eye that will work with these glasses we won't need for the 3D laptops which don't yet exist?
I have synaesthesia [wikipedia.org], you insensitive clod!
Finally, a laptop not from Flatland! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad that they are going to be shipping 3 dimensional laptops. Those 2 dimensional laptops that I've been using are really inconvenient. The screen and the keyboard are on the same plane, and you can't push the buttons at all, because that would require a third dimension. Even worse, my 2 dimensional laptop keeps falling through infinitely thin slots, and cut my arm off once when it fell perpendicularly to the floor while my arm was in the way. It might be 2D, but it has mass after all, so it has an infinitely sharp edge. Apple made a big deal out of the Macbook Air being .25" thick at its thinnest point. That's nothing. My 2D laptop has 0 thickness!
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Apple made a big deal out of the Macbook Air being .25" thick at its thinnest point. That's nothing. My 2D laptop has 0 thickness!
You got it all mixed up, silly. "Nothing" is your 0-thickness laptop. the Air is something, to the tune of .25".
Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted.
So basically they're just throwing a pair of shutter glasses into the box.
aaaaanndd... (Score:2)
... a 120Hz LCD screen (which I'd very much like).
Or alternatively (and probably more likely), pixels with opposite polarisation are interleaved (horizontally or vertically), the included glasses are passive-polarised, and the "3D mode" is half the resolution of the 2D mode.
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Or 2 LCDs stacked on top of one another like the iZ3D monitor, www.iz3d.com . However I would hate to lug a laptop with 2LCDs on it around.
Summary grossly incorrect. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted."
Suddenly, that 'most interesting thing' isn't that interesting at all.
Re:Summary grossly incorrect. (Score:5, Funny)
All they have to do is get the whole 3D thing working.
Inaccurate summary (Score:4, Insightful)
The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it requires no special glasses.
Wow, that is interesting... oh, wait:
Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted.
What's next? "The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it runs on a hyperdimensional fuel cell weighing only two ounces but able to supply power for six months on a single charge... (but not currently, and it has quite a few technological obstacles to overcome)."
Wishful thinking makes for a good press release, but not such a good Slashdot story.
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but not such a good Slashdot story.
Well, it will be good. Once they get some bugs worked out.
Sharp produced a 3D laptop in 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
Sharp produced a 3D laptop in early 2005.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/115348/sharps_3d_notebook.html
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/22/042253
with a no-glasses display, even. I saw one at a conference expo,
it worked pretty well for molecular graphics/viz stuff. But they never
caught on.
Actius RD3D in 2004 (Score:4, Informative)
And you are talking about the second generation. The Actius RD3D [hardwarecentral.com] was released a year earlier. So, this Acer is not the first 3D laptop in the sense that it exists in 3 dimensions, it is not the first 3D laptop in the sense of having a 3D capable display, maybe there is another usage of the term 3D?
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Absolutely! "First ever" my foot!
The Sharp Actius RD3D, which has been available for more than 5 years, has a spectacularly cool lenticular display that produces a pretty convincing and definitely bright & colorful illusion of 3D without the need for any accoutrements.
Turns out it's not a great laptop in and of itself - pitiful battery life - too heavy - and a few users I've known just don't seem to "get" the 3d effect.
Nonetheless - summary and TFA are completely wrong.
Er... and as for software which co
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So, this Acer is not the first 3D laptop in the sense that it exists in 3 dimensions, it is not the first 3D laptop in the sense of having a 3D capable display, maybe there is another usage of the term 3D?
New Acer DDD: the first laptop with 3 Ds!
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Fuck you. This is a slashdot article.
Competence, precedence, and facts have no place here.
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I knew Sharp had made the no-glasses 3D display LCD panel. Didn't know they'd made an integrated version. As I recall, they use an integrated lenticular lens sheet. Unfortunately for Sharp, they're completely and utterly clueless about how to find a tolerable price point. People might pay a premium for a native 3D display, but they sure as hell won't pay as much of a premium as Sharp asked. So they didn't sell.
Worse, it's not hard to find out what lenticular lens sheets cost. They're the same things g
will it have a good video card or a cheap Intel gm (Score:2)
will it have a good video card or a cheap Intel gma card?
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Sharp tech? (Score:2)
Apple's marketing is better than Acer (Score:2)
first 3d? then Actius RD3D from sharp was 0? (Score:1)
Glasses or Not: Both 'suck', so go with glasses (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay.. so on one hand, you've got... ...glasses. Nobody likes these, because you have to wear them.
- red/green red/cyan red/blue
- polarized
- shutter
- chromadepth
- etc.
On the other hand, you've got.. ...displays. Which most people don't like either, as you practically have to sit in a single spot to make it work well. There -are- displays where you can view from a few more angles (any 'tween' angles show ghosting), but always at a loss of (horizontal) resolution, as more and more images get displayed at the same time.
- lenticular
- uhm. nope, that's pretty much it.
This only counts -stereographic- 3D methods. So a bunch of panels behind eachother (medical imaging-look, and your laptop would be as thick as a printed encyclopedia..), or displays that track where your face is so as to show a different viewpoint (doesn't give depth cues except for the illusion when you move your head side to side like some sort of pigeon on drugs), don't count.
Neither of the above 2 methods are very appealing, but if I had to take my pick, I'll take glasses *any* time. Combined with the head tracker, all the more awesome. Displays that don't take glasses simply aren't there yet for any extended use.
( See an older post of mine for various other '3d display' methods; though I'm sure wikipedia's got 'm all covered, too )
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Lenticular actually sounds pretty promising. When we're talking about a 15 inch screen, it's not really that useful to move your head around too much. Also, assuming you're gaming on it (the only serious application I see for 3D at the moment) your head's position is actually fairly fixed anyway, since one hand is on the keyboard.
I'm not saying it's ideal (I'll certainly be sticking to my 25 in. desktop) but if I was in the mood to buy a gaming laptop, I might be inclined to do go with one that has 3D.
Obvio
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Yes, but keep in mind that the lenticular cover is typically permanent (if it's not, you have to *very carefully* re-align any time you put it back over the screen).. which means your resolution is cut in half at best (say, every even vertical column of pixels for the left eye, every odd vertical column for the right eye). And even if you don't move your head very much, go find a lenticular display or even just one of those little cards that came in cereal boxes or whatever.. the smallest movement can caus
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I always thought that LCD (uh.. displays...) would be a natural fit for polarized lenses. How hard would it be to stick an additional perpendicular layer and drive it in such a way as to have different levels at each pixel depending on the polarization angle?
Sure, you couldn't do circular polarization, but that doesn't really help much anyway, as you really need to keep your head pretty level for it to work, anyway. Personally, I don't find wearing sunglasses to be all that bad of a proposition, for the b
On the third hand (Score:2)
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I'm a huge fan of that method, actually :) unfortunately it typically does mean loss of both half your horizontal -and- vertical resolution ( unless you shoot a portrait mode movie :) )
I take some stereoscopic side-by-side photos from time to time, and cross-eye is definitely the best way to view them. However, some people seem to have problems with focusing right when they cross their eyes; their brain is too wired into thinking that whatever is at the point where your eyes' sightlines cross, must be wha
I wonder... (Score:2)
Is this using Johnny Lee Chung's wii mote technology shown here [youtube.com]?
I have no idea how a movie would be encoded to enable this, and of course, as Johnny points out it's only good for one viewer at a time... PERFECT for laptops, not so much for general displays. And... IMHO it's not really full 3-D but a damn good trick.
Keep your glasses - autostereoscopic not there yet (Score:2)
Guys, you don't want an autostereoscopic display based on lenticular imaging - basically the same thing you see on cracker jack prizes. There is no autostereoscopic display that looks anywhere near as good as polarized glasses or shutter glasses at 120hz or above. (60hz per eye) the resolution and viewing angles are simply too poor.
The current state of the art in personal 3D displays are LCD or plasma displays that have a polarizing layer on every other line, so you can view them with the nice, lightweigh
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A clarification - I meant to say that the same type of glasses are used with the digital cinema projectors, but the technology is different. The projectors project a full frame in each polarization simultaneously, whereas the home theater sized LCD flat panel displays show left and right eyes on every other vertical line simultaneously. With the projection system, each eye has a full resolution image, and on the LCD each eye sees 1/2 vertical resolution, which is not an issue on a smaller display.
We can finally put Angelina Jolie in 3D... (Score:1)
I hope... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope these notebooks come with three or four spare motherboards. Judging by their previous track record, that is what it takes to keep their notebooks running beyond the warranty.
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=243038&start=0 [com.com]
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-71394-Acer-5101-keyboard-usb-and-touchpad-are-dead.html [techspot.com]
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/51337-35-keyboard-mouse-work-vista-login-screen [tomshardware.com]
Google it, tons more...
Seems Acer preferred playing their customers along until the warranty ran out, then charged them for a new motherboard (that didn't fix the problem in most cases) rather then admit they had a pattern failure.
I don't care WHAT kind of product they have, from a purely moralistic point of view, I'll take my business elsewhere.
Ehem (Score:1)
oh for the millioneth time.. (Score:1)
Is there a bot net moderating slashdot firehouse, tagging all shitty stories as interesting , insightful and funny ?
Paradigm Shift (Score:2, Funny)
This is awesome. First, notebooks. Then, netbooks.
Now, migrainebooks.
Bundling (Score:2)
... and everything else in the universe (Score:1)
Sharp (Score:1)
OMFG (Score:2)
Jenna Jameson in full 3D glory! Prepare your Biff's sidekick 3D glasses. We are about to live interesting times.
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Will the screen display 2D images without being out of focus or looking weird?
Oh, that'll sell really well then.
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I rented the Virtual Boy when it came out, and played it all that (long, Thanksgiving) weekend. I do not recall it shutting off and making me take a break. I do remember there were warnings about taking a break, which I completely ignored.
The VB was awesome. Too damned bad it was monochrome. The price (and weight) were just way too much at the time for them to go full color. And now that they already have the failure on record, there's no chance in hell they'll pursue a full color version anytime in th
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I never had any headaches from mine either and I'm prone to them. I think I still have one in a box somewhere. I don't see why they couldn't make one with dual LCDs.
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It was just cost (and weight) prohibitive at the time to do anything more than they did.
And today, they've gone with the DS. Can't get that touchscreen or the casual appeal with your face buried in some viewfinder.