3D/2D switchable LCD monitor from Sharp

Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk writes "Sharp just came up with an LCD monitor that allows you to switch between 3D ( no glasses ) and 2D view. Wanna play quake and have a slight heart attack?" Now thats what I'm talking about!

Comments

I'm seeing double!

[Bonker]

Oh wait, it's not the monitor, it's just the double post on Slashdot!

EEEK!

[CoolVibe]

Oh sorry... that green color of slashdot just LEAPED at me...

What???

[iplayfast]

No SCREEN SHOTS!

Re:What???

[UnhandledException]

You know, I actually remember TV commercials for TVs that demonstrated the picture. "Look at this great picture!" Not sure how that was supposed to impress anyone when the picture CAN'T be any better than the set that you see the commercial on. In fact, it'd look downright lousy on any set owned by their target audience.

3D Games Suck!

[Drunken Coward]

Well, they did a few years back anyway. I remember my friend challenged me to a game of Rise of The Triad in a booth at some theme park. The main attraction was that to see the game you got to wear these fancy looking 3D goggles. It was something like $3 a person, so I figured what the hell.

That was the worst first person shooter experience I've ever had. Maybe the goggles weren't focused right, but I got incredibly dizzy from playing it and ended up not being able to do much at all. Maybe a slower game like Icewind Dale II would be more playable in 3D, but then, what would the point of that be?

Applying for a second mortgage now...

[goldspider]

...because that's probably the only way I'm going to be able to afford one of these. Now what do I tell my bank...?

more info

[Dizzo]

For more information, check out:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/27/162423 9&mode=thread&tid=137

Applications other than Quake

[hey!]

I can think of one really cool application. Maptech makes a product called terrain navigator which shows USGS topos in 3D using the standard 1950s 3D movie style glasses. However, dedicating the color dimension to getting a 3D effect means the information densities you can get on the screen are somewhat lessened. Governments often spend a lot of money to get higher resolution elevation data. I know of several counties in FL that have 1m LIDAR for their entire county for flood control. Combine this with color aerial photography and you have a kick-ass visiualization system.

The technique used in the display reminds me of the old 3D post cards.

Unlikely

[PhysicsGenius]

Three dimensional vectors are composed of three numbers. 2d vectors have two. This much is obvious. What's slightly less obvious is that moving from 3d to 2d results in a loss of information (50%, in fact). If any of you followed the Shannon story from the other day you'd know that Loss of information = increase in entropy = heat. Therefore, when you hit the switch to move from 3d to 2d mode, your computer is going to get hot. Exactly how hot will be dictated by the amount of data on-screen and in-memory but my back of the envelope calculations here indicate that it will be roughly 3 GeV. Assuming a tower-sized case and 19" monitor made of metal and plastic, that translates to a 50F increase, which would probably melt the thing.

So I call hoax.

Re:Unlikely

[ryanvm]

by your reasoning, when I close my eyes, my brain should boil

Looks like you need to add "inability to detect jokes" to your geek code. ;-)

The cool thing is...

[EchoMirage]

The cool thing about this product is that it's being marketed by a big company, namely Sharp, and not some no-name startup that promises to "revolutionize the world" but never gets its product to market. There's a much higher chance of actual success when a big company like Sharp is involved. From the site, they've also done the following:

In 1973, Sharp was the first to successfully mass produce LCDs for use in electronic calculators. Since then, we have actively promoted innovation in display technologies, going from simple numeric displays to dot-matrix graphic displays, moving from monochrome to color displays, and on to full-motion video displays.

Cool stuff.

Re:3D is cool...

[netphilter]

Someone with the nickname passthecrackpipe is telling me to get a social life. Maybe you want to get a bit less of a social life there, buddy.

You 'entertainment'?

[Sanguis Mortuum]

Dont you mean "I want to interact with my pr0n"?

Likely

[Finuvir]

So when you forgot everything you might once have known about thermodynamics, did you get hot (because of loss of intormation)? Energy is conserved, entropy increases all of the time (pretty much...). It is not true that an increase in entropy will result in excess heat (energy). Nor is it true that simply ignoring available information increases entropy.
And if your calculation of 1/3 = 50% is anything to go by, your 50F increase is probably way off anyway (even if the theory was sound)
Entropy is often explained by comparison to disorder or loss of information, but it is neither of these, it is a function of state of any thermodynamic system. And it cannot create heat out of nothing.

Sharp probably make the best TFTs

[wackybrit]

This is semi-ontopic, but I wanted to say that Sharp make what are probably the best TFTs out there right now, so when this screen hits the market, it'll probably be a stunner.

Sharp were also the first to produce 16" TFTs (one of which I own) which while double the price of the cheapest 15" displays, have a response rate of *half* what normal TFTs have, sRGB profiling, dual inputs (VGA/DVI), and a 1280x1024 resolution.. compared to the awful 1024 of most smaller TFTs. The 18" Sharp TFTs are pretty much the same, but larger, and oh so sweet. The 16" TFT is 104dpi. With ClearType, that leads to 300dpi (horizontal) goodness on text.

Another thing Sharp has pioneered is 'slim bezel'. Most Sharp TFTs have a bezel of about 1cm, compared to the horrid 3cm+ bezels of most TFTs.

Sharp are the kings of TFT (except, perhaps, IBM who produces those 300dpi dowickeys), and anything they produce has got to be hot.

No screenshot?

[Mr. Moose]

I wanna see a screenshot of that 3D-effect. Every time nVidia and friends makes a new 3D GFX-Card, we almost drown in screenshots. Sharp could learn something from their marketing dep.

Re:It's not a repeat, eh!

[Ctrl-Z]

Do you actually remember the last time this story was posted? Switching was mentioned in the article as the most significant challenge for the engineers.

Already posted on front page

[drinkypoo]

I know that this will get marked as redundant but you sheep will always give me more karma. Not only was this already posted (the link is in the second highest article in my view) but this was already on the default front page.

It must be important if it's front page news twice.