Slashdot Mirror
NEC to Introduce 3D Laptop Next Year?
Hoon Mihn Fao writes "For those of you for whom 2D laptops are not awesome enough, next year NEC is coming out with a 3D laptop. No, you don't have to wear those retro red and blue glasses, but the monitor is actually an LCD screen placed on top of a conventional monitor. The company is currently seeking gaming software companies to produce games for its technology. Each unit will cost an estimated $200 more than a conventional laptop."
NEC Corp. plans to market a laptop computer next year that can display 3-D images without requiring special glasses... The new laptop will feature a special liquid crystal display panel that is placed on top of a conventional screen. Users will be able to view digital photos of [sic] play online games with the 3-D image display or use the standard panel for viewing Web sites, Nikkei said. ... Mercury3D, a software company in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, will also provide a program that converts standard 2-D images to 3-D on the new laptop, Nikkei said.
How is this supposed to work? No glasses, a special LCD on top of a standard monitor. How do we get actual or simulated 3D out of this? If it doesn't provide two different perspectives to each eye (as shutter glasses do), presumably the LCD must project the 3D image into midair. And how does the software generate 3D from a 2D image? There isn't enough data in the source image to do this properly. I'm betting vaporware here.
Anyone have an insight?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
More impressive 3D spreadsheets? Awesome presentations? Hmmm...
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Forget about games. This could usher in a new golden era of pr0n.
but the monitor is actually an LCD screen placed on top of a conventional monitor.
A laptop with an LCD screen and a conventional monitor! How big and heavy is this thing going to be?
HH
--
Will it be able to display hi-res jpg and mpeg images? Will they be better than these 3D jiggly pics?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I highly doubt this will initially be released in the US. Like all other cool gadgetry, it will probably be out for years in asia before it makes its way to the us. *sigh*
So will I get to see Window$ crash in 3d?
Your desk? Matrix math? ;)
It's supposed to sit on your lap rotating and zooming in on more profitable graphics
And yet no images of the device...ironic some might say?
Jonathanjk.com
As far as I can see, my laptop has height, width and depth. So it's 3D, right? Does that mean that we can expect thicker laptops in the future (that are of course more 3D than thin ultra portables we can see today?)
actually an LCD screen placed on top of a conventional monitor.This is a really clever idea. Now I can see how they managed to get that real 3D feel. Using a conventional CRT monitor in a laptop certainly adds some third dimension.
Now I can see what they are planning to do:
1. Use CRT monitor in a laptop2. CRT monitors are cheaper than LCD panels, but laptop with CRT is more 3D, so it can be more expensive than conventional thin ones
3.
4. PROFIT!!
LCD on top of a conventional monitor? what's the point?
I doubt that such a thing will make any use, we always hear about such stuff and never see them make it to the public.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
It's important to note that the extra LCD screen is placed on top of conventional LCD display (check the article), not a CRT monitor, as the blurb suggests.
If it used a CRT monitor, it would hardly be a laptop, wouldn't it?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I thought the idea was to make laptops more and more 2D (thin), and now this :-)
What? Read the article? I didn't even read the post. Since when did have we slashdotters read past the title before posting?
For once, I RTFA. And what do I get? About 5 more words than the Slashdot blurb. No pictures, no nothing. That's it -- it's hearsay and conjecture from now on.
c-hack.com |
So who are they targetting with this contraption? The hard-core gamers, who are the ones most likely to spend an extra $200 on a gimmick, would scoff at gaming on a laptop. The LCD is still universally acknoledged as inferior to the CRT as far as gaming goes.
Lenticular images
Remember those little stickers, covered with ridges, where you turn them and watch the image change to one of 5 or 6 possibilities? If a computer screen is covered with verticle ridges, you could control the flow of light to left and right eye from limited viewing angles.
Such a monitor would only work if the person's head was in certain positions.
Other technologies are possible which would allow the viewer to be in any position and orientation. Think tiny lenses instead of long ridges.
"presumably the LCD must project the 3D image into midair. And how does the software generate 3D from a 2D image? There isn't enough data in the source image to do this properly. I'm betting vaporware here.
Anyone have an insight?
"
The monitor stacks images - think of it as a 3d baseball card with puffy "3d" baseballs..
Mmm...3d pr0n.
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
No, he is suppose to perform translations on the laptop itself, like moving it around his desk, REAL-TIME!
;)
And i think it was ment as a joke
Nuff said.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Those are retro now? Sheesh, I must be getting old!
The article is plainly wrong - it is bound to be just an innovative display, although can't get google to say anything more informative.
So the famous Windows "blue screen of death" will become the "blue cube of death"? ;-)
Seems this page and this one have more info and piccies on this technology. In Japanese, but readable with babelfish.
Oh no... it's the future.
Introducing the NEW Microsoft 3D EULA; a list box of EULA text with a couple of buttons, oh, and picture of Bill reaching out to grab your nads.
3D Windows will be a whole new release packed with new features such as the
- 3D blue screen of death
- the 3D EULA (previously mentioned)
- the 3D Microsoft Wallet; reaches right into your pocket and actually installs itself!
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
Didn't somebody tell these guys that *MOST* people simply DON'T play games on a laptop ...
.. PROFIT!
mostly because the screen sucks in laptops and is far too jerky to catch up with the frame rate required by most modern games.
Wait a second...
Conventional CRT over traditional LCD - call it 3D (though it's actually simulated 3D)
This solves the problem mentioned above AND creates a new genre in gaming!
Way to go NEC Corp! You found a cool way to resolve an issue with a gap in the market.
now you can own that "gap" in the market with your new (patented, no-doubt) technology and of course
Seems pretty cool to me! This seemingly crazy idea could actually work!
The new laptop will feature a special liquid crystal display panel that is placed on top of a conventional screen.
It's not a conventional monitor... We're talking about a laptop here. It's a conventional LCD screen. (In case you're wondering the difference, a monitor is a free-standing device, while a screen is attached to something.)
Check here: http://www.lenticular.biz/3dlcd.html for 3-D monitors for your desktop. I would imagine the laptop is just an extrapolation of this technology. However, I am sure it will be thicker than normal. but for people with "gaming laptops" such as the alienware area-51m, the extra thickness probably won't even be noticeable. it's still easier to lug a thick laptop to a lan party than even a micro desktop.
Basically, this is correct. Here in Japan, Sharp (at least) has been doing these for a while; my current keitai even has one! I don't know the grisly details offhand, but from what I can tell, there are two layers, each of which are angled towards one of the two eyes; displaying stereoscopic images, one eye's worth on each layer then gives you essentially the same result as those old red+blue+purple displays with the red-and-blue glasses. It's certainly not perfect, but it's an acceptable imitation.
this means that laptops will be even more expensive... why isn't anyone interested in creating a linuxable laptop that is not so damn expensive?
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
How would you intend to display the monitor's 3-D image on your 2-D screen?
thats fun. I wonder why there are no E-cards/pr0n available or something. That could create a new hype for a week or so. Actually, I want a 3D-BSOD.
if they bought tablets they wil lfall for this one too. ;-)
So if some gamers get slight motion sickness for 3-D games, will that phenomenon increase? As a gamer that gets motion sickness from certain FPS (not all, only some), I'd hate to see something with such potential just make it worse
I couldn't post to your discussion because I moderated this, but read this journal entry: http://slashdot.org/~adzoox/journal/44304
but the monitor is actually an LCD screen placed on top of a conventional monitor.
And you're supposed to fit a conventional monitor on your LAP?
Fascinating. I had a toshiba laptop about five years that had three dimensions. In fact, I thought the current trend was to move from 3D laptops to almost 2D ones with things like tablet PCs. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with trends.
espo
Possible responses:
a) Yes.
b) No.
c) Didn't see the movie so I don't know WTF you are going on about?
that'll make your current LCD-screened laptop have a 3-D display. Sounds a lot cheaper than this NEC will be.
http://www.sampletheweb.com
Having used 3D monitors before with LCD glasses, I imagine the LCD panel is simply synced to the monitor frequency, shunting each frame left and right. So you want a really, really high frame rate to keep flicker to a minimum (because you are halving it). If my guess is correct, only the size of the LCD panel and Monitor need line up, not the pixel density, however, there are probably distortion effects from pixel misalignment, like resizing your resolution on LCD displays.
Letter To Iran
They're interesting-but I think I would get a headache using it for too long. It's definitely only for 3d images, as browsing the web with it would kill you. There is a tracker to tell if you're viewing a 3d image or not, and then the effect switches off. At the institute where I work, we demoed one, and I had to give my opinions on it. I believe, however, that the place was charging 500 euro for the screen or something like that? We had a cell modeling program that would display a 3d image of the cell, and that use of the monitor would be nice. I tried to get in after hours and see if I could find some quake patches or something, but at that time my keycard to the institute wasn't working correctly.
...sounds like portable vertigo, to me! _Exactly_ what I need at 40,000 feet in the air with my ears popping and my stomach ill with air-sickness.
Most of the software I've tried on 3D screens (like games) is unaware of the screen, which just passively outputs two images at a pre- defined stereobase.
So everything that approaches the viewer and breaks the 1/30 rule + touches edges, ends up breaking up the stereo illusion.
Here's one article that illustrates the phenomenon.
It seems tough to fight this without some interaction with the viewing device, or without switching to a more advanced technology, such as holography.
So yeah, nice.
J
no pictures? wtf. I need color and pictures. I can't read. If it doesn't look like the comic section of the newspaper, don't post it here.
This story so boring!! You should find something interesting to do. Why do you sit here and talk about useless boring stuffs!?
Go find life ok?
what they do is take two images and then bind them into one to create the 3d effect.
Great! Now all I need is a flying car and a house on the moon.
If you have a need to look at 3D images on the computer regularly, just learn to cross your eyes; it doesn't take long. Here
">Here is one of many howto's.
While it's a cute novelty, any laptop-sized 3D display is going to be somewhat disappointing in the long run. Essentially, you get roughly the same 3D effect as you would by arranging objects inside a shoebox. Furthermore, objects will seem to move relative to one another as you move your head, which is decidedly unnatural and no good for games anyway.
Hurray for Nec for such a bold move. But why doesn't any company try for the pixel cube ? instead of pixels making a 2d flat area, they could be little cubes arranged in cubic fashion and make a true 3d display.
By the way, true 3d could revive the arcade industry (offtopic, yeah, I know).