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Sharp to Sell 3D laptop for $3299
prostoalex writes "The laptop that allows the user to view the 3D images without the special glasses is finally being sold by Sharp. The price tag is $3299. Actius 3DRD runs Pentium 4 2.8 GHz with 512 MB DDR SDRAM and is also capable of displaying two images in parallax."
But does it feel real?
Sweet! I can finnally watch the booty divx of Spy Kids 3D I've just been dying to watch. Not!
ew.
Windows XPXP?
Well, that's nifty, viewing 3D without glasses and all...
l ophane.htm
But you could just save $3299 and simply use some cellophane: http://individual.utoronto.ca/iizuka/research/cel
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
Heh... you just shelled out a load of cash to realize:
The battery life is only 1.3 hours.
Shoulda RTFA before you bought the laptop
Anyone have an article with more info on it?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Sounds nice, but I think that I'll wait until more content and programs are developed which take advantage of 3-D space. Besides, after shelling out $1900 for a new laptop with the same specs almost, I don't see $3300 for this sucker. Interesting, and I wish it luck, but it isn't for me yet.
#define DRM chmod 000
Battery Life: Approx. 1.3 hours
Weight: 10.2 pounds
I read the article, but didn't find anything about how these worked other than a cop-out answer. I've experienced what you might call a 3D effect when different colors are displayed on my LCD monitor. Perhaps their screeen is an extreme of this phenomenon.
Without glasses, I can only assume the screen shows different images as a function of the angle at which you view the screen (like these pictures that "move" because they have ridges in them with different pictures).
I'm very curious to see how well these work.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
You know, a 10 pound laptop brings new meaning to "drag and drop".
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Does anyone understand how this technology works? "Without special glasses" - Do you need to cross your eyes the whole time you are working on the computer?
I hope I'm not misrepresenting Mac owners when I say, $3299? Damn that's cheap!
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
From the details on Sharp's website:
Includes 3 free Electronic ArtsTM games to showcase the capabilities of the RD3D! Test your cool with James Bond 007: Nightfire, hit the road with Need for SpeedTM Hot Pursuit 2 or putt for dough in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR(R) 2003. All 3 are yours when you order the new RD3D for a limited time.
Yeah, because there's a huge audience of 3D golf afficiandos with $3300 spare. (On the other hand, the integrated hybrid DVD-writer is pretty. It'd be neat if they had software for partial 3D rendering of DVD movies.
So, uh, any guesses on how many years before this technology hits the $500 price point?
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Guys, how hard did you have to look to find an article without pictures?! I remember reading the original stories on /. and wanting to see pictures then too! I mean, how odd is it that an article about display technology doesn't have pictures? Wasn't that everyone's first thought? I wanna see if it's any good so that I can buy one. It's like buying a guitar without ever hearing what it sounds like. Or, like buying a CD without ever hearing the band... Ummm. Never mind that last, but you understand.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
I've been viewing 3d images on my current screen for ages!
IOW...When can I get some 3d pr0n
i'm blind in one eye, you insensitive clod...
as it is widely known, to launch a technology you need to make it widely support pr0n. see also: "VCR," "Internet" and so on
:)
does this laptop comes with a full year membership..? I wasn't able to find it out from the links..
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Now we don't have to listen to people complain that Apple's prices are too high.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I was wondering whether this 3D thing is hardware-based or software-based or a bit of both. One article doesn't say anything about it and the other was /.ed already.
I seem to remember playing a game called Magic Carpet (I think from Bullfrog) years ago that had "actual" 3D images - the kind where you kind of cross your eyes to get the depth right. You know, like pictures of sailboats that you have to stare at for a while before you see anything.
So, what exactly is new about this, and why would I want it?
I, for one, welcome our new 3D goggle-wearing masters.
all the Lindows kids, adding software is so fun, let's do the Lindows rock.
I'm sure it would be useful in a medical enviornment or a lab or such that needs 3D images of MRI's etc. but for the average person is it really needed? Does Joe Whitecollar need to see the annual reports in 3D Excel, though it could really show the descending barcharts of profits.
While this idea sounds cool, I wonder if it will be one of those technologies that I cannot use. I am legally blind in my left eye and often these 3D technologies rely on the fact that vision in both of the users eyes is relatively equal in order to create the illusion. This reminds me of those stereoscope drawings from a few years back. I was never able to get them to work for me because of my imparied vision.
After the last time /. published the story about the 3d laptop, I was engulfed by this urge to try out anaglyph (red-blue) games/software on my machine. What ensued was a frenzy of activity spanning about a week:
1. I purchased a 3-d jigsaw puzzle from Wal-mart for $15, which came with red-blue glasses. (A wiser idea would've been to go see SpyKids 3d for $6 and save the glasses (which I did later anyway)).
2. I downloaded and installed Anaglyph Stereo Quake and had hours of headachy fun.
3. Downloaded some simple shooter/roller coaster type games from stereo3d.com This site, btw, has a cool chart listing software for which 3d patches have been released, graphics cards supported etc. A really interesting quote about 3d API's:
"The reason why 3D-API's are important for 3D-glasses is the fact games written for these interfaces supply genuine 3D-information in a standard format. These 3D-informations (i.e. depth-informations, Z-values) can be utilized by special universal 3D-glasses-drivers to create real 3D-imagery."
Can't wait for the prices for 3d displays to come down.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I can now display the stolen plans of the Imperial Death Star in 3D so all my Alliance buddies can see where to shoot!
and they make great webservers too!
CONNECTION LOST
Of course it ain't that easy. But it's got to be a lot cheaper than making a whole bloody new film. (I hope they archived the rendering scripts!) For the older movies they should be able to re-render in a small fraction of the time spent on the original.
these types of gimmicks are wasting the time of engineers across the world, these people could be working on important stuff, like a 20inch LCD thats folds and has no middle gap to fit in a very small footprint laptop. that would be fantastic. how big are "tabletops" going to get?
What about people like me who have lost natural depth perception using their eyes? When I was 3 my right eye squinted alot. I had an operation to fix it however it was never properly fixed, so I seem to be looking straight at someone, but still only seeing them with one eye. Basically.. i figure when it comes to 3d, as much as i love the concept I wont ever be able to see it properly, which will hurt me in the long run with computers i believe. Is there any alternatives to seeing 3d? or different 3d systems that have other ways of projecting stuff? Arg :\ Its really bugged me for years now.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
One good post and the site comes to a grinding halt, lol, if anything, perhaps they will see that their infrastructure needs some work...
Nice job guys, seeing a high-quality
Bah! Kids these days are so spoiled.
Back in my day, all we had was 1-D laptops. Ever try typing on an infinitesimal point in space? It's hard!
Then came the 2-D laptops, otherwise known as "Paper" to you cretins...
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
So it's a viewmaster without separate eyepieces. Super.
I'm not enthused at all. That style of 3d (two similar images next to each other) never works for me. It looks good at the edges, and it's blurry in the middle. I strain my eyes looking at computers enough, thank you.
i don't like my old sig.
Yeah that was fairly frightening. According to the credits someone named Kevin Carmony did the lyrics for that uh... "song".
The thing is I don't think that song's going to appeal to anyone. The target audience for Lindows is supposed to be the regular user, at lesat that's what I thought. But to understand that "video" you have to know about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and tarballs. Ok so the average user knows about Bill, but not the other two. And I doubt all these people choose Lindows over Windows because they hate Windows. Rather, I'd expect them to choose Lindows on accident or because it's cheaper.
So I don't think anyone that understands this flash file is going to like it; and Kevin Carmony should't give up his day job.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
How many FPS in Quake?
I can see it now... I won't be able to see anything! What manner of ungodly pr0n could you cook up for this display? Furthermore, how much more can I sell my art prints for, since they'll be in 3-D?
stuff |
pseudo-mod: "+1 Funny"
I'm blind in one eye, you insensitive clod!
Seems like a desktop display would be a good place to release this technology first.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/iizuka/research/cell ophane.htm
At my last job at SEGA, my lab was in charge of coming up with many different and pioneering ideas for new ways to play video games, many of which, for one reason or another, never made it to market.
One of those was HOLO-GENESIS. It was a 3-D laser
holographic projection device for the MegaDrive/geneis. It could have displayed 3-D rendered images, in full-color, in real-time, using a system of 3 red/green/blue lasers, and a finely-meshed micro-faceted surface which gave a pseudo 3-D effect based on carefully utilized light diffraction effects, a la printed holograms.
It was slated to come out in mid-1995, but at the time, we couldn't get a acceptable frame rate (3-D graphics accelerator hardware was still very primitive and expensive, the province of SGI workstations and arcade machines), so we decided to not commercialize it at the time.
In any case, I must say, this is a very interesting announcement, and I must congratulate Sharp for bringing such technology to the market. Hopefully they can continue to lower the price point and make it adopted wider.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I have a lazy eye. I mean my eyeball moves around and follows what I am looking at, but it's vision is terrible. All my brain sees is what's coming out of my good eye. Am I going to be able to see the 3D? I've never had any success with the 3D glasses for obvious reasons and I've always hated those posters that you are supposed to stare at until you see the picture. If you ask me it's a hoax, cause I've never seen one.
...but if the parallax "sweet spot" is too small, you might need a head brace to lock your skull in the proper position.
Where can we see one of these in person?
Peeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuupt!
If this follows the trend that previous new display technologies do, you can immediately expect enhanced:
1. Games
2. Porn
After that, expect widespread adoption followed by support from mainstream Windows business apps, followed by support from Linux hardware and software vendors.
This all hinges on the actual usefulness of the technology, the willingness of Sharp to support it and the willingness of vendors to develop for it.
The parent poster is obviously not a Mac owner. And he is obviously purposefully misrepresenting Mac owners.
I saw them at 2001 and 2003. They work OK, with better resolution this year. They draw both perspectives on the screen in quick alternation. Each eye latches on to the one that makes sense.
Other no-glasses 3D at SIGGRAPH include the concave mirror (floating penny) and the spinning LCD plane. These arent very portable.
Another interesting approach I'm waiting to see in person is the Stanford 3D phospher cube. A pair of lasers activates phospher dots in 3D locations. Science stores sell the static version of this: 3D dot images etched inside leucite cubes.
And I'm waiting to see the MIT Media Lab's holographic TV. It computes and redraws the holograph plate in realtime.
The company that designed this is Dynamic Digital Depth. I used to work for a company ScreenZone that had plasmas displays showing movie trailers in malls. DDD demo'ed their 3D display in our office (we were going to use it in our plasmas). It's actually a really cool technology. Although the image does not "pop" out at you like the effect with 3D glasses, you can see depth and the image changes based on your position to the screen. Can't wait to pick this laptop up!
This is just the beginning...who would have guessed that the Sharp Actius 3DRD is the grandfather of R2D2?!? How long until Sharp teams up with Honda and comes out with the R2D2 portable 3D laptop/movie projector/ashtray?!?
Are there Linux drivers for this new technology yet? If not, it doesn't really exist.
I did some extensive work in stereoscopy in the late 1980's, so I know a little bit about this. Basically what Sharp is using is a lenticular grille.
The key to stereoscopy is to feed different images to each eye. The brain interprets the parallax difference as depth. To see this sort of thing for yourself, close one eye, and hold two pencils vertically so that they line up one behind the other. Now switch eyes. The pencils appear to have "moved," and no longer appear lined up. This is because your other eye is in a different location, and sees from a different point of view ("duh"). This parallax separation in the left/right images is what triggers depth perception in the brain.
Okay, great, how do you get this on a computer display without funky glasses? Well, to use the pencils you already have, imagine that the farther pencil is the actual LCD pixel element, and the nearer pencil is a black band on a piece of glass/plastic in front of the pixel. One of your eyes cannot see the farther pencil, but the other one can. You have achieved a form of image separation without glasses.
Now, repeat across the entire horizontal display. Your left eye, being shifted slightly to the left, will see all the even-numbered pixel columns; and your right eye, being located slightly to the right, will see all the odd-numbered pixel columns. Result: Sufficient image separation to display and perceive steroscopy.
Problem: The optimum viewing location is fixed. You can be no closer or farther away than the prescribed location, or the images will bleed together or invert at the edges. Also, if your eyes are not centered, the lenticular grille will be effectively shifted relative to the pixel columns, and you'll experience stereo inversion (left and right images swapped; always good for a headache).
If you want to experiment with this stuff at home, and if you have access to a laser printer that will print on transparencies, print up for yourself a transparency with evenly spaced vertical lines, each one pixel in width -- one pixel width black, one pixel width clear, alternating. Lay this over your laptop screen and compose an image with alternating imagery in the odd/even pixel columns. Fun for the whole family!
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
you can check out other articles about this at Wired and CNETNews
Remember using those old "analogue" thermometers back on the day to measure your temperature? Those termometers always had to be rotated just the right way so that you could see the fine red line inside: Essentially these thermometers had
"one-dimensional" lenses that magnified the strip along a line along the length of the thermometer.
Now imagine putting these types of long/thin lenses vertically across a notebook monitor with pixels behind them- As you move your head horizonatlly, these lenses let you see only certain rows of pixels, because moving your head is the same as rotating the thermometer.
If you look at the monitor exactly dead-center, half of the pixels will make it to your left eye, and half to the right eye. You can now control what these eyes see separately and give the illusion of 3D depth.
This wouldn't be any diffrent then looking at a hologram. And you can also run it in flat mode. Anyway, I've never experianced eye strain looking at a 3d display.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You'd make a horrible predator. Anyhow, where were all the colorblind people complaining about the uselessness of higher colordepths on our video cards?
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There is an interview about the latest 3D phone here: page(EN)
Also check out this page, which has a drawing explaining how this works: page(JP) (I guess - it is in Japanese :)
As Sharp also has the Zaurus I'm waiting for a mobile phone with a 3D screen, running linux, and with a full keyboard - perhaps something similar to the C-760, only narrower. Oh, and dual 2mp cameras for taking 3D pictures.. (Sharp already has a 2mp mobile, so why not two of them.)
It might not fly in the US (lots of features = expensive), but I bet it would sell in Europe.. My mobile (a nokia 9210) is still retailing for 1000$ + without a subscription here.
If you are blind in one eye, then everything seems flat anyway. So there won't be an advantage for you, but for you a monoscopic images is already as good as it gets. You just won't be able to tell the diffrence, that's all. It won't be like a stare-o-gram, which requires sterioscopic vision. But more like those green holograms like you see on a credit card.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, almost. Lindows has just gone *way* up in my estimation.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Just imagine watching Steve Ballmer dance around on your 3D laptop and then stick his head out in true 3D fashion and yell:
"I... *breathing heavily* LOVE *breathing heavily* THIS *breathing heavily* PROOODUCT... *breathing heavily* YEAH..."
Samir Gupta is a notorious troll.
Check the usenet archive for more information
This guy could just bob his left and right to get the true 3d image.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
...so all those pixels become cubes...whatever.
If this tech has already made it to the laptop market, it'll probably be in plenty of much more reasonably priced laptops in a couple years. (as well as stand-alone LCDs for desktops). I wouldn't be surprised if they took the same course as 3d cards... first only for enthusiasts, then high end systems, then ubiquitous.
:P
Maybe we'll finaly be done with CRTs... or maybe someone will figure out how to do this with CRTs as well
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I mean, how odd is it that an article about display technology doesn't have pictures?
Just as odd as seeing a TV commercial showcasing HDTV on a black&white.
It needs to be seen in person to really experience it.
Your follow-up post literally illustrates this.
This is not my sig.
You'd think Sharp would put in a better graphics card. A GeForce4 440 Go is hardly drool inducing.
Sharp to Sell 3D laptop for $3299
Man, it's about time, I'm really tired of my 2-dimensional laptop!
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
http://www.sle.sharp.co.uk/research/3d/3dbackgroun d.htm
And you thought pokemon caused seizures!!
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Yeah, because there's a huge audience of 3D golf afficiandos with $3300 spare.
You should see the resolution on the 3D golf game I play. The color depth and lighting effects are amazing and you can even *feel* the wind. It's a bit frustrating because it's such a tough game but the realism can't be matched. And it's no trouble at all to find someone to play with a spare $3300. They're more likely to drop it on a new set of clubs though...
That was a cool game, but bullfrog got hit with a crazy frivolous class-action lawsuit. It seems that about 3% of the gamers couldn't handle it and were maimed for life. In the settlement, Bullfrog agreed to build a special colony just southeast of Detroit where these gamers could live out the rest of their days
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Unless the target audience is m$ hating rastafarians, this ad missed the mark.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
Imagine how trippy it would be to look at a beowulf cluster of these..
whoa 66D, i guess that was brown acid
They seem to have hired a Jamaica guy in the marketing department who doesn't give a darn about target audience and focus groups. Well, good luck Lindows... you need it with these talents onboard. :)
They are genuises. I'm still LMAOF. If only Lindows wouldn't suck as much as it does I would be a convert now. That's really neat. I mean: "Prices going l-o-a-r now, really l-o-a-r now..." That's totally funny!
With a "Battery Life Approx. 1.3 hrs", even three bundled DVD programs won't make this a good laptop for airline cinema.
eye popping 3d
Yeah,right...If it is a two dimensional surface - how is that any different than my current video games that map 3d objects to a 2d pixilated surface?
I will believe it when I see it.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I hope they'll put this technology in the next model Zaurus.
C'mon, it'll be like 3D penguins!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And dig the Jamaican accent, mahn!
Nice little ditty, I will play this all day tomorrow and drive my co-workers totally crazy, they will be dancing around singing "do the Lindows' Rock"...
Ahl ah need is some o dem dreds, mahn! totally cool, lindows!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Did you ever notice the Slashdot 20 second rule is fucking annoying when you don't want to pontificate, but just ask a simple question!
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Dimension Technologies started selling LCD desktop displays like this in the early 1990s. In fact they still do. www.dti3d.com
Why would they bother with using a P4 chip when Centrino is here and *way* better? IMHO, if you're going to buy a $3000USD notebook, then it better come with the latest and greatest hardware. 512MB of RAM is a good start, but what about wireless connectivity? MobileMark performance? And don't talk to me about gamers wanting to buy this laptop -- any respectable gamer would take that $3000 USD and buy a tricked out desktop system with a projector!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
This is excellent news! Now we will be able to take advantage of the 3D extensions to C++ that AT&T were researching in 1998, details here (last paragraph).
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
...welcome our new 3-D masters.
/.!)
(Hey! This is my first post on
I can't decide if this post is interesting, funny, insightful, or flamebait.
Be They Be Smokin' the Ganja ' Mon ?
View my 3 dimensional arrays in 3D!
Why buy this and say you are gaining a dvd burner? It uses DVD-RAM. That's the least compatible format you could use for burning DVDs. Not to mention the fact that format requires the use of caddies to hold the discs. The discs are expensive as well.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Is it just me or is it a bit sad that the only way they can "sell" the 3D feature is by including games?
I can just see companies forking out the money for those, for the average consumer I guess it's a bit out of price range, no?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Cool, a 3D laptop! That puts my current 2D laptop to shame.
:-(
My current laptop is so 2D, the screen can't fold up without leaving the XY plane.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
great, now everquest fanboys wont be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy at all.. .....
nevermind.
LOL. Yeah, that sums it up perfectly.
Furry cows moo and decompress.