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PC Magazine Reviews Sharp's 3D Notebook
Moochman writes "I recently discovered this article over at PC Magazine, an excellent and fairly complete review of the Sharp RD3D, aka the 'world's first 3D laptop' (see previous Slashdot coverage here). In addition to rating performance, features, etc, it provides a nice little explanation and diagram of how the no-glasses 3D technology works, and discusses possible eye-strain issues. The biggest disappointment is that even the included 3D games still don't work right." Moochman provides a link to Sharp's information site, too.
Te 3Dness works (or was that fails to work?) by allowing each eye to see a different picture. Only B&W is 3D, and the front picture is color. This is cheaper but no doubt causes problems. It's no surprise that "3D" games don't look 3D on it because it is a different type of 3Dness than before.
Give this some time, and it will improve significanttly. Plus, it will be backed by the computer industry (sell more bigger CPUs and memory)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
IMHO it's important to see (pun intended) that vision in a 3D world is fundamentally 2D. A ray of light is 1D; this takes away that one dimension. The human retina is effectively a 2D surface. In an n-dimensional world, vision is (n-1)-dimensional.
It helps a little that humans have two of those 2D eyes, but it doesn't make vision fully 3D (physical impossibility as explained above). Therefore a parallax-based system can give a perfectly good illusion; it's not fully 3D, but we don't need it to be as our vision is so limited.
On the other hand, things change when you move your head. You can't peek behind the image. However, it is possible if the head position is being tracked and the image changes accordingly. I've experienced one such system, it used LCD shutter glasses whose position was tracked via radio waves. A friend at the local university showed me a molecular simulation with this system, it was pretty kewl. The only limitation was that it used a single flat screen, but they are planning to extend it to cover every wall of a room to give full 3D immersion.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
As far as I know, opengl and directx allow for a left and right screen buffer, one for each eye, the programmer can then render to these as s/he so wishes.
AnandTech also covered this monitor at COMDEX.
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1924
Ok, this I can speak to! I also have only one good eye, And I work with 3D graphics. While it is a bit of a pain to set up sometimes, we use our VR system in stereoscopic 3D sometimes. I can't see it because only my left eye works. i can of course understand the math, and also see each images (left and right), but I cant see the depth created by viewing the images correctly. For people with only one good eye stereo images are mostly useless.
-tim
--1024MB of RAM vs. 512MB
--Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB vs. GeForce4 440 Go (64MB?), the mobile version of the MX cards
--8MB cache 60 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi vs. standard generic 60GB drive
--4x2x8x DVD-RW vs. DVD-RAM drive
--16.1" 1600x1200 UXGA vs. 15" 1024x768 XGA
So either the tech costs a lot more than they're willing to admit, or they're hiking the price because people will pay for the gimmick. I think Sharp has confused themselves with The Sharper Image.