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3D Projection Rumoured to be The Revolution
mars soup eel writes "Cube.IGN is reporting that Brooke Burgess (of Broken Saints) has let the proverbial cat out of the bag concerning Nintendo's new Revolution console. The big secret (assuming the rumors are true)? 3D projection." From the article: "At the core of the theory sits how Revolution will display games: through a form of real-time 3D projection. That's right folks, along the lines of a classic 50s monster movie. Nintendo itself has stated that what it plans to use on Revolution isn't all that unique, only that it has never been applied to videogames. Taking that into account, plus recent patents filed by Nintendo, and it doesn't sound all that far fetched, argues Burgess." As always, take this with a grain of salt.
From TFA:
If that's not enough, he goes on. During the ShoWest film conference, a panel featuring George Lucus, Robert Zemekis, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez...
At least it's not George Mucus.
Sadly, I doubt the next N console is gonna have holo-deck type processing power.
Most likely it'll be some sort of LCD-shutter glasses technology, as already used in '3D' movies.
I find the claim "only that it has never been applied to videogames" somewhat misleading, as this technology has been available for PC games for many years (http://www.xforce3d.com/) It will, however, be the first time such technology has been natively supported by a game platform.
As for culling, the use of this pseudo-3D technology isn't going to change a thing.. your POV will remain the same, just the illusion of depth will be enhanced. Also, consider that if the hardware is powerful enough, some forms of culling (such as back-face) are unnecessary. Take for example the PS2 with it's 2.56Kb graphics pipeline.. I've heard developers rarely need to do backface culling with it.
Your Sig Here ($10)
IMAX glasses don't have shutters and don't blink. There is no blinking in IMAX at all. The IMAX system uses polarized light; one eye is polarized vertically and one is polarized horizontally. The light projected on the screen comes from two separate projectors and is also polarized. The glasses reject the 'wrong' light for each eye and allow only the 'right' light through. (If you take the glasses off, you will see two images projected on the screen.)
That's the reason you can't quite see the flicker. It's imaginary.
I was about to call shenanagans on this one until I found out that there are two systems for IMAX3D. The system you are talking about sounds like the one used at Disneyland with the pink glasses on rides like Captain EO, or the Muppets one or the Honey I Shrunk the Kids one, which I have absolutely no problem viewing and find very entertaining and convincing. They used to have an informative video before Captain EO that explained how they polarized the light and whatnot.
The only IMAX3D movie I saw was at the Luxor in Vegas, and I had to wear these big, bulky grey shutterglasses. You had to push a button at the beginning of the movie to calibrate them if I recall correctly. I know the difference between shutterglasses and the polarized glasses from Disney. Just to reiterate, this shutterglass movie was horrible and I would never see any IMAX3D movie again for fear that it uses the shutterglasses. For linkage verifying that there are two types of IMAX3D, check out this page at IMAX.
Who the hell said this was set in stone? This is a rumor. I highly doubt that Nintendo is going to make a mistake when they know what the people want. These are the same people who made Link older in the upcoming Zelda 2005 because it's what the people were crying about. I also doubt Nintendo is going to bring to the attention anything that even slightly resembles Virtual Boy.
Please give Nintendo more credit than claiming that they're gonna put some ancient 3D gimmick effect in their new console that will scare off consumers and 3rd-party publishers. These are the people who (currently) have been in the business longer than anyone else has (can't claim Atari now, they're gone). Everyone needs to stop preparing for Nintendo's funeral, it's not coming any time soon.