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Acer To Launch 3D Notebook In October?
An anonymous reader writes "Acer is planning to announce a 3D notebook computer by end of October. If Acer indeed comes out with a 3D laptop then it'll be the world's first manufacturer to do so. The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it requires no special glasses. The 15.6-inch notebook features built-in software which can convert regular 2D movies to 3D and directly support 3D movies." Update: 06/08 23:18 GMT by T : According to the linked story, the no-glasses version is still in the works; the current iteration does still require special glasses.
CSI already has these. I know because I saw it on TV. They were also able to get High Res photos out of a .5MB security camera and spin it around in 3D.
Are all the other laptops on the market existing in only two dimensions? I am pretty sure all laptops are currently three dimensional.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Bullshit.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm glad that they are going to be shipping 3 dimensional laptops. Those 2 dimensional laptops that I've been using are really inconvenient. The screen and the keyboard are on the same plane, and you can't push the buttons at all, because that would require a third dimension. Even worse, my 2 dimensional laptop keeps falling through infinitely thin slots, and cut my arm off once when it fell perpendicularly to the floor while my arm was in the way. It might be 2D, but it has mass after all, so it has an infinitely sharp edge. Apple made a big deal out of the Macbook Air being .25" thick at its thinnest point. That's nothing. My 2D laptop has 0 thickness!
Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted.
So basically they're just throwing a pair of shutter glasses into the box.
How we know is more important than what we know.
3d
I can barely stand staring at my 2d monitor all day.
Will it stop working after a while so you can take a break like the Nintendo VR Boy?
From TFA:
"Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted."
Suddenly, that 'most interesting thing' isn't that interesting at all.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it requires no special glasses.
Wow, that is interesting... oh, wait:
Currently, users still need to wear stereoscopic glasses for the 3D to be effective, however, Acer is developing a model without the need for glasses, although it still has quiet a few technological obstacles to overcome, Kan noted.
What's next? "The most interesting thing about Acer's machine is that it runs on a hyperdimensional fuel cell weighing only two ounces but able to supply power for six months on a single charge... (but not currently, and it has quite a few technological obstacles to overcome)."
Wishful thinking makes for a good press release, but not such a good Slashdot story.
Sharp produced a 3D laptop in early 2005.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/115348/sharps_3d_notebook.html
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/22/042253
with a no-glasses display, even. I saw one at a conference expo,
it worked pretty well for molecular graphics/viz stuff. But they never
caught on.
will it have a good video card or a cheap Intel gma card?
Is there anything they can't do?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Maybe they'll be using sharp's many-year-old technology? 2 LCD panels, one high res, the other lower behind it with something like a lenticular lens so one eye see only one panel
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
And you are talking about the second generation. The Actius RD3D was released a year earlier. So, this Acer is not the first 3D laptop in the sense that it exists in 3 dimensions, it is not the first 3D laptop in the sense of having a 3D capable display, maybe there is another usage of the term 3D?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Considering it's an Acer, they will go for the cheap solution.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Apple has spent the last few years getting people to think that switching from a 3D laptop to a 2D laptop is an upgrade. Now Acer thinks they can make non-thin cool again? Good luck with that.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
first portable computer with 3d screen was a device from sharp, and, whatever acer will say - they can be just at best second. And - yes.... 3d from sharp works without any glasses. what wrong is with this world? nvidia sells tehnology based on glasses and calls it "a new tehnology" - even if this kind of 3d is older than computers, and now acer comes with "first 3d laptop". they want to rewrite the history? or just sell the same sXXX one more time?
Fotowoosh?
Highly unlikely that it could work in a way acceptable for viewing movies. Cardboard cutouts instead of actual 3D at best...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Lenght, Width and Smell. Those computers will stink. Alternatively the 3rd dimension could be time, and they rot (hey, biodegradable computers will be a very ecological solution, you can make a whole marketing campaign with that)
Or could be some of the extended strings teory dimensions... it will be there, believe us, but you wont be able to perceive it.
can't wait to run dnf on it! oh.. wait!
Okay.. so on one hand, you've got... ...glasses. Nobody likes these, because you have to wear them.
- red/green red/cyan red/blue
- polarized
- shutter
- chromadepth
- etc.
On the other hand, you've got.. ...displays. Which most people don't like either, as you practically have to sit in a single spot to make it work well. There -are- displays where you can view from a few more angles (any 'tween' angles show ghosting), but always at a loss of (horizontal) resolution, as more and more images get displayed at the same time.
- lenticular
- uhm. nope, that's pretty much it.
This only counts -stereographic- 3D methods. So a bunch of panels behind eachother (medical imaging-look, and your laptop would be as thick as a printed encyclopedia..), or displays that track where your face is so as to show a different viewpoint (doesn't give depth cues except for the illusion when you move your head side to side like some sort of pigeon on drugs), don't count.
Neither of the above 2 methods are very appealing, but if I had to take my pick, I'll take glasses *any* time. Combined with the head tracker, all the more awesome. Displays that don't take glasses simply aren't there yet for any extended use.
( See an older post of mine for various other '3d display' methods; though I'm sure wikipedia's got 'm all covered, too )
Is this using Johnny Lee Chung's wii mote technology shown here?
I have no idea how a movie would be encoded to enable this, and of course, as Johnny points out it's only good for one viewer at a time... PERFECT for laptops, not so much for general displays. And... IMHO it's not really full 3-D but a damn good trick.
Guys, you don't want an autostereoscopic display based on lenticular imaging - basically the same thing you see on cracker jack prizes. There is no autostereoscopic display that looks anywhere near as good as polarized glasses or shutter glasses at 120hz or above. (60hz per eye) the resolution and viewing angles are simply too poor.
The current state of the art in personal 3D displays are LCD or plasma displays that have a polarizing layer on every other line, so you can view them with the nice, lightweight RealD style circularly polarized glasses - the same ones deployed with about 1,800 3D movie screens at the moment using the Sony XSRD digital cinema projectors. They look absolutely stunning. unfortunately for a 40" screen, it costs about $10,000. Hopefully they can get the manufacturing process down so that it is less expensive in the future. I imagine it is currently a very hands-on process of laying the strips down individually.
There is enough vertical resolution in full HD (1080 lines) that it looks DAMN good. I could not tell that each eye was only looking at an image with 1/2 the vertical resolution. The human brain is -very good- at putting together stereoscopic vision to give you something more than what you are looking at.
If they made a smaller version of the polarized LCD display that could fit on a laptop, it'd be a great thing for traveling demos.
A clarification - I meant to say that the same type of glasses are used with the digital cinema projectors, but the technology is different. The projectors project a full frame in each polarization simultaneously, whereas the home theater sized LCD flat panel displays show left and right eyes on every other vertical line simultaneously. With the projection system, each eye has a full resolution image, and on the LCD each eye sees 1/2 vertical resolution, which is not an issue on a smaller display.
The easiest way to get a stereo 3D movie is actually by taking advantage of camera motion.
1. Detect camera motion
2. Detect the direction
3. Detect the velocity
4. display frame t=N for one eye
5. display frame t=+-x for the other eye, depending on 2, and x depending on 4.
If you've got the movie Swordfish, you can apply this technique to the action sequence in the beginning where a camera orbits the scene. In fact, try here*:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2a6tw82&s=5
It's in cross-eyed stereoscopic format, so just cross your eyes, focus, and enjoy the scene in stereoscopic 3D.
It also shows (slightly) the pitfalls...
1. If there's no camera motion, this doesn't work.
2. If there's too much non-camera motion, this shows ghosting (as e.g. a person will be in place A at t=N, and place B at t=N+x)
3. If there's any post effects, they will stick out like a sore thumb if they are not accurately composited in. In that video, for example, the explosion-y bits halfway in look like they're kind of floating at a place in the scene they shouldn't be. It doesn't show so much in the original (just watch either left/right alone), but it shows up easily once made stereoscopic 3d.
It is a cute method, just not well-suited to any and all movies at all.
Other methods that might be employed are detecting fog and using the fog as a depth cue, or parent poster's method; but that will take a more hefty processor (most of the above steps can easily be derived from e.g. an mpeg processor, which already does motion estimation).
( *original material copyright Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, NPV Entertainment and Jonathan Krane Group and Warner Bros (distributor). Broadcast by SBS Broadcasting, a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. Used only to demonstrate a 2D to stereographic 3D conversion method, for educational purposes. )
The majority of 3D movies are such that you know that they're awful before you see them. No time-travel necessary.
... 3d that's my apartment number, I'll be waiting...
I hope these notebooks come with three or four spare motherboards. Judging by their previous track record, that is what it takes to keep their notebooks running beyond the warranty.
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=243038&start=0
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-71394-Acer-5101-keyboard-usb-and-touchpad-are-dead.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/51337-35-keyboard-mouse-work-vista-login-screen
Google it, tons more...
Seems Acer preferred playing their customers along until the warranty ran out, then charged them for a new motherboard (that didn't fix the problem in most cases) rather then admit they had a pattern failure.
I don't care WHAT kind of product they have, from a purely moralistic point of view, I'll take my business elsewhere.
When last I checked all laptops are in three dimensions, I wouldn't want a 2D laptop., it'd be hard to type...
How do these fucking stories make it to main page ?
Is there a bot net moderating slashdot firehouse, tagging all shitty stories as interesting , insightful and funny ?
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Does it mean they have started to use a CRT for the screen?
While Acers on average are "cheap", they do use better video cards sometimes:
Aspire 8935 - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670
Aspire 7730G - NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
just a quick search, I'm sure there's more...
This is awesome. First, notebooks. Then, netbooks.
Now, migrainebooks.
Is it just me, or does the article make it seem like Acer is merely bundling 3D software with their hardware. "Built-in software" really means nothing to me unless this is somehow part of the BIOS or it relies on special hardware they provide.
Is it not our notebook and everything else in this universe are 3D?
A couple of years ago Sharp released a 15 inch 3d display and a notebook with the display built in. It wasn't the best but it was the first run of the technology. They even had a beautiful 19-inch 3d display that never made it to market, at least not in the US.
... a 120Hz LCD screen (which I'd very much like).
Or alternatively (and probably more likely), pixels with opposite polarisation are interleaved (horizontally or vertically), the included glasses are passive-polarised, and the "3D mode" is half the resolution of the 2D mode.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
does the knob go up to 11D?
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
Jenna Jameson in full 3D glory! Prepare your Biff's sidekick 3D glasses. We are about to live interesting times.
the fact that acer is even pushing 3d is indicative of the trend, is it not? ...for what tech can separate the masses from their money in this doldrum of 2d we find ourselves in? 3d, of course! ...but I doubt acer will be on the forefront of it -- just a tailcoat rider, as usual. Does this mean ubiquitous 3d is finally here and ready to be ridden? When we see an i3d laptop from Apple, we will know for sure =)
You just have to cross your eyes
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first 3d laptop available. I was at a trade show (IAAPA) about 5 years ago, and one of the exhibitors happened to have a laptop with a lenticular screen, running a 3d demo. If you positioned yourself in exactly the right position, then you would see the image in 3d. Now, I'm not saying that the 3d effect was really pronounced, or even good. And if you were off-center by even a little bit then it just looked bad. But the laptop existed, and I'm pretty sure it was available on the consumer market.
That is, if you spill a glass of water (anywhere in the house), or just bring a glass (maybe even empty, but this has not been tested), the keyboard dies.
Really, just try it. And then buy a real laptop.
Does anyone else hate 3-D? I don't understand why this 80's fad is back but it sucks. Almost as bad as a pet rock. I don't mean to troll but G. Lucas is behind this right now so you know it is a really bad idea.
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