Slashdot Mirror
First Look At Acer's 3D Laptop
Barence writes "Acer today revealed the world’s first 3D laptop, the Acer Aspire 5738PG, which will launch alongside Windows 7 on October 22. It uses a combination of software and specially coated glass on the 15.4in screen, along with a standard set of polarised glasses. Initial impressions were a bit iffy, and whether anyone actually needs a 3D laptop is another question entirely, but we'll find out this month."
I wonder whats the use for 3D laptop, and if this works better than the existing tech?
NVIDIA 3D Vision is great with some games, but laptops aren't usually used for that and you would probably want atleast 17" screen if you'd get it for gaming. So whats the use?
This would be a better idea for a desktop system since laptops are supposed to be portable. You'd have to be a pretty big nerd (even by Slashdot standards) to wear special 3D computing glasses in public.
Using 3D glasses in the privacy of your own home (on your desktop PC) makes far more sense.
I'm on my third Acer laptop in 4 years (one for work, one for personal use, and a spare). I do not by any means consider myself an Acer fanboi -- they just keep coming up with the features I want at a good price point, and they seem to last a good long while (yes, I still sometimes use the one I bought in 2005).
This 'feature', however, is not likely to be among them. Might be cool for gamers and/or designers, though.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And aim the cooling vents directly at the retinas!
Why do you need a laptop? Put a CPU several times more powerful than iPhone in glasses themselves and use a webcam/microphone to let you "type" on any flat surface or give voice commands. Sounds like another case of trying to glue in a new technology without thinking how to integrate it.
You're right. Your solution really does sound like trying to glue in a technology without thinking how to integrate it.
I do 3D modelling, and I'd love to do it at the beach.
Otherwise, gaming in 3D would be fun.
Novelty technology? Okay, maybe for most folks at this time.
Their marketing department already has. The issue is getting the engineers on board.
And have the Li-Ion battery to power all that in the form of a hat.
It will be great in the upcoming winter months. Not so great in the summer when it explodes and catches fire on top of your head.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is pointless and stupid : here's why.
First of all, 3d gaming requires some serious tinkering. It's still a very immature, rare technology that works best with better displays than you can fit into a laptop. Right now, the DLP HDTVs that support 3d are the best available display with the least amount of ghosting.
Second, rendering 2 viewpoints puts far more load on the GPU than rendering just one. You need the fastest available single GPU nvidia graphics card in order to play recent games. It has to be single GPU because so far nvidia drivers don't support 3d and SLI at the same time. It has to be nvidia because only nvidia currently offers 3d drivers. There's a way to get 3d on an ATI card but it's limited.
Gaming on a laptop is already a bad bargain, 3d gaming is even worse.
Without all that said : I think 3d gaming is freakin' awesome. I even built myself a custom planar display a couple years ago in order to play games in 3d.
Ben Affleque suqued in that flique.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
Ahem.
The article links to the Sharp Actius RD3D, a 5-year-old failed 3D laptop. But, the summary calls this new one the "world's first". I suppose the article submitter didn't RTFA, and neither did the poster?
I have one. The stylus input device works quite well for drawing, but the UI sucks. There's not even a delete function. Battery life seems to be very good though.
A 3D display produces a 3D representation; that is, if you change your angle of view, what you see changes accordingly. Likewise, if the display is turned 180 degrees, you'd be looking at the back of the scene being displayed.
Stereo displays provide a fixed perspective generated by providing two single-angle images of a scene that are designed to replicate the angles your eyes would achieve from the (single, unchangeable) desired vantage point. Moving your head will not reveal other portions of the scene in any way, nor will moving the display.
Stereo image technologies can become 3D when they use the actual angle of view of your eyes and change the stereo angle appropriately. This requires far more interaction with your eyes and physical orientation, not to mention actual 3D media to display. A half-measure most of us are familiar with can be observed in a game like Mechwarrior (XBox), where you can change your angle on the scene by moving your mech's position or rotating its turret; here, we have the 3D media that is required, but we still don't have the eye and body tracking that would give you the sense that you're looking at something in full 3D.
There's a huge push right now to get the public to call stereo, "3D." As proper geeks, we should resist this strongly, not only as a matter of incorrect (highly exaggerated) terminology, but to make it clear that there is a long way to go yet before we actually get 3D displays, and that we're interested in getting them.
Quite aside from the issue that until or unless we're all normally wearing display capable contacts or something similar that conveniently and as a matter of course feeds us dual images, the entire "here, put these glasses on" approach is a sorry mess. No matter what technology the glasses use.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.