Acer Reveals First 3D Laptop
Acer revealed the "world's first" 3D laptop using in-house software, a special screen coating, and polarized glasses.
Acer has been a busy little bee today, revealing various products like the Windows 7 Multitouch notebook and the 11.6-inch Aspire Timeline CULV notebook. Acer also displayed the world's first mainstream 3D laptop during the press conference today as well, the oddly-named Acer Aspire 5738PG.
According to Pocket Lint's hands-on report, the device doesn't use hardware-based 3D acceleration like Nvidia's 3D Vision GPU, but rather relies on a software solution called Acer 3D CineReal and the TriDef suite. However the software works in conjunction with a special 3D coating on the laptop's screen and a pair of polarized glasses.
Acer actually goes into detail about the technology here, revealing that the TriDef Media Player within the CineReal software can convert 2D videos and photos on-the-go. On the other hand, PC Pro said that there are drawbacks to Acer's 3D technology. Viewers are required to have their heads positioned carefully to see the 3D effects without ghosting. The screen also has some very slight horizontal lines that apparently are a side effect of the 3D technology.
As for the laptop hardware, the device uses Intel's Centrino2 processor, up to 4 GB of memory, and the 3rd generation of Dolby Home Theater. The cost will be somewhere around $1,500.
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Sounds pretty cool I suppose; however, if the 3d effects are done with software acceleration they aren't going to be as fast as they would be with hardware. I will have to wait and see before a final judgment can be made.
The thing with relatively new tech (this tech isn't necessarily new, just new in consumer computers) is that the first few versions of it often leave some things to be desired. For instance, what happens if you wear glasses? Do you have to have special polarized glasses? What if you don't want to wear glasses? What if you want to use an operating system other than Windows, like GNU/Linux or BSD? What if you don't look at it at just the right angle?
This is great news though. Wait a few years and this may be mainstream, have a wider viewing angle and not require glasses. Imagine doing a video chat with your friend as a sort of hologram.
I for one can't wait for Flash that not only expands beyond it's tag size to most of the full screen, but actually reaches out of the screen and 'chases' me with advertising.
Just like Futurama...
Wait a few years and this may be mainstream, have a wider viewing angle and not require glasses.
If it is using polarisation to separate the left and right eye images I'm not sure how it could be done without glasses.
Without some decent 3D porn sites I can't see the thing working. With some decent 3D porn sites consider this a sale!!!