My eyes! They do everything!

August 12, 2010 7:33 PM

Nintendo's latest handheld console will display images in 3D, without glasses (and also without burning your eyes out. Again.) How? Jeff Grubb explains.

via.

posted by griphus (55 comments total)

Cool, but the first thought that came to my mind (first YT link) was "they didn't let their demo chicks wear flats?" I don't find myself wearing high heels, but I'm pretty sure standing around in those is gonna suck.
posted by doubleozaphod at 7:50 PM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Really love what Nintendo is doing with the 3DS I hope the technology is adopted in regular TVs (though it would be hard to hit the "sweet spot") because right about now it seems way too gimmicky to watch 3D "TV" with glasses on the whole time.
posted by The1andonly at 7:52 PM on August 12, 2010

I've maintained that my interest in 3D would start when the glasses went away.

...Starfox 64 in 3D is also a pretty great concept.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:04 PM on August 12, 2010

I'm sure people will scoff, but be skeptical of Nintendo at your own peril. I remember lots of predictions that the touch-screen on the DS was just a gimmick that would flop. If anybody can find the killer app for 3D games it's Nintendo.
posted by Camofrog at 8:13 PM on August 12, 2010

I wonder when the Nintendo 3DS ultra Super light with a 137% more 3D brightness will come out....
posted by The1andonly at 8:18 PM on August 12, 2010 [6 favorites]

Also that dude gets bonus points for using Gogol Bordello.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:40 PM on August 12, 2010

I may have to break out the VirtualBoy game system and celebrate.
posted by zippy at 8:51 PM on August 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

i can see through time
posted by The Whelk at 8:57 PM on August 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

The problem with using parallax barriers on TVs is that the technology doesn't really scale. The video mentions that you need to be in the "sweet spot" in front of the screen in order to see the effect; too far to the left or right, and you don't get the 3D experience. This is a problem with large televisions, where people generally sit wherever the hell they want on a couch. It also makes it hard to display 3D video to more than one person, especially in your typical "have some friends over to watch the game" scenario.

On the 3DS, of course, neither of these things are issues. What's more, even 3D with glasses isn't immune to these problems—for example, you'd need to buy a set of glasses for all of your friends if you wanted them to watch 3D football with you. And companies like Sharp are still working on improving the parallax barrier method, so in a few years we might think of glasses-enabled 3D as a technological stopgap. But right now, the sort of glassless 3D Nintendo's pushing is only really possible in a portable, which partially explains why Sony's 3D video game solution requires so much hardware.
posted by chrominance at 8:58 PM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

They should polarize the screenso it's a blank screen outside the sweet spot, because stop watching me play Castlevania. You're making me nervous and I'm messing up.
posted by fuq at 9:02 PM on August 12, 2010 [9 favorites]

Ah, hell, The "explains" link is supposed to be this. It's got all the diagrams and everything. Mods, pls help?
posted by griphus at 9:03 PM on August 12, 2010

This looks like the same screen technology as on the Fuji W1 3D still camera released last year.

Hopefully Nintendo have done a much better job than Fuji did. The screen on the Fuji ended up being very low resolution to account for having to display for both eyes at once and it's a painful experience trying to use it, like trying to maintain a magic eye illusion for a long time.
posted by breakfast! at 9:18 PM on August 12, 2010

The1andonly: "I wonder when the Nintendo 3DS ultra Super light with a 137% more 3D brightness will come out...."

Sweet criminy jesus no. The unlit original GBA was a bad idea, but there is such a thing as too much fucking light. The GBA SP doubled as a pretty good directional light, and the original DS was brighter. The DS Lite was brighter still, for no good reason. I haven't picked up a DSi for fear I might burn my retinas, and the way you talk about the 3DS makes me afraid of second hand sunburns.
posted by pwnguin at 10:16 PM on August 12, 2010

The Jeff Grubb you know is not the same Jeff Grubb I know.

When I was in middle school we thought it would be cool to call TSR and ask My Jeff Grubb when a supplement for the Marvel RPG was coming out. He picked up the phone.
posted by Cyrano at 10:52 PM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Has a pricetag on this been announced yet? As much as I love Nintendo, I simply don't have a reason to purchase yet another handheld console just for the 3D capabilities. It really isn't that big of a deal to me.
posted by FiberOptick at 10:52 PM on August 12, 2010

I'm really excited for the 3DS, but lordy, the row of women who were basically acting as walking tethers for the demo machines was creepy.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:10 PM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This looks like the same screen technology as on the Fuji W1 3D still camera released last year.

Oh yeah, the 3DS has a built-in camera that can take 3D photos too. I actually said, "holy shit!" out loud when I read that.

Has a pricetag on this been announced yet? As much as I love Nintendo, I simply don't have a reason to purchase yet another handheld console just for the 3D capabilities. It really isn't that big of a deal to me.

I don't think there's been a price announcement yet, but the 3D capabilities aren't even the biggest thing to get excited about with it. 3D may be the 2000s-era Nintendo Gimmick that gets people's hands on it (see: touch screen, Wii Remote), but the really big deal is that this is the first true successor to the DS (even though there's been, like, five negligible hardware revisions).

Hell, they're porting Metal Gear Solid 3 to the thing. 3D's just gonna be the icing on a very delicious cake.
posted by EmGeeJay at 11:13 PM on August 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

This is a great parry to Apple's growing gaming mindshare (I abandoned my DS about five minutes after buying my iPod Touch last year). It'd be tough to counter on iOS devices because of the portrait/landscape flip.
posted by Lazlo at 11:31 PM on August 12, 2010

Actually youtube already has support for 3D videos, in fact you can view them without glasses or a special screen by crossing your eyes.

Ironically the reason I know this is because of this 3d video, which is actually the only 3d youtube video I've seen.

And it's a joke about the 3DS. But yeah just select crosseyed mode (I think it starts with red-green anaglyph mode by default)

But check it out if you can do crosseyed 3d (also 'far focus' mode is available if you can do that too. Cross eyed is easier for me). It's actually really cool.
posted by delmoi at 11:32 PM on August 12, 2010

This is a great parry to Apple's growing gaming mindshare (I abandoned my DS about five minutes after buying my iPod Touch last year).

Speaking of which, id's spiffy new engine runs on the iPhone and even at this early stage can throw around considerably more than the PSP or the original Xbox.

For purely selfish reasons, I hope Apple never does displace Nintendo in the handheld space (not that I think they will; the absolutely insane cost of buying into the iOS ecosystem, the frequent hardware updates and the regular obsolescence are incompatible with truly mass-market gaming), as I find purely touch-controlled games painful to play after a while. Some days I find it hard enough to play my PSP, which I can fully support with both hands.

the really big deal is that this is the first true successor to the DS

Oh hell yes. Finally, a Nintendo handheld able to push decent-quality 3D (old-style, 2D3D, that is)? I'm getting ants in my pants waiting for the inevitable Mario Galaxy-style platformer.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:02 AM on August 13, 2010 [3 favorites]

Wait, what? From the explains link: "The cyan lens blocks cyan light and the red lens blocks red light".
posted by lucidium at 3:36 AM on August 13, 2010

I had a chance to see a laptop with one of these parallax screens at the Royal Institution's summer fair this year, and I was very impressed. The "sweet spot" was indeed too small to be much use for a TV, but was easily big enough for something designed for single viewers like a laptop, phone or handheld console. The 3D effect was at least as good as what I've seen wearing glasses in the cinema.

The researchers there were also demonstrating a different idea based on the same technology: a screen that shows a different image depending where you're standing. The demo unit they'd built was set up to look like a car dashboard computer; from the driver's seat you see GPS mapping/routing software, from the passenger seat you see a film playing. Here, the "sweet spots" were very generous -- easily enough to be useful to drivers and passengers without restricting their movements -- and there was absolutely no bleed-through of images that I can see.

The guys working on the stand said that they were making "promising" progress on displays in which things seem to hover in front of the screen, instead of hanging behind it. It sounded like a fascinating job - a mix of materials scientists, neurobiologists, programmers, etc.
posted by metaBugs at 3:43 AM on August 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Cool, but the first thought that came to my mind (first YT link) was "they didn't let their demo chicks wear flats?"

Maintain your perspective, dude. Women do not buy or play video games. This is a demonstration for manly men with bulging wallets, and manly men with bulging wallets want their demonstrators to be hot chicks in tight skirts and high heels.
posted by pracowity at 4:11 AM on August 13, 2010

I was able to play the 3DS demos back at E3 this year and I really believe that this gadget is going to change everything (again). Starfox 64 in 3D is amazing. It's like looking into a shadowbox. I felt like I could reach into the screen and start pulling out spaceships. There was one point in the demo where an enemy took a position between me (as in, my eyes) and my Arwing (spaceship). Amazing stuff. The 3D camera is impressive, but beyond showing the images on the 3DS, I can't really see the benefit.
posted by Servo5678 at 4:13 AM on August 13, 2010

Are those demo games attached to those women? And men stand there and fiddle with the knobs while the women stand attentively and smile?
posted by DU at 4:52 AM on August 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yep. I watched the Nintendo E3 presentation live and I couldn't believe it when the totty trotted on. From other accounts it seems like they weren't even briefed properly on the console itself; they were just supposed to be walking, smiling demo pods. Creeeeeepy.

I hadn't seen it properly before so I looked up a video of the MGS3 demo, and even without the 3D effect it's clear that the 3DS is able to push more stuff around the screen than the PSP. Very impressive.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 4:56 AM on August 13, 2010

I spent some time playing with generating stereograms from depth maps a while back, and though that doctor's opinion which is all over gaming sites today is reassuring, I do remember finding myself having trouble focusing afterwards.

I think it was because normally your eyes' convergence and focus are linked, but viewing a stereoscopic image on a flat surface means the convergence changes while the focus remains the same. Splitting that automatic link for long periods meant I had to make a slight conscious effort to properly focus on things in real space. I can imagine that getting a lot worse if you spend hours every day viewing a 3D display, even for an adult whose vision has already developed.

As an aside, I'd be curious to know if 3D displays mean that tricks like billboards and sky boxes don't work any more, because their actual shape is visible. It's probably not such a problem on a PS3 say, but even with the bumped up specs on the 3DS it must still need to simplify some things.
posted by lucidium at 5:07 AM on August 13, 2010

The demo unit they'd built was set up to look like a car dashboard computer; from the driver's seat you see GPS mapping/routing software, from the passenger seat you see a film playing.

They have this in production Range Rovers. It's apparently indistinguishable from magic.
posted by smackfu at 6:09 AM on August 13, 2010

Actually youtube already has support for 3D videos, in fact you can view them without glasses or a special screen by crossing your eyes.

That was awesome Delmoi! It's pretty shocking when you get it to just pop into focus.

For anyone that wants to try, use this picture first as the video is sort of tricky to do until you get a feel for it. Just cross your eyes till there are "3" images and then focus in on the middle image.
posted by zephyr_words at 6:15 AM on August 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

i could have gone to test this thing out but I had to go and get a bloody haircut. BOOOO.
posted by mippy at 6:24 AM on August 13, 2010

Wait, what? From the explains link: "The cyan lens blocks cyan light and the red lens blocks red light".
posted by lucidium

That is correct. With the cyan lens blocking cyan light only the image in red is being received by the right eye and since the red lens blocking red light only the image in cyan is being received by the left eye.
It's just one of the different ways of making sure each eye gets a different image.
posted by zephyr_words at 6:26 AM on August 13, 2010

That is correct. With the cyan lens blocking cyan light only the image in red is being received by the right eye and since the red lens blocking red light only the image in cyan is being received by the left eye. It's just one of the different ways of making sure each eye gets a different image.

The Cyan lens appears Cyan because it lets cyan light through. The red lens appears red because it lets red light through. That's how an Anaglyph works, anyway. The article on the DS just used those colors to illustrate the channels. The 3DS doesn't actually use an Anaglyph.
posted by delmoi at 6:47 AM on August 13, 2010

Whoa, since when does YouTube have a 3D mode menu?
posted by DU at 7:01 AM on August 13, 2010

Are those demo games attached to those women? And men stand there and fiddle with the knobs while the women stand attentively and smile?

Where is the problem with this?
posted by Fizz at 7:25 AM on August 13, 2010

Once I used a very expensive scientific monitor with similar technology. It had an eye tracker built in to the bezel, and a motor that moved around a lenticular plastic sheet so the two images stayed in your eyes' fields of vision.The upshot was that every time you moved your head, even a fraction of an inch, everything went blurry and there was a horrendous grinding noise for a second or two.

I'm sure Nintendo's version will be way better -- it's easier to ask the user to hold a portable device at exactly the right angle.
posted by miyabo at 7:44 AM on August 13, 2010

I went from "How the hell would this work?" to "OMG, huge wave of nostalgia" very quickly when they showed a clip from N64 Zelda. Life was so much simpler then...
posted by UrbanEye at 7:57 AM on August 13, 2010

What if I already see in 3D?
posted by stormpooper at 9:36 AM on August 13, 2010

Are those demo games attached to those women? And men stand there and fiddle with the knobs while the women stand attentively and smile?

Well, considering where the demo units are being held in relation to the models, it must be pretty fucking amazing technology, as I didn't see a single participant's eyes stray from the portables.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:51 AM on August 13, 2010

You mean I got those shutter-contacts surgically implanted in my eyes for nothing?

Also, dude: What was wrong with the first two dimensions?

I don't recall anybody saying they wanted 3D until suddenly it was the Next Big Thing. When did that happen?
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 11:48 AM on August 13, 2010

but the really big deal is that this is the first true successor to the DS (even though there's been, like, five negligible hardware revisions).

It's the 3rd, thus 3D.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:22 PM on August 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Or rather 3DS.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:25 PM on August 13, 2010

Whoa, since when does YouTube have a 3D mode menu?

It's actually been there for a while, but it only shows up on videos shot in 3D, so you don't see it often. Should be more 3D stuff coming over the next year or so.

I was about to buy a DSI XL or w/e when they announced the 3DS, so now I'm waiting for that (I have an original DS, but it only supports WEP for wifi which is annoying since I'm certainly not going to run my network in WEP and am too lazy to set up a side net for just the DS).
posted by wildcrdj at 12:34 PM on August 13, 2010

I tried that cross-eyed 3D demo with the focus-on-the-pen trick, and it didn't work. Trying to switch from looking at the pen to the picture almost broke my brain.
posted by smackfu at 12:37 PM on August 13, 2010

I don't recall anybody saying they wanted 3D until suddenly it was the Next Big Thing. When did that happen?

Saying you want 3D is like saying you want a flying car. No one thinks that they can actually get one, so why talk about it? (Except in the case of flying cars, ironically, to lament their lack of existence)

Of course, if flying cars were as cheap as regular cars, we'd just have a huge mess of sky traffic and it would be a disaster. That's not the case with 3D, though.
posted by delmoi at 9:31 PM on August 13, 2010

As an aside, I'd be curious to know if 3D displays mean that tricks like billboards and sky boxes don't work any more, because their actual shape is visible.

I've been doing some stereoscopic 3D games work, and this is indeed a problem. Sprites, impostors, and sky-boxes all look flat in 3D. We have a few ideas, not least of which is using more models.

It's quite exciting because we have to come up with viable real-time solutions for all of these, and more. For example, UI elements, subtitles, and overlays now exist in real space, so anything from the simulation that occupies the same space can intersect them stereoscopically, but not graphically. Which looks very wrong. You basically have to hang all the UI in front of the nearest thing you draw.

Indeed, anything in front of the screen is problematic. When an object moves out of shot, it gets clipped by the edge of the screen. This is fine for things behind the screen, because the brain's model is that you're looking through a window. In front of the screen though, and the clipping looks wrong. It leaves a partial image, which breaks the illusion. You can see this in Despicable Me, when Vector pulls out the squid gun. One of the squid's eyeballs is clipped in one eyes view, but not the other. Although I suspect I only noticed it because I spent that whole movie looking for stereo breaks.

My current favourite error though, happens when you play with convergence. This is the angle difference between the view vectors for each eye. It affects how deep the effect looks. If you crank it up, while you're looking at something in the far distance, then just before the image breaks into two, you can get your eyeballs to diverge, which is unnervingly uncomfortable.

This is the same number that the slider on the side of the 3DS screen controls. I don't think the screen on the 3DS is wide enough for divergence to be an issue though. I was surprised they let you control it. I guess they found that there's a large variance in the distance people hold their hand-helds from their faces.

I'm quite excited about In the Mouth of Madness, because the potential for 3D to fuck with your head, is pretty large. It should be fairly easy to make something you really don't want to look at, because the angles are all wrong.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:35 PM on August 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's the 3rd, thus 3D.

No, the original DS has already had four iterations: first came the original, then the DS lite, then the DSi, and finally the DSiXL.

Now comes the 3DS, which isn't the third anything. It's basically the DS2 / DS Advance / Super DS Entertainment System.
posted by EmGeeJay at 3:07 AM on August 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I know, but they are counting it as the third iteration rather than upgrade.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:33 PM on August 14, 2010

That is to say the DS Lite was an upgrade, the DSi was the second iteration, and the 3DS is the third. I'm not sure how you're discounting it as the third DS though. Especially if you go back and look at the accessorie list available for the DS that, aside from the 3D, a lot of it's features were previously available as add-ons.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:48 PM on August 14, 2010

Yeah, the DS Lite and the DSi XL was nothing but an upgrade in form factor with the same internals, like the GB SP was to the GBA. Here are the specs on the three consoles, they're distinctly different whereas the Lite/XL share the specs of the DS/DSi except for the design.
posted by griphus at 12:59 PM on August 14, 2010

As an aside, I'd be curious to know if 3D displays mean that tricks like billboards and sky boxes don't work any more, because their actual shape is visible.
---
I've been doing some stereoscopic 3D games work, and this is indeed a problem. Sprites, impostors, and sky-boxes all look flat in 3D. We have a few ideas, not least of which is using more models.

Can't you just create stereo sprites?
posted by delmoi at 1:39 PM on August 15, 2010

You mean like voxels?
posted by pwnguin at 4:14 PM on August 15, 2010

You mean like voxels?

Uh no, I mean two sprites, one for the left eye, and one for the right, so that when viewing the sprite, it looks 3D.
posted by delmoi at 1:54 AM on August 16, 2010

I find it really difficult to call the DSi a full step forward. Sure, it has some neato toys built in, and DSiWare downloads, but you know how many actual retail releases require the DSi hardware? Four.
posted by EmGeeJay at 1:54 AM on August 16, 2010

delmoi, what you're asking for is a surface pre-projected into two 2D perspectives. If you allow for a free-roaming camera, I think it will fare poorly. Keeping the geometric surface or voxels will let you recalculate the projections as the camera moves. I guess it might work, if you restrict it to 3D parallax like Virtual Boy. I'll let someone else experience non-euclidean geometry and inform us how long it takes to recover their sanity though.
posted by pwnguin at 4:01 PM on August 16, 2010

Huh, stereo sprites are good idea. I don't think you'd need to recalculate them pwnguin, as with things like billboards the planes they're rendered on are always oriented to face the camera. Maybe you could use parallax mapping to allow pre-rendered sprites to turn a little bit, too.

I'd be interested to see what else you can do with the two views other than stereoscopic 3D. For example, making an object partially transparent in one eye makes for a strange, flickering sort of effect.
posted by lucidium at 7:13 AM on August 17, 2010