this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025

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Lenovo testing glasses-free 2D / 3D computers with a ring controller. (www.theverge.com)

submitted 6 days ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Naich@lemmings.world 26 points 5 days ago

Back on to 3d already? The AI bubble hasn't even popped yet.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

this was working well in a research lab in the aughts. Surprised its not more common as by now I would think any laptop camera should be able to do eye tracking pretty decently.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

If a 3DS was able to pull this off flawlessly I'm pretty sure any potato laptop or phone can as well.

The challenge is the display and the software. There is no real contemporary stereoscopy support anymore beyond dedicated VR apps. Nvidia's driver level support has been deprecated, I believe.

[+] Grippler@feddit.dk 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

As I said below I'm shocked to find out that people have forgotten that Nintendo iterated on the launch design with camera-driven eye tracking that pretty much solved that issue entirely.

Did people not mess around with the New 3DS at all? In my recollection it feels like it dominated most of the system's lifespan. But then in my recollection I never ever turned off the 3D slider while the Internet is full of people that claim they never turned it up, so it seems the 3DS was used in very different ways by different people.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'd guess many people never used a New 3DS. I got the original, was disappointed, and never thought about buying a new expensive one to fix the shortcomings of the old one.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Was it your first Nintendo handheld, then? Because man, is that their default play. I say, sitting on my pile of Game Boy Light, Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DSi, New Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch OLED Editions.

But seriously, it works very well, it feels like magic and the bigger screen is also pretty good for how old and low-res it is. I have one sitting on my bedside table right now. If anything would sell me on a laptop using the same tech is the New 3DS.

I just don't know that the PC ecosystem would have the software support for it.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Was it your first Nintendo handheld, then?

No, but it was my last

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Man, for a thing that sold 75 million units and ended up with a pretty great game library some people really latched on to being mad about it at launch and just never moved past that.

It may well be the console with the biggest gap between performance and performative negative opinion online ever. I would have said neck and neck with the PSP a few years ago, but it really feels like that got reassessed after the fact through emulation.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm not mad, I was simply disappointed enough by the original 3DS that I didn't want to spend more money on a different version of it.

Is it somehow important to you that people like it?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Not particularly, but if we're discussing the idea of bringing this display technology back I do have a vested interest in knee-jerk rejection of its use on the 3DS not misrepresenting the potential.

This is the absolute best way to do stereo 3D, at least for single user devices, it works and it's built on well understood technology. I get that people were mad at the OG 3DS, mostly as part of a bit of a mob mentality memetic rejection of 3D TVs, but this is genuinely cool tech I would like to have access to again.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Me too, man, I miss the 3DS era. I need to go back and replay A Link Between Worlds, at least.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 5 days ago

Man, yeah. Mario 3D World, the Sega M2 3D conversions of retro games...

I don't think the native PC software support would be there for something like this, but at least having a viable way to properly emulate the 3DS without having to rig something with a VR headset would be great.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I get that people were mad at the OG 3DS, mostly as part of a bit of a mob mentality memetic rejection of 3D TVs

Not sure why you're bringing this up in a discussion where multiple people have given other reasons for "being mad" (or, more objectively, disliking) the OG 3DS.

You're acting in pretty bad faith.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The only thing I've seen mentioned is the bad stability of the stereoscopy and the narrow viewing angle of the original model, which was solved with the same eye tracking solution we see here. The entire conversation is spawning from my surprise at people seemingly being unaware that happened or assuming it hadn't worked.

There was legitimate criticism at launch about the initial library, but obviously we're not arguing about that here (and it definitely got corrected over time).

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The only thing I've seen mentioned is the bad stability of the stereoscopy and the narrow angle of the original model, which was solved with the same eye tracking solution we see here.

Yes, and I've explained to you that many people probably never tried the fixed version. So why say "people are just repeating what they're heard about 3D TVs"? You're attributing an infantilizing explanation to all those who disagree, when a more logical and direct explanation was already given.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Was it?

Look, you seem very keen on having an argument about this, but this conversation so far boils down to:

-3DS did this well. -No, it didn't. -Oh, I meant the New 3DS that made it better. I didn't realize people didn't know about that one. -People probably didn't know about that one.

While we're at it, the 3DS sold 75 million units. There are probably way more people out there who tested a New 3DS than a Dreamcast.

EDIT: Made me check. 10 million units, as per Wikipedia. I would have guessed higher, but hey, I was still right, it's more than the Dreamcast.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'd be fine if you didn't tell people they only dislike the 3DS because they are repeating what others are saying about 3D TVs.

While we're at it, the 3DS sold 75 million units.

Nintendo 3DS: 25.96 million

Nintendo 3DS XL: 19.64 million

Nintendo 2DS: 10.29 million

New Nintendo 3DS XL: 12.25 million

New Nintendo 3DS: 2.49 million

New Nintendo 2DS XL: 4.41 million

These are the sales numbers I was able to quickly find. Roughly 15 million "New 3DS (XL)" vs 75 million total devices, or ~60 million 3D devices. So for every person that tried a New 3DS, 3 people only tried the old one.

And you're surprised, even "shocked", that most people still think about the old 3DS when talking about the 3DS 3D effect? Shocked enough to attribute it to people just repeating what other people said about 3D TVs?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago

The 3D display on the 3DS was absolutely treated way more harshly than it deserved because it landed smack in the middle of the hipstery meme of claiming 3D cinemas were a scam and 3D TVs sucked. Both of those things had different degrees of grains of truth at the core, but none of them really applied to the 3DS.

If that's your hangup, I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree, because I WILL hold to that. It happened and it was absolutely the children who were wrong. You know because they weren't even done being unreasonably mad at 3D displays for sheer mob dopamine when they started getting hyped about putting the same 3D displays on their face, which had most of the same issues plus made everybody puke in the crappy early iterations. I've kept a mental naughty list of all the games journalists that were super snarky about 3D monitors and the 3DS but immediately fawned over Palmer Luckey because, man, did that bit of flip-flopping not age well.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, because the point I've been making all along is that I am surprised at people not realizing that the New 3DS fixed the shortcomings of the original when it came to stability and viewing angles. For the umpteenth time.

I also sniped your googling, but hey, the count you found gives it a few extra million over the one I found, so that's neat. Again, that puts it ahead of the Dreamcast, the Game Gear and the Saturn and just behind the PS Vita in terms of units moved. I think you'd be surprised if somebody showed up not realizing that one of those existed. That seems reasonable. More relevantly to the point, you don't need to have owned one to be aware of this. Not only were these on display kiosks all over the planet (because 3D was and remains hard to market otherwise), but this was the big selling point. It was all over reviews of the new models.

And again, I'm not saying people do remember and are lying, I'm surprised at the fact that they don't remember. Or at least that they don't remember so hard they're willing to be confidently wrong about it online. Which seems both reasonable and entirely up to me, to be honest.

[+] Grippler@feddit.dk 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh, now you are objectively incorrect.

I pulled mine out on the back of this thread (not hard, I have it on hand), just to reassure myself of how effective the eye tracking is. A level of Yoshi's Wooly world later, I can say it only lost tracking when I started pacing around with it. While sitting or standing with it in my hands it was just a clean, solid 3D image, and it definitely beats having some polarized or shutter glasses on my face.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You are objectively incorrect. The tracking is better, yes, but the image is blurry when 3D is on. It's definitely not clean and solid.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 4 days ago

I will choose to believe my eyeballs on that count, but thanks for your contribution, I suppose?

This is a real issue with stereoscopy, in that it's hard to talk about and there isn't a guarantee that people's perception of it is identical. Here, for example, I don't know what you mean by "blurry".

Potentially you could be talking about the ghosting effect you see when the lenses aren't properly lined up with your eyes. I find that is entirely resolved by the eye tracking unless you're moving the console around on the what, three different New 3DSs I have used for any length of time. I can't guarantee something about your eyes or your 3DS isn't different, though. I can only tell you I have a 3DS in front of me right now and I'm tilting it every which way and I see no ghosting as long as the camera gets line of sight to my face.

Or you could be talking about resolution. Because the way 3DS stereoscopy works is by angling alternate lines of pixels to each eye there is a horizontal resolution change on the display between 2D and 3D, although your brain should sort most of it out when overlapping the two images. I'm sitting here with a 3DS in front of me typing this and flipping the slider on and off and the image doesn't lose any resolution to my eyes, it just goes deep. Can I promise that your brain is parsing the half-res-per-eye the same way mine does? I guess not.

All I can tell you is the effect is rock solid for me and I would take it on a tablet or laptop any day with no improvements (although I'd like to see how much further it can be pushed with modern tech). This is non-negotiable and the results of real life testing in real time right the heck now. Unfortunately for the same reason I can also not sit here and tell you that you aren't seeing what you're seeing. I can only report on what I see.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 2 points 5 days ago

that is sad to hear. when it was coming in I just assumed it would be something eventually all cards had as standard.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Firstly the 3DS couldn't pull it off. Secondly this is a completely different technology. Basically it's just tracking your eyes and Parallax mapping the screen effects.

It's still a 2D display in reality.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, no, the 3DS did eye tracking starting with the New 3DS.

Have people memory holed this? The New 3DS could adjust its parallax via eye tracking to a much wider effective tracking angle. It took a fraction of a second to adjust if you moved too quickly, but it was seamsless most of the time.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Have people memory holed this?

I have no idea what you mean. I've never heard of a new 3DS when did it come out?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It had a bigger screen, eye tracking for the stereo 3D, a built-in second stick nub thingy and a bit more performance. It came in two sizes, to match the OG and XL versions of the base model.

Kinda nuts that this fell through the cracks for some people. The improvements to the stereo tracking were dramatic.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's rather telling though isn't it that Nintendo then abandoned the technology as soon as they went over to their next console. If it had been popular they would have included it on the switch.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 4 days ago

They abandoned many things when transitioning to the Switch. Most notably home consoles. I wouldn't extract too many conclusions from that train of thought.

But yeah, I'm not saying the 3DS stereo display was hugely popular, even if the console itself did pretty well. Clearly a bunch of people were very hostile to it (and to every other variant of 3D display) right off the bat and never looked back. If the meme of "I switched the 3D slider down and never touched it again" popular at the time didn't show that this thread seems to be good proof.

I'm saying people were extremely wrong about that and I'm surprised that the massive improvement in the New 3DS flew under the radar enough for some people to not even be aware that it happened. The tech absolutely works, and the two iterations Nintendo did absolutely show that it can be implemented very effectively for cheap.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

im not sure how the 3ds did it but if this is what I think the screen will still require physical lines to work off of that will be so thing that they should barely be visible or assuming its done better two screens on top of each other where the first screen throws up the lines and could likely be something like eink.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 4 days ago

I have no idea how it works I'm not sure if Lenovo have released that information.

It was at CEX but all the footage of it is mostly of people going "it's really interesting but it doesn't show up on camera". So is anyone's guess how good this will be.

I'm inclined to feel like it's a gimmick though. Does anyone want 3D displays?

[–] OmegaMan@lemmings.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Why.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

So you can see what it's hiding behind all those windows.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 8 points 5 days ago

This will go nowhere.

[–] Konstant@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

But can we eat the 3D?

[–] carp1@lemm.ee 2 points 4 days ago

I love 3D tech this is awesome

[–] londos@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

So basically the Wii hack but with modern head tracking instead of IR.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They had this at CES. But the online footage doesn't really capture it very well so I have no idea how good the product is.

If it's pulled off where I suppose it could be useful but it just sort of seems gimmicky to me. Remember 3D TVs, remember how there was absolutely no content for them and no one bought them. Yeah.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

There are plenty of 3D movies still being released on Bluray. And 3D is still a thing in home-theatre projectors. The content is definitely there. And the tech has gotten better aswell. It just never caught on. Because people would rather have 8k on a 30 inch TV.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Woah is that a 3d picture

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl -1 points 4 days ago

"This is how, with a few simple contraptions, a loaf of white (or black) bread can be turned into a trolleybus... But what for?"