Sony Teases 3D Playstation 3 171
Ars Technica has a brief report from CES, where Sony demonstrated the work they've done to bring 3D technology to the PS3. Quoting:
"The idea was just to show the technology to people, to see if they would be interested in sitting at home, wearing a dorky set of black glasses, watching content in 3D. I couldn't pry details about how the 3D affect was achieved, or if the display could turn any source into 3D, but what's clear is that, glasses or no, the 3D affect is amazing. Sony showed off Wipeout HD running in true 3D, and I was ready to whip out my credit card right there. Frank and I both agreed, this was one of the best demos of 3D technology we have ever seen."
Grammar - Affect / Effect (Score:1, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the author means "effect" instead of "affect".
Dorky reference: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx
Re:Content (Score:1, Informative)
Uhm. It's just a rendering technique and a set of dorky glasses. You won't need to buy anything except the game and dorky glasses.
Re:"if the display could turn any source into 3D" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hang on... (Score:3, Informative)
As far as the "any source" part is concerned, let's not be silly here, you need concrete depth information. Sure our brains can infer this information but the sheer processing grunt required for a computer to do this means it will not be done any time soon at least not in realtime on full motion video.
Maybe they meant "any game" which is how it works, for example, on a PC with LCD shutter goggles.
Nice to see that technology is rolling back around to the Sega Master System, though.
Maybe next they will use Vectrex technology to make black and white TVs display color :P
Re:"if the display could turn any source into 3D" (Score:3, Informative)
That isn't new, though, because you've been able to do the same thing for some time. 120 Hz LCDs are fairly new but 120 Hz CRTs have been around for some time and the "on a flatscreen!" thing is no more valid than the "on the internets!" patent suffix.
Re:Hopeful (Score:5, Informative)
For LCD HDTVs, most of the input lag comes from all the processing hardware, not the LCD panel itself. Many TVs now come with a "game mode" that disables certain processing features to decrease lag time at the expense of noise reduction, or upscaling quality, or whatever.
When I play Guitar Hero on my Sony LCD TV, I get about 60ms lag with the TV in its normal operating mode (as measured by GH's lag compensation feature). When I enable game mode on my TV, the lag effectively drops to zero. With game mode enable, many of the picture optimization features are not available, but that doesn't generally bother me since I usually disable them anyway.
Once again... we have a failure to RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Or even the title.
Sony Teases 3D Playstation 3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3#Stereoscopic_3D [wikipedia.org]
Stereoscopic 3D
In December 2008, SCE confirmed that they intend to support stereoscopic 3D games and Blu-ray movies in 2009.[186] This functionality will be introduced to the PlayStation 3 via a firmware update making the first and only games console capable of generating high definition 3D images.[187] This technology was first demonstrated publicly on the PS3 in January 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show. Journalists were shown Wipeout HD and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in 3D as a demonstration of how the technology might work if it is implemented in the future.
As for refresh rate and glasses...
HD does not go over 60Hz at the moment. And that only with 720p and 1080i.
And while 120Hz TVs are relatively new - 100Hz TVs have been around for a decade or more.
So, unless your TV's remote comes with a cord - there are pretty good chances it has a rather comfortable refresh rate.
Which is actually - irrelevant.
Those "no shutter job or anything" glasses are actually circularly polarized glasses [wikipedia.org].
In fact, if you look closely at the photo in the original article you can make out the Real D logo on the glasses.
Circularly polarized glasses
To present a stereoscopic motion picture, two images are projected superimposed onto the same screen through circular polarizing filters of opposite handedness. The viewer wears low-cost eyeglasses which contain a pair of analyzing filters (circular polarizers mounted in reverse) of opposite handedness. Light that is left-circularly polarized is extinguished by the right-handed analyzer; while right-circularly polarized light is extinguished by the left-handed analyzer. The result is similar to that of steroscopic viewing using linearly polarized glasses; except the viewer can tilt his head and still maintain left/right separation.
Real D Cinema System (used recently with the sterescopic Disney movie, "Chicken Little 3D") uses electronically driven circular polarizers that alternate between left- and right- handedness, and does so in sync with the left or right image being displayed by the (digital) movie projector.
So, refresh rate - irrelevant. If it works in 2-D it will work in 3-D.
So, that "massively higher cost" you are talking about comes down to $1.95 for the glasses [ultimate3dheaven.com] while that "lower image quality" does not even exist - since it is the case of only displaying a "doubled" image as can very well be seen in the photo in the article.
Unless you refuse to fork over those 2$ cause it is an outrageous case of bait and switch making the consumer spend extra on hardware just so he/she/it could play the game. [vgcats.com]