Posted 10/21/09 at 09:28:49 AM by Paul Lilly

Jumping on the fast emerging 3D bandwagon, Acer today announced its new Aspire 5738DG notebook, the first from Acer to sport 3D viewing technology.

"This holiday season, we are seeing 3D content become more prevalent in popular films and games," said Ray Sawall, senior product manager for Acer America. "The new Acer Aspire 5738DG notebook enables consumers to enjoy exciting new 3D entertainment on a mobile PC that can also replicate a 3D experience from standard 2D content."

The new notebook achieves its 3D effect using TriDel 3D technology, which in addition to a 3D screen and special software, also means you'll need to don a pair of 3D polarizer glasses. When you do, you'll be able to filter 2D content into 3D, while also being able to toggle between the two types of displays with the click of the mouse, Acer says.

While the 3D capability steals the show, other specs include an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor (2.2GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus), 4GB of DDR2-1066 memory, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 with 512MB of dedicated video memory, a 320GB hard drive, multi-card reader, 8X DVD burner, four USB 2.0 ports, 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Acer says the Aspire AS5738DG-6165 will be available later this week starting at $780.

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Posted 10/19/09 at 09:58:46 AM by Paul Lilly

Boy oh boy has 3D technology come a long way since the advent of those horrendous blue and red glasses that are still around today. Taking the technology to a new level, Sony says it has developed a 360-degree 3D display, which it plans to show off during Tokyo's Digital Content Expo 2009 this Thursday.

Sony says no goofy glasses are required to view the stereoscopic, 24-bit color image, which measures just 96 x 128 pixels. The image is viewable from all angles, but Sony didn't say if you'll be able to see the side of the image, depending on where you're oriented in relation to the display.

It's just a novelty at this point, but as research and development continues, Sony said it could see this technology being used as a 3D photo frame or in videophones.

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Posted 10/15/09 at 10:45:20 AM by Paul Lilly

Remember when notebooks were simple portable PCs? That's not the case anymore, and today's units boast all kinds of tricks, whether it's multitouch capabilities, or unveling the "world's first" 3D laptop, as Acer has done with its Aspire 5738PG.

Acer unveiled the 3D-capable laptop during a press conference on Tuesday. The lappy uses a combination of in-house software, a special screen coating, and polarized glasses to achieve the 3D effect.

"The display has been coated with a special 3D film that clings to the panel pixel by pixel, enabling the LCD technology to deliver a 3D visual feast," Acer stated. "Slip on the cool polarized eyeglasses that filter the images and you're ready to dive into an extraordinary 3D adventure."

According to Acer, its TriDef 3D Experience software makes it possible to view all of your 2D videos and photos in 3D. Moreover, it comes with a tool that enables 2D to 3D conversion for games and apps supporting DirectX 9 or above, the company said.

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Posted 10/05/09 at 05:10:23 PM by Jason Barry

The folks over at 3M’s Optical Systems Division are excited to announce a new field sequential 3D optical film for handheld devices. They are crazy about their films over there at 3M and are hoping to change the mobile market with this latest development.

The new film should help motivate manufacturers to create new 3D mobile devices, applications and gaming products around the technology. “Our 3D optical film solution is designed to enhance communication and interaction by providing an immersive, compelling visual 3D experience for mobile devices” said Jim Bauman, VP of 3M’s Optical Systems.

3M Optical also managed to make the new film easy to integrate into the assembly process. It only requires the modification or upgrade of a couple layers in the optical film stack to produce the extra sensory experience they hope to achieve.

If you happen to be in Korea next week, they’ll be demoing the product at the Korea International Exhibition Center.

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Posted 08/04/09 at 10:42:44 AM by Paul Lilly

OpenGL 3.2 is here, marking the third major update in twelve months to the 2D and 3D graphics API (application programming interface). The updated API adds a bunch of new features, including a new WebGL standard for 3D on the web.

According to the Khronos Group, a member-funded industry consortium focused the creation of OpenGL, the latest release adds features to enhance performance, visual quality, accelerated geometry processing, and easier portability of Direct3D applications.

In addition, the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group on Khronos has defined an updated version of the OpenGL Shading language, along with two profiles within the OpenGL 3.2 specification for new application development and backwards compatibility.

Both AMD and Nvidia commented on the updated release, with the former calling the development of three new versions in twelve months a "remarkable achievement," while the latter announced the release of its OpenGL 3.2 beta drivers.

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Posted 07/23/09 at 01:01:05 PM by Paul Lilly

According to Greg Spencer, a Google Chromium programmer, hardware 3D acceleration might be coming to Chrome sooner than you think.

"The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we're close to being able to complete our first step towards integration: To build the O3D plugin as part of the Chromium code base, and link it into Chromium DLL," Spencer stated in a blog post.

Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome and Spencer said that he'll be making the Windows build of Chromium be dependent upon building O3D as part of the build process.

What this means to Joe User -- or more appropriately, Joe Gamer -- is an extra incentive for Web developers to build browser-based games capable of tapping into 3D graphics.

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Posted 07/21/09 at 04:35:21 PM by Andy Salisbury

Over this past weekend it would appear that the folks at YouTube have begun the initial stages of testing for their 20% Project, which aims to bring 3D to YouTube videos.

According to a Google employee posting on the YouTube forums who has only been identified as “YouTube Pete,” “I'm the developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project. It's currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes. A fix for this is in the works.” He also revealed some code, which would allow you to change the aspect of the video, among other things. You can see it all here.

It has been made clear though, that this is a side project for Google. With that in mind, there’s no official word as to when this mighty finally get official.

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Posted 07/07/09 at 08:00:30 AM by Paul Lilly

If this is the first time you've heard of VirtualBox, there's a good chance it won't be your last. The open-source virtual machine software, now owned by Sun, is giving the likes of VMWare Workstation a run for its money, and with the release of VirtualBox 3, the VM now supports experimental 3D graphics.

Not entirely new, developers have been slowly adding support for accelerated 3D graphics, and with the latest release, it's possible to run Direct3D 8 and 9 games or applications. That's in addition to OpenGL support.

Other new features and fixes include a revamped settings dialog, the addition of a minimalistic toolbar for seamless and full-screen mode, Windows 7 Remote Desktop Protocol client support, fixed TX checksum offloading for Linux kernal 2.16.8 or higher, fixed USB dongles issues, and lots more.

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