Nintendo 3DS Review

[PressBot]

By Andres Hernandez


Introduction

Nintendo has been the brand-name in the video game industry for over 20 years, and at one time the word "Nintendo" was synonymous with the action of playing video games.  Although Sony and Microsoft have both carved out chunks of the market for themselves, Nintendo continues to be the company consistently innovating in this field.

Even back in the 80's, the original NES came packaged with a light-gun and a battery-controlled robot, R.O.B., that could play the 2nd player on select games.  A few years later, Nintendo released the PowerPad, a mat you could step on to control certain titles (most notably Track & Field).  Dating back three decades, Nintendo was pushing the envelope with what it meant to play video games.


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[cybereality]

OMG! I remember that Virtual Boy commercial. Such a great system, just way ahead of its time. R.I.P.

[Neil]

I just realized an image was missing from the "ghosting test". This has been fixed.

Regards,
Neil

[Likay]

Great review which gives a fair "taste" of the 3ds!

[budda]

Thats a great review.

I bought a 3DS and its something I am growing to like a lot.

Of course I have to ask Nintendo about some things.

[1] Nintendo could have made the parallax barrier in the LCD panel, electronically adjustable.

By sensing the sideways shift in the viewer's position and adjusting the viewing 'sweet spot' on the fly, it would prevent any loss of the 3d effect. The onboard motion sensing gyros or the inside camera could be used to track the viewer's head position for this purpose.

[2] It would be great to import 3D CAD models into the 3DS. Imagine seeing for real what a product design looks like in the palm of your hand, or even constructing an augmented reality model of it on a table.

The touch pad or voice activated microphone could be usedful as a control to animate the object, such as an excavator on a construction site, for example.

Imagine playing a board game where the game itself comes alive when using a 3DS viewer. 'Monopoly' could be made over in this way for instance.


Anyway, enough dreaming ... back to work.

[cybereality]

I don't think tracking would be reliable enough to make the situation any better. Though it might work 90% of the time, the other 10% you could get jittery behavior or other anomalies that *WILL* give people headaches for real. Believe me, I have had to deal with the inaccurate tracking on the VR920, so-called "VR" apps on Android, and my own DIY optical tracking. Its cool when it works, but when it doesn't it kills the effect and induces headaches 100% of the time, every time. I'm sure Nintendo tried it and decided against it.

People that can afford to work in CAD can probably afford professional 3D monitors, and aren't concerned about looking "dorky" wearing 3D glasses.

The other stuff you talk about will surely be coming in the future, there is a lot of potential with the handheld.

[budda]

Hi,

I have a wry smile on my face.

The following day - Thursday, 07 April 2011 - MTBS posted an article about the forthcoming Toshiba S3D laptop:

Toshiba 3D Notebook Details Revealed!

http://www.mtbs3d.com/index.php?option= ... 1&catid=35

For those concerned about being forced to sit in a fixed position, worry not! With the help of an embedded web camera, the unit features eye tracking that carefully adjusts the image according to where you are seated. This gives you a wide range of movement that other solutions lack.

Followed by a comment from cybereality:

This sounds interesting. So it is actually using a dynamic lenticular layer, as some people here suspected. This could turn out to be a nice solution, especially in combination with the head-tracking. Really like to see this for myself

Just as I originally suggested - except I would like to see it on the Nintendo 3DS Mark II version.

[cybereality]

Its still remains to be seen if Toshiba has solved all the problems I mentioned and, even if they did, the processing overhead may have been too great to have running in the background while playing games on a handheld device. We shall see.