Nintendo Announces New Nintendo 3DS Portable System | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo Announces New Nintendo 3DS Portable System

gamasutra.com

39 pointspmjordan23 comments

Reminds me of 3D Hidden Picture, a DSi Ware puzzle game, available in Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5QSclrIdlE

Supposedly this uses the DSi's camera the track the motion of the device and adjust the displayed image to give it depth.

Everything's relative, but since the camera is stuck to the device I think it makes sense to say it tracks the location of the player's eyes...

Nintendo press releases crack me up sometimes. So they announced a handheld 3D games machine, gave no further details, but don't worry, it will be backwards compatible with DSi and DS games.

That's like Ford announcing a flying car and saying nothing except it will be backwards compatible with existing Michelin tyres.

My son has had his DS for about 2 years now, and our investment in games is far more than what the console originally costed. So, backwards compatibility is indeed an important consideration if we were to buy a new console.

And in Ford's heyday, it'd have been accepted just as readily. Nintendo's reliable about delivering what they claim.

It will sell. Backwards compatibility is the most important part right now, because it keeps DSes and games selling. Imagine what their sales would do if they said it wasn't.

Going from the Game Boy Advance to the DS, adding a second screen and resistive touch opened up a new world of gameplay possibilities, even if only a minority of DS games have really made good use of this configuration. But I can't really see how 3D paves the way for anything gameplay-wise.

You can have in-game cues that make use of depth perception, but how much use can that be when you're still only interacting in 2D? I could see something like MotionPlus working here to allow the device itself to be tracked in 3D space, but that gets problematic when the screen is attached to the user's spatial input device. And this is to say nothing of players with limited depth perception.

I remember the same arguments about color monitors. Some things are appealing b/c they hit our senses better.

Now this is something to wow about. Forget the iPad, this is real innovation.

Does anyone know how it works? It's hard to find any real information about this...

The most probable display technology is Autostereoscopy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy), since it doesn't require glasses. It's already available in standalone 3D displays, and Hitachi have shown it off in a mobile phone form factor.

Unofficial:

Asahi in Japan offers the first word on how the 3DS achieves its 3D-ness by suggesting that the new portable game machine with feature a parallax barrier LCD from Sharp. The tech has apparently already been deployed in a few cellphones over there and is described as "unsuitable" for large-screen TVs. This is corroborated by Nikkei, which suggests that the screens on the new device will be smaller than 4 inches diagonally, placing it closer to the DSi than the 4.2-inch DSi XL / LL.

Other news from the latter source include so-called 3D control stick(s), though it's not entirely clear whether this'll be anything massively new or just a pair of analog nubs for us to push around. Either way, Nintendo is said to have secured patents for the new control methodology in Japan late last year. The Nikkei article also mentions improvements in WiFi transfers and battery life, as well as a new vibration function. Now that we've got all that out of the way, can someone please tell us if this thing has Tegra inside or not?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/nintendo-3ds-to-come-with...

I've seen a few auto stereo displays and they only work if you view dead on from the center, at the right distance - though for a portable device that might not be too much of a restriction.

An example would be this cell phone:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1597252/hitachi-3d-...

Just wondering (probably stupid), but could that be combined with a camera to track where the head is, so that it could be viewed at multiple angels?

Sort of like this effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWAg1s7xfz0

Probably not. The cell phone (and effectively any other "real" 3D effect without glasses) has very limited viewing angles to get a 3D image. A small horizontal movement, or effectively unlimited vertical, does work on most methods I've seen (though horizontal is arguably more important). However, as the phone seems to allow 3D in both orientations, it probably can't handle either direction's angle changes very well.

Personally, I like head-tracking better than limited camera angle, primarily because it lets you look "behind" things by changing your viewing angle. Stereoscopic 3D alone doesn't allow that, because you're looking at a fixed image with depth. It's also cheaper to render the image, because you don't need to do it twice (or more, if you want to allow additional viewing angles).

I'm actually really surprised I haven't seen fairly frequent head-tracking for the current generation of consoles, imagine how well that would sell for single-player games, even if it's only subtle shifts (which are all you need to get a 3D feel). Suddenly, your TV has depth.

Of course like said it's single-player only games and wouldn't work for multiplayer. That's why I don't think we will see them soon.

Because single-player games don't exist on consoles? Or because they're so rare, nobody has them?

I think it would be a hard sell to say you have to drop that feature in multiplayer mode, but I guess people live with split screen.

Well, ultimately, there's no reason you can't do it with multiplayer. Just map the person's head, and render each split-screen based on their location. It can be done with a single camera, though Z-movement isn't too accurate at a distance. If you want more precision, then wearing the LED-bar that goes above the TV with a Wii would work too, and calculations are way simpler (thus likely faster).

(hadn't actually thought of the split-screen head-tracking before, silly me >.< )

One problem with this, is the field of vision will be very small, so the effect would be poor. However 3D iPad type device could be really good. Maybe with the new DSi XL is a sign of things to come?

I was thinking maybe something like HoloToy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lipIyMp6w8w

3D games? Sounds like we keep getting closer to augmented and virtual realities like they had in Minority Report.

Virtual Boy Mark II! I knew this day would come.

that is the first thing I thought when I read this release.

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