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Comment by brink | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me. Back in the day, HTC made a 3D enabled phone with a 3D screen and camera.

I would love to see that attempted today again with how much progress we've made in terms of screen resolution and camera quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_3D

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Not sure why but during the HTC Evo and Nintendo coming out with the 3DS having the screen be 3d (Stereoscopic since you can use it without lenses) didn't take off.

The iPhone 15 and 16 pro models can take 3D photos and videos right now https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spatial-photos-record...

The 3DS was fun but it was gimmicky, and it wasn't great.

I would love to have a 3d tv that works without glasses even if it was a limited depth thing (like multiple screens on top of each other to create real depth within a confined space) but I think the technology of the 3DS screen wouldn't scale to larger screens.

> like multiple screens on top of each other to create real depth within a confined space

iirc this is effectively what looking glass displays do [0], or at least the early prototypes I saw, split a projected beam across 16 or so panes of glass. I've only seen the little one in real life but it was pretty enchanting. They go up to 32" and 64", something like 20,000 dollars tho [1] I don't know if they've actually made any sales of the larger formats

I was recently googling for whether these displays supported Apple Spatial Video and the answer was yes after some 3rd party conversion and playing media back straight from the iPhone it was recorded on, sounded annoying but feasible [2]

[0] https://lookingglassfactory.com/about

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/looking-glass-unveils-second-gen-...

[2] https://stereoscopy.blog/2024/09/22/how-to-use-the-looking-g...

What is wild is that I saw a flat screen lenticular Canon display playing some custom DOOM clone in about 1998 at a video game developers event. It must have been at least 17" 4:3. It always seems it was something that accidentally fell back through time because it was so far ahead of its time. I remember feeling like a caveman because I put my head around the back like I was looking for the magic of how it worked.

The New 3DS was quite good, but being a relatively cheap Nintendo portable with backwards compatibility concerns it was pretty low resolution.

I was big fan of my HTC Evo, I found the 3D images to be immensely helpful when taking documentation photographs. I could take just two images and get all of the info I needed to capture vs taking ~8 from multiple angles and having to mentally envision the relative dimensions of the space afterwards.

I had a SHARP Aquos Phone SH-12C with a 3D camera and lenticular display and some of the photos I took with that phone are some of my most treasured photos since the 3D aspect really brings you back to where you were.

But back then everyone just said "3D is a gimmick I hate it I just want an normal TV" and the fad died.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/SH-12C

The iPhone recently added support for actually shooting spatial photos in addition to videos so I need to try that out.

Nice. There was also the RED Hydrogen phone which may have been the same display, it was a flop but IMO they were just early on the whole 'charging $1200 for a smartphone' thing. Its legacy is now just the prop smartphones announced by the villain in "Don't Look Up"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hydrogen_One

I think it would be totally possible for an iphone to come out with two camera bumps - on either end of the phone to maximize 3d depth. And then when you fold the phone, it becomes a 360 cam....?

I have about three Fujifilm FinePix digital 3D cameras. Fun to play with if you like stereo photography (although consumer-level quality images, but still decent).

tried all those. the fire phone 3d with the 4 ir cameras was the only decent implementation... sadly completely ruined by the dystopian amazon android running on it.

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