New kind of 3D being developed.

[the_antithesis]

Some of you may recall my issues with stereoscopic 3D, namely that it's made from the devil's soiled underpants. This will take some doing, so stick with me.

So I've been watching Stuart Ashens's videoes of tatty electronics and one such item he reviewed was a knock off of the Game King, a Chinese handheld that had worse resolution than the original Gameboy, but is interesting in being a wholly original system, even if the games were rip-off of other games. In a strange twist, even the Game King got ripped-off by Chinese rip-off artists and we got this:

[youtube:1b3sczng]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRVa3crLV2o[/youtube:1b3sczng]

Where my mind went was that if LCD displays are inherently transparent, then instead of a background, they could put in another screen. Possibly three or more screens to achieve a 3D effect using actual depth instead of fake depth. Sure, the unit would be rather chunky as a result. But call it something catchy like Game Brick and people will likely buy it anyway.

The idea of layering LCD screens seemed so simple, I couldn't believe people weren't doing it. So I googled "layered LCD" and it turns out MIT is doing research into this sort of thing.

[youtube:1b3sczng]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJWJMh1PmR4[/youtube:1b3sczng]

This is a form of 3D I could get behind. It actually seems to work, even for a one-eyed man when the image is turned. Samsung was working with a company called PureDepth that used a two-layered LCD screen back in 2008. I don't know how that worked out, but apparently commercial products using this idea have already been to market.

the interesting thing about this is this works the opposite of how stereoscopic 3D in movies and such. That sort of 3D tends to make a big thing about stuff coming out of the screen at you where as this makes a little world inside the screen. Stereoscopic can do that as well, but it tends to go for the crap coming at you because that's "impressive." It's like lowest common denominator while ignoring that the little world in the screen has appeal, too. It's why people make model railroads and such.

In either case, I think this is something to be watching. it probably won't be long before some sort of layered LCD display becomes the norm.