Acer is the only PC maker currently pursuing the hardware. SpatialLabs brings gains in resolution and performance, but it’s far from a surefire hit. “They said, ‘You know what? I think I can build the scene with even more depth.’ And this is just the beginning.”ĭoes glasses-free 3D really stand a chance? “When the Turn 10 team saw what we had done with Forza Horizon 5, they were like, ‘Wow, this is so great!’ ” said Hsu. Gaming seems a natural fit given its history in Nintendo’s handheld, and Hsu thinks it will help attract mainstream attention.
Acer says its software suite has “out-of-the-box support for all major file formats.” It recently added support for Datasmith, a plug-in used to import assets to Epic’s Unreal Engine.īut the technology is also coming to Predator gaming laptops for glasses-free stereoscopic 3D in select titles like Forza Horizon 5 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Most of the SpatialLabs product line, including the ConceptD 7 laptop and View displays, lean toward creative professionals using programs like Maya and Blender to create 3D content.
The View Pro display is built for use in kiosks and retail displays. The Acer View Pro, meant for commercial use, may have a future in retail displays, a use that headsets can't address. Creators can use Spatial Labs to achieve a 3D effect in their home office without pushing aside furniture. SpatialLabs is a complementary alternative. It’s not comfortable, or it’s expensive, and you need space around you. “Acer spent a lot bringing VR headsets to market, but.it was not very successful,” Acer Co-COO Jerry Kao said in an interview. They were a flop, and their failure taught Acer hard lessons about how people approach AR/VR hardware in the real world. A new angle on augmented realityĪcer was a lead partner in Microsoft’s push for mixed-reality headsets. It can also help creators generate content for use in stereoscopic 3D by importing and converting existing assets. This should make SpatialLabs useful with a wider range of content. Partners like Nvidia and Intel can now accelerate AI in hardware, a feature that wasn’t common a half decade ago.Īcer has harnessed this for SpatialLabs GO, a software utility that can convert full-screen content from 2D to stereoscopic 3D. Hsu says advancements in AI compute are also key. Turning 3D on shaves resolution to 1,920 by 2,160, which, while lower, is still sharper than that of a 27-inch 4K monitor. That’s 43 times the pixel count of Nintendo’s 3DS. Each provides native 4K (3,840 by 2,160 resolution) in 2D. The 3DS cut resolution to 400 by 240 when 3D was on and blurry visuals were a common complaint among critics.Īcer’s SpatialLabs laptops and displays are a big improvement. Because it renders two images to create the 3D effect, the resolution of the display is cut in half on the horizontal axis when 3D is on. Resolution is important to this form of glasses-free 3D. In a sense, the technology is the same, but over time it has improved for a crystal-clear, high-resolution experience.” “The fundamental difference is that the computing power is way different, and resolution is way different,” said Hsu. It also displays two images which are filtered through an “optical layer” and has cameras to track and compensate for the user’s viewing angle. “The PC in 2022 is encountering a lot of problems.” -Jerry Kao, AcerĪcer’s technology is similar. Because angle was important, the 3DS used cameras that detected the user’s eyes and adjusted the image to compensate for viewing angle. This barrier controlled the angle an image reached the user’s eyes to create the 3D effect. The 3DS filtered two images through a display layer called a parallax barrier.
The technology has powered several niche products and prototypes, such as Sony’s Spatial Reality Display, but its most famous debut was Nintendo’s 3DS portable game console. “It’s a different form for users to start interacting with a virtual world.” Glasses-free stereoscopic 3D isn’t new. “We see a convergence of virtual and reality,” Jane Hsu, head of business Development for SpatialLabs, said in an interview. The launch is paired with artificial-intelligence-powered software for converting existing 2D content into stereoscopic 3D.
Acer, the world’s fifth largest PC brand, wants to take the growing AR/VR market by the horns with its SpatialLabs glasses-free stereoscopic 3D displays.įirst teased in 2021 in a variant of Acer’s ConceptD 7 laptop, the technology expands this summer in a pair of portable monitors, the SpatialLabs View and View Pro, and select Acer Predator gaming laptops.