Things to Come--Sharp Produces New TFT 3D LCD Laptop

While not yet available on Apple's PowerBooks, Sharp, Inc., has produced some great 3D LCD technology that hopefully will find its way into them some day soon. Here is Sharp's description of the TFT 3D LCD technology used its new, second generation Actius AL3DU 15" laptop:

Sharp’s 3D LCD Technology uses a secondary LCD as a parallax barrier. This LCD is switchable, and when off, the display acts the same as a normal 2D LCD monitor.

When the barrier display is switched on, the light passing through the primary TFT LCD is directed, such that odd pixel columns are focused towards the left eye and the even pixel columns are focused towards the right eye. When the software displays a 3D image, the 2 different perspective views are shown to each eye and the brain fuses these into a realistic 3D view.

Sharp's 3D LCD technology does not need blue/red or shutter glasses but it needs software especially written for it. The technology is likely to be big in medical, CAD, oil exploration, chemical and game software. According to Sharp, using a special Nvidia chip the games Call of Duty, Halo and Unreal Tournament 2003 (and many more) are compatible and must look terrific. The new 3D screens do not come cheap. The 15" 3D LCD monitor is $1499 and the new Actius AL3DU 15" laptop is $3499. More... [Bill Fox]