Rock, Paper, Shotgun

3D PC Gaming Without Glasses

By Alec Meer on January 15th, 2011 at 3:55 pm.

Of course it's a gag, numbnuts

Oh boy, this is such a relief: the technological revolution we’ve all been waiting for is here. All you need to see and play steroscopic 3D games on any PC is a 120 Mhz monitor and a tiny pair of non-obtrusive gizmos created by French inventor Francois Vogel. No more stupid plastic spectacles, no more colour-dimming polarised lenses. This is going to change gaming forever. This is going to change the world forever.

Sheer genius. You’ll see.

The Singularity is here.

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78 Comments »

  1. AtkinsSJ says:

    Ew ew ew ew ew! That is unbelievably freaky.

    It’d have to come with some kind of safety warning: Eyelids may catch fire with prolonged use.

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  2. Baka says:

    Holy maccaroni, my eyes started to tear.
    That has to be harmful in some way.

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  3. Gnoupi says:

    Glad to see France is once again ahead of the technological curve.

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  4. Coded_One says:

    MIND = BLOWN.

    So was this some clever shooping or is Francois Vogel some sort of eyelid olympian?

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  5. Diziet Sma says:

    OW. That sensation must be fricking weird.

    @CodedOne : Rapid electrical pulses, in sync with the monitor, causing his eyelids to close.

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  6. Igor Hardy says:

    Creepy! And I bet that after keeping this device on your head a longer period your head explodes like in Scanners!!!

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  7. The_B says:

    TEH GOGGLES! THEY DO SOMETHING!

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  8. President Weasel says:

    DO NOT WANT

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  9. ts061282 says:

    You’ll be able to identify WoW players by their bulging eyeceps!

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  10. Mistabashi says:

    Another of Monsieur Vogel’s videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcI4Lf2iuT8

    Yep.

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  11. JohnnyMaverik says:

    O.o

    Nobody is doing that to my face…

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  12. Subjective Effect says:

    This is a great idea but it just cannot possibly be good for you.

    It is genius though. Genius.

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  13. Bennyjh says:

    So this is bull?

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  14. Vague-rant says:

    Ummm, I’d rather have the glasses. Although 3D isn’t something that interests me much right now.

    Also, I am not spam dammit.

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  15. stahlwerk says:

    My vision is augmented?

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  16. AlephAleph says:

    François Vogel is a genious, not as much an inventor as an inventive filmmaker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovdAzgD5c7c&feature=related

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    • Now next time I go visit the streets outside again people will be staring at their iPhones with flickering eyes like some sort of zombies on steroids. Just another reason to lock myself in another 20 years. Hooray.

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  17. Moonracer says:

    that was great. It hurt to watch.

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  18. crainey92 says:

    Regardless of health and safety issues and the sheer stupity of it this should be actualy invented, just because it made me rofl so much.

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    • bob_d says:

      Sadly, since the human blink takes almost a third of a second, we don’t blink nearly fast enough for this to work, even in theory, unless you’re looking at still images.

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  19. Soon says:

    Yeah, he was demoing these in Paris but ended early after an incident with a power surge.

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  20. Jambe says:

    lol, people thinking it was real.

    Dude’s interesting though.

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    • Clean3d says:

      Honestly, I was only spared because I was lucky enough to see the article image’s alt-text before it loaded completely.

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    • Flimgoblin says:

      Was pretty sceptical from the moment he described existing 3d glasses as using shutters that open/close very quickly…

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    • bob_d says:

      @Flimgoblin: But there are 3D glasses that work that way; the “shutters” are liquid crystals going dark, but that’s essentially an accurate description. They were part of the first widely adopted commercial 3D computer display systems; I remember a friend had the system in the mid-1990s, it came bundled with the “Magic Carpet” game.

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    • JuJuCam says:

      Indeed, all current domestic 3D screen technology works this way. The only upcoming product that won’t will be Nintendo’s 3DS, which will work with a very advanced moving image variation of the old “holographic” 3d image, and will only look any good when viewed from a quite specific fixed point in front of the screen. As you can imagine this is no big deal for a handheld device.

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    • snv says:

      Nah, thats the annoying thing. The 3DS Tech is nothing new. Its been around for years and it works well (Seen it on a PC-LCD on the first http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Convention in 2002). Good screens dont only give you one “sweet spot”, you can move around to any usual position in front of the screen.

      They`re just not mass produced and cheap. You will mostly just find those in medicine and engineering (at best)

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  21. yaster says:

    This device could be quite spectacular as alternative to marijuana. Could be…

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  22. Daiv says:

    It would be so much less weird to look at if only it used electrical impulses to disable the optic nerve for a fraction of a second….

    Ouch. I wish I hadn’t thought of that…

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  23. bitkari says:

    That’s the funniest video I’ve seen in a long time. ^_^

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  24. Small Ivory Knight says:

    That’s the best thing to come out of France since toast.

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  25. golden_worm says:

    Do you remember this HP ad ?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lde77E4PY4Q

    it’s also by Francois Vogel. I don’t think you can trust what he shows on screen to be 100% real.

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  26. Navagon says:

    If that was real his eyes would still be twitching decades later.

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  27. MuscleHorse says:

    My mind is blown by how many people are even considering that this could be real.

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    • bob_d says:

      Well, to be fair, it’s on the cusp of believability. Electrical stimulation can make muscles contract, so in theory you could make someone blink with an electronic device. Artists have worked with this technology before – Stelarc once covered himself with electronic muscle stimulators that were controlled via the internet, essentially making him remote controlled. You you could easily sync stimulated movements with a screen the way the shutter glasses are synced. The only place where it really falls down is the blink rate necessary for this particular idea to work: human blink speed is simply so slow you’d not be able to get much better than 1 frame per second.

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    • Jahkaivah says:

      @bob_d

      But then you have the way this guy appears to be actually trying to market this in such a “no this isn’t wierd at all, of course sane people are going to want this” manner.

      If it was made to look like it’s intention is just a spot of computer mad science that one guy wanted to try out, as opposed to some kind of upcomming product the “is it real?” discussion might have been more justifiable.

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    • bob_d says:

      @ Jahkaivah: I guess I’ve seen too many amateur tech-demos that look exactly like this.

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  28. Bluebreaker says:

    Is this just a troll to say: “hey look 3d glasses are the future” ?

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  29. ezekiel2517 says:

    I want them! I NEED THEM!

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  30. Tei says:

    DRR… DRRR.. DRRR…

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  31. Carra says:

    An idea so good that it could be real.

    Then again, seeing his eyes open & close so quickly makes sure that noone would want to go near such a device :)

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  32. I did, indeed, laugh out loud.

    I would like to see what he comes up with to parody the Kinect.

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  33. Brumisator says:

    120MEGAHERTZ monitor? That’s a bit overkill, don’t you think? I’m pretty sue 120 Hz would suffice.

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  34. psyk says:

    This is mainly for Flimgoblin but the rest of you should take note

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_shutter_glasses

    You all act as if you know everything but you know so little ;)

    Edit to add
    “Nvidia makes a 3D Vision kit for the PC; it comes with 3D shutter glasses, a transmitter, and special graphics driver software. A certified 120 Hz monitor is required to use the 3D Vision; standard LCD monitors run at 60 Hz.”

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    • arccos says:

      Alternatively, iZ3D makes a pretty excellent LCD monitor that only uses polarized lens glasses. It works much, much better because both eyes are always seeing the image, and not being blacked out.

      Left 4 Dead is all kinds of awesome with one.

      Edit: So it turns out they stopped selling them. WHAT THE HELL!? Its my favorite gadget of all time. *Sigh*

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  35. Dozer says:

    Doesn’t need a ‘Staring Eyes’ tag. Needs something else completely.

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  36. Inglourious Badger says:

    I think the Deus Ex 3 marketing team missed a trick by not doing similar videos for some augmentation products. Would be cool.

    PLUS: I’m equally excited about the invisible pint glass he is showing in the header picture. I want one of those for work

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  37. patricij says:

    Am I the only one that is reminded of the aesthetics of the 80s computer (Apple for instance) commercials by this? White surroundings, a man with a beard wearing a polo t-shirt…

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  38. patricij says:

    Also, Mr. Vogel reminds me of my political science lecturer..just younger and much more French

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  39. deanimate says:

    where can this be boughted?

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  40. xrabohrok says:

    It is possible to make glasses free 3d, but it only works for one person at a time. Its called head tracking, where the camera is dynamically changed based on where you are facing. See here, the effect is crazy even just watching the video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

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  41. RegisteredUser says:

    Am I the only one who expected this to end in him not being able to shut it off and then one of various optional horrific endings involving loud screaming, flailing about and vast amounts of ickyness and possibly self-gouging, blood and gore?

    Yes? No?

    Come on, we’re internet children, where’s your spirit..

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