The Nintendo 3Ds

[Yoyobuae]

There's a few things I wonder about such a small 3D screen.

With this kind of 3d there's always the problem of limited depth resolution. The 2 "independent" screens for each eye allow the displayed geometry to be offset, thus producing the 3d effect. But this offseting is limited by the resolution of the screens themselves. Then end result is that 3d objects appear as a set of "slices" as different depths rather than a solid object. This is clearly noticeable in some "magic eye" style posters. Things like anti-aliasing help (ie. allow offsets of fractions of pixels), but in the end is also limited.

Another concern is that the 3d effect will make the screen seem smaller as depth increases. Since the effect is accomplished by offseting, the borders of the screen will get offset inwards, on both sides (for each eye). All the area that lies outside of this new "virtual" screen size is NOT 3d and it looks plain weird, since one eye will see a part of the screen, while the other sees the border of the screen. I guess that's why the top part with the 3d screen has black borders, to avoid "poluting" the image seen with the color of the plastic case.

Using the "magic eye" style posters as reference, I wouldn't expect the 3DS screen to be able to show scenes that are very deep (or tall). It will most likely only allow for say 10~20cm of depth probably.

Also another wacky thing about this kind of 3d, the apparent depth expands as the screen moves away from the viewer (making deep things even deeper), distorting the scene somewhat. The change will be noticeable each time one changes holding position.

All in all, the 3d effect will definitely be impressive, but I wouldn't expect it to be perfect, like the screen was a window into the game world. Unluckily, technology hasn't come that far yet.

PS: You might want to have a look into 3d auto-stereograms (if you can "see" them). It gives a good taste of what the 3DS screen will be able (the 3DS won't need the repetitive patterns, though). 3Dimka's gallery at DeviantArt is a good source:
http://3dimka.deviantart.com/gallery/#/dibjxv

 

[OrR]

I don't think you understand how the technology actually works. The issues you listed don't make any sense to me.

 

[migo]

I understand these screens are already used in some cell phones in Japan. Nintendo has a tendency of packaging old technology in interesting ways, and I suspect this is another case of it. I doubt they'd go for it if it didn't already work.

 

[matzesu]

I want this one:

Nice, but where is the hole for the Stylus??, I think, this is the Reason why its TBA..

But it looks great (the pandora is greater because its opensource and better etc, but i want a 3DS too..)

 

[OrR]

It's somewhere on the back IIRC. They finally included a telescoping stylus, though, so that shouldn't be much of an issue. B)

 

[x68000]

@ Exophase, Do you think that the PSP2 will still use physical media? After the whole PSP Go debacle it would be an unwise move for Sony to ditch media for Digital Downloads. I'm sure they now refer to the PSP Go as a 'test exercise'

PS. Sorry for the off topic comment!

Back on topic, heard on the ol' grapvine yesterday from a distributor that the Japanese 3DS launch is likely to be late October or early November with the price set just under Y20,000. If true, that would suggest a £229 uk retail and a $299 in the US.

 

[OrR]

Actually, the PSP Go failure has no real implications for the PSP2. It failed precisely because it was not a new generation but instead a crippled PSP, introduced while the regular PSP was still on the market at a similar or even lower pricepoint. A download-only PSP2 could still work very well IMO. What is for certain is that they have to get rid of UMDs. I guess they could still sell games on Memory Sticks or something if they absolutely need to keep making physical copies. That would also be a good solution to get the market to adopt to downloads: Sell games online as well as on Memory Sticks in the beginning and then release less and less games in physical versions as the market begins to accept downloads.

 

[SomeGuy99]

If true, that would suggest a £229 uk retail and a $299 in the US.

More than my Pandora cost. Interesting!

 

[Evil Star]

How is that guy moving the camera around Snake without a second nub?

It's beyond me why they just don't add another nub so that FPS's can be played properly.

n00b dumb c*nt!

Quoted to prevent editing.

Bit harsh their SONY, eh

Wish this thing had dual analogue nubs.

n00b dumb c*nt! :lol:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/53463-letcool-n350jp/

 

[Exophase]

Back on topic, heard on the ol' grapvine yesterday from a distributor that the Japanese 3DS launch is likely to be late October or early November with the price set just under Y20,000. If true, that would suggest a £229 uk retail and a $299 in the US.

xe.com says 20,000 Yen is about £150 and $221. In practice, USA prices are usually lower than Japanese prices by standard conversion rates. I think there's no way 3DS will cost $300, my bets are at $200 or less.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Don't forget VAT for Uk prices.

 

[migo]

Yeah, I don't see the 3DS launching at higher than $199USD.

 

[Exophase]

Don't forget VAT for Uk prices.

Oh, I have no doubt the UK and EU prices will be jacked up, well beyond just what the VAT adds. They always are. Nonetheless, I don't think the USA one will be > $200.

 

[Exophase]

The GPU design for 3DS has been officially revealed:

http://jonpeddie.com...raphics-engine/

(the official announcement was from the manufacturer DMP, it's in Japanese)

The technology is actually pretty old, announced 4 years ago and is an OpenGL ES 1.1 part with a programmable vertex pipeline and fixed fragment pipeline but with a decent number of hardware effects. It doesn't look like there's any overdraw eliminating techniques employed here - on paper it looks like PSP level hardware with some added useful builtin features.

 

[Nintendo]

Thanks, Exo.

And...here's a vid of a tech demo...

.


@ Evil Star

lol

 

[x68000]

Back on topic, heard on the ol' grapvine yesterday from a distributor that the Japanese 3DS launch is likely to be late October or early November with the price set just under Y20,000. If true, that would suggest a £229 uk retail and a $299 in the US.

xe.com says 20,000 Yen is about £150 and $221. In practice, USA prices are usually lower than Japanese prices by standard conversion rates. I think there's no way 3DS will cost $300, my bets are at $200 or less.

I'm guessing of course, but this is going to launch at a higher pricepount than any previous NDS. I doubt we'll get any concrete info on western pricing until the new year, especially with the frailty of the Yen.

Has the actual CPU been revealed or can we at least whittle down which ones it may be?

 

[OrR]

How will it accomplish NDS compatibility? Maybe that could be a hint?

 

[Exophase]

I'm guessing of course, but this is going to launch at a higher pricepount than any previous NDS. I doubt we'll get any concrete info on western pricing until the new year, especially with the frailty of the Yen.

$200 is higher than what NDS launched at ($150). As far as I can tell, the only really potentially expensive item that we really know of is the 3D display, at least when comparing with the DS. Accelerometers are super cheap and I'm assuming the analog isn't too expensive. The resolution bump on the bottom screen probably isn't hurting them too much. The new SoCs designed and used is probably all par for the course and has scaled with performance/cost like everything else does, ie I doubt it costs more than the stuff inside DS. On the other hand, how they're achieving DS support might be adding costs because I doubt they're using software emulation. My guess is some glue chips and outright reproduction of a few pieces of DS hardware, because the new hardware isn't so much a drop in replacement.

Has the actual CPU been revealed or can we at least whittle down which ones it may be?

No. Some Chinese site claimed 67MHz ARM9 and up to 482MHz ARM11, but they also claimed an SGX543MP2 GPU which was already proven wrong (and was a pretty stupid figure given the screenshots we've seen).

But since they're using a fixed fragment shading OGL ES 1.1 chip revealed 5 years ago I don't have high expectations that they're using a very modern CPU, so the above specs seem pretty reasonable.

From a backwards compatibility standpoint the arrangement above actually makes sense, although I'd expect the ARM9 to operate at 133MHz too for DSi compatibility. The ARM9 would be kept at DS main CPU clock speed and timings, with the same internal RAM and peripherals and possibly would have the DS video subsytem on die as well. There'd likely be some bridge logic builtin in order to accommodate the DS memory map and possibly simulate (slow down, if necessary) external memory timings. The ARM7 functionality on DS would be handled by the ARM11, which would have ARM11 ports of the ARM7 firmwares packaged with games. It would have to adapt to the proper ARM7 version present on the game. This would abstract most of the other peripherals so they could be mapped in native ways that make sense for 3DS, although it's entirely possible that 3DS's peripheral design matches DS's. It's possible that instead of running 3DS ports the ARM11 can run in a DS ARM7 compatibility mode to handle this; the timings would still be off but I doubt Nintendo's ARM7 code is sensitive to it.

To me the biggest backwards compatibility obstacle seems to be the video. I just doubt that this 3D chip is capable of handling DS graphics entirely perfectly with low translation overhead, especially since it has a fixed function pixel pipe. And I know it won't be able to do the 2D accurately. But I guess including just the DS graphics again wholesale isn't a big deal.. DS is old, with a die shrink to 45 or 40nm of just that portion of it it'd probably take up very little space. Assuming DS video is not in-use in 3DS mode they could share the VRAM as scratchpad and possibly L2 cache for the main CPU.

 

[x68000]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

 

[God Ginrai]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

I'd rather a new, less gimmicky game in the vein of SM64. (So, not a port of SM64, but more like SM64 in Gameplay than Galaxy)

-God Ginrai