Top Tech News

NEW YORK – Nintendo just launched the 3DS, a handheld mettlesome figure with a 3-D screen. But you don't need to pay $249 for 3-D gaming on the go: $35 module do. That's the price of an adhesion Hasbro is commerce that adds depth to the concealment of an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Unfortunately, the Hasbro My3D isn't a slim unify of glasses. It looks more like a unearthly ordered of toy binoculars. You behave the Apple figure into a bearer on digit end and countenance finished the other.

It's a fun onset aimed mostly at kids. It crapper wow grown-ups too, but I'm not trusty anyone module ingest this much in the daylong run. It's hardly $35 worth of plastic, but it strength be $35 worth of entertainment.

The roots of the My3D go way back: it's basically a slight update of the stereoscope, which was prototypal demonstrated in 1851. This two-lens figure delighted Victorians with ease 3-D photos of landscapes. The View-Master is another later-day progeny to the stereoscope.

The View-Master, of course, never worked with applications and movies, but the My3D does. It's utilised with specially cursive apps like as "Sharks," which immerses users in a shark-filled underwater scene, and "Sector 17," an outer-space shooter. These are all liberated to download for now from the iTunes Store, though Hasbro does organisation to start charging for whatever of them later this spring. Until June, the audience are exclusive available from Target stores.

To start, I downloaded a liberated app titled My3Dpresents, which serves as a sort of introduction. The app includes trailers for My3D games and six underway and upcoming 3-D movies, including "Kung Fu Panda 2," "Megamind" and "Smurf'd." (However, Hasbro Inc. hasn't promised that full 3-D movies module be available.)

To accomplish the iPhone's contact screen, you append your thumbs into digit holes at the bottom of the My3D. But many of the games also ingest the phone's motion sensor. I played a ultimate lowercase mettlesome titled "Bubble Bolt," which has you tilting the iPhone to pass a cyprinid exclusive a eruct finished progressively complex obstacle courses and into a lake inactivity at the end. To my co-workers, this staleness hit been a range — I was hunting into a unify of binoculars with no lenses patch bobbing and tilting my nous to control something exclusive I could see. In "Sector 17," offensive spaceships crapper become from some angle, so I had to twist and turn on my turn lead to countenance up, downbound and behindhand me.

This aspect of the mettlesome was perhaps modify more engaging than the manifest depth of the screen, which I had whatever trouble perceiving. Like many people, my 3-D exteroception isn't amend because of an receptor condition, but I had an easier time enjoying the My3D than a 3-D movie in a theater.

On my iPhone 3GS, the images were a taste pixelated. That's because the My3D presents digit side-by-side images on the screen, digit for each eye. This halves the manifest resolution of the screen. The iPhone 4 and the stylish version of the iPod Touch hit higher-resolution displays, so the image in the My3D stays concise and clear — clearer, in fact, than that on the Nintendo 3DS concealment in 3-D mode.

That said, the digit devices are in assorted leagues and neither serves to change the other. The Nintendo 3DS, which went on understanding in the U.S. last month, has a 3-D camera and comes with controls for far more complex games than the My3D crapper play. None of the My3D games held my confessedly brief tending movement for very long, but I'd be peculiar to see what else developers module become up with. Later this summer, Nintendo plans to start moving Netflix noesis to the 3DS.

Sprint Nextel Corp., AT&T Inc. and others are thinking to sell smartphones with 3DS-style screens soon, so Hasbro's My3D strength be a short-lived novelty. Until then, though, it's worth a shot, especially if you don't nous hunting a lowercase comical peering into a impressible viewfinder navigating 3-D worlds circumpolar exclusive to you. For underground rides and dentist offices, it's probably best to stick to "Angry Birds" and another 2-D games.

Source