Sony Shows Off 3D Display at CES

Kris Erickson • Jan 9, 2009 • Comments (0)

One of the mythical white whales of the video game industry has always been true 3D gaming. We were first promised it way back in 1995 by Nintendo with its bizarre tabletop Virtual Boy machine. After suffering from our first epileptic seizure after playing a few rounds of Mario Tennis, we decided that the whole 3D thing just wasn’t going to work out for us. Since then, there have been very few attempts to slap another dimension on our favorite digital pastime.

Now, completely out of the blue, Sony shows up at CES with a wicked-cool 3D display. Oh, and it runs Gran Turismo 5. This exciting news is tempered a bit by the fact that Sony does not appear to have any immediate plans to market the device. In fact, the company told curious booth attendees that it doesn’t even want to talk about the technical specifications of the device. Apparently Sony only wants us to know that it has a working prototype and that it may, in the future, offer something like this to consumers.

The screen works by displaying two simultaneous images which are offset to create the illusion of a 3D image. In order to benefit from the effect, the user must wear special glasses that resolve each image separately into the right and left eye. This way, the game can trick the player’s brain into thinking that they are a looking at real objects instead of a flat image. Onlookers at CES have said that the effect is “astounding”.

Until Sony spills the beans on the design, we have no idea what kind of technical wizardry is behind the prototype. However before we get too excited about seeing full 3D games on current hardware like the PS3, consider this: In order to render 2 simultaneous images of a game in 1080p resolution, the graphical power of the machine would have to be roughly double what it is currently.

To read more about what might be around the corner in the future of gaming, check out our recent feature article on video games in the year 2020.