752 Cartography Shmartography.

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I got a chance to play a 3DS on Tuesday. It was pretty wild. Took a bit of fiddling for me to get the thing adjusted to where I could see things properly, but once I did the effect was cool. Not a game changer based on what I played, but a neat gimmick. The 3d stuff isn’t going to be a big part of my experience when I get a 3DS, I’m afraid. I don’t play handhelds in conditions conducive to holding the system in a very specific way. The 3DS demands a bit too much attention. I usually play portable systems while doing other things. So my focus is divided. Readjusting to the screen every time I look away will likely not work for me. Games and the new control features will be the biggest selling points for me. The games aren’t here yet, but I’ve seen a few on the horizon that look promising. Once they start to trickle in my desire to experience them will increase until I can resist no longer. I’m hoping that between now and then Nintendo will release a green 3DS. I’m going to try and wait them out for a color I really like this time.

13 Comments

Thomas has suddenly made me afraid that one day all the internet porn will disappear. Never tempt fate, dude.

What’s the deal with 3D these days? It’s like a revival of the 50’s with everything being put out in 3D as though it made up for lack of content or something. And admittedly, if ANYTHING should have been shot in 3D, it was every Jackass movie ever, but by the same token current 3Dness isn’t really that wow-worthy. Coraline was a good movie with about three (brief) scenes where the 3D actually made a difference, or was even really that noticeable. Avatar…. God, I was distracted by constant arguments in my head about why this movie should have either sucked more or been better (really, it’s one of the suckiest good movies ever. Or is it best sucky movies? Bah!, stupid, evil James Cameron…)

Or maybe I just remember waaaaaay back, over 20 years ago when Disney was the ONLY place that had 3D readily accessible (I saw the nature feature at Disneyland back before Captain Eo came out. Those of you who don’t know can …. infer various arrogantly snarky comments at your own leisure. Don’t bother to google it, it wasn’t worth it. Also, keep in mind this was before MJ was truly creepy.) Funny thing was, THAT wowed me. Perhaps it’s nostalgia-goggles at work, but the stuff that’s so much more common these days doesn’t seem to compete, at least not to me.

Oh, and on a final note: Home version is worse. haven’t actually seen it on a “3D T.V.”, or “3D Blu-Ray” yet, but it shouldn’t really make a difference with those funny little glasses. Admittedly, the polarization characteristics of the lenses COULD be more effective on certain types of screens (not that there’s a whole lot of tube T.V.s left out there), but it might be worth a little bit of investigating. Hell, if I were 20 or so years younger, I’d be watching T.V. for my science project…

Just wait, in about 20 years, some doctors will come out with a study saying all this 3D stuff and 3D tvs and glasses will be detrimental for kids, and the kids today will all have to wear glasses/special surgery to correct all this pointless 3D media.

And the things Thomas is talking about makes 100% sense to me. I know where things are at due to google maps and the satellite imaging/taking the little man and looking at the street view, even when it’s dark out because i look at where things are at if they’re in the middle of nowhere, or in the middle of a big city. And it boggles my mind when people still need directions/GPS to find anything when you should of somewhat planned ahead.

Crave–

About nine years ago, I ran into one of my old playmates from my former ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’ stint at the Nuke Plant. He said, “Hey, Perfesser, Keith said you’re working with computers, now.” I admitted I was, and he said, “I bought a brand new Dell, but the hard drive was filling up, so I got a new one at Comp USA. They said it would cost me $50 to install it.”

At the time, I was charging my ‘outside clients’ $20/hour to reduce the likelihood of getting a call at 2:00 a.m. because some idiot downloaded a virus and thought I was the Help Desk. He thought the charge was okay, so I followed him back to his house and installed the drive (N.B.: the Foxconn cases of the early 2000s Dells are a joy to work on). He had the first Windows XP I ever worked with. When I closed the case and turned the machine on, XP found the new drive and graciously and quickly formatted it. “Okay,” I said, “You’ve got about half your hour left. Need anything else?” He said it had started running slow, so I downloaded two of my favorite free spyware killers and let ’em go to town.

Those bad boys always told me what they were removing and where it came from. Ew. Eww! Eww!

“Hey Muffy,” I said, “Do you always follow those porn ads when they pop up?” Of course he did. And, I. Had. Been. Touching. His. Keyboard.

Moral: Just because it’s out there, you don’t need to click on it!

@darcman0–

Never mind 3-D; I remember back when my Mom used to tell me, “Don’t sit too close to the T.V., you’ll ruin your eyes.” Sitting about 24 inches from my twin LCD monitors, Mom…

–Perfesser

You forget, that John DOES believe in ghosts, right when he was looking for maps he realized he might not come back if a ghost decided to possess him and make his head explode so he decided to have one final moment of joy before going to his potential death.

I love Nintendo, I love the 3DS, I got to play it during PAXEast, but even though I always get the black one I’m not going to buy it till Zelda OoT comes out, the current game list isn’t appealing to me. Also waiting for Nintendo to get their bearings back which seems difficult since japan got hit with yet another disaster, yet at least not as bad as the first.

I just want to know in advance how long this gimmick will last, a little notice on when we are going 4D or when they drop it all because they found some correlation between 3D and cancer…because as you know everything causes cancer these days.

YEah Porn and internet unless you have a nuke go off inyou back yard the porn is stillgoing to be their

I kinda suspect 3D will stick this time. I mean, unlike previous times, there’s been such a huge investments in the technology and marketing that I can’t see the movie or TV companies giving it up without a long, dirty fight. They know the content isn’t there yet, and their taking the long strategy of ramming it through the market, making it a loss leader now so that ten years down the line it’ll be the de facto standard. The tech is growing a lot faster than people think: the first glassesless 3D TVs are due out later this year, and they’re allegedly supposed to have lots of viewing angles so you won’t have to be fussy like with your 3DS. Those will make a big difference. Not all at once, but when the first Mac or Windows OS with a 3D GUI comes out, or after the first Superbowl broadcast in 3D, there will be big spikes in sales. The TV manufacturers, and the movie and TV studios in turn, are waiting with baited breath for that.

No screen technology will take away the headaches though. That’s a mostly a matter of filming/rendering technique. Only thing I’ve seen in 3D personally was Tron Legacy, and that was a horrible experience, I can totally see why it would drive so many people away. Worst part was, thanks to my photography background, I could see what the problems were that were causing it. Some are fixes that could be implemented now, others less so.

If it sticks around, it will get better, but that will take years. I can think of neat ways it might actually add to visual storytelling and gameplay instead of just being a shallow gimmick, but that’ll take some time for film/game makers to sort out, and as long as they’re being forced to make the same images work equally well in 2D they won’t be able to make a proper attempt at it. In the mean time it’s like the early days of color, where people felt it had to be garish enough to be like licking a battery with your eyeballs to be worthwhile at all, and a fair number would rather just stick with the devil they know than sit through growing pains that may not pay off for a decade or more.

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