View Full Version : Cooperative gaming 2.0

07-16-10, 10:58 AM
Let's not beat about the bush here. 3D isn't really an essential new technology, now is it? It's more of a gimmick if you ask us and even Microsoft has been reluctant to push for the technology, perhaps with good reason. It'll take something really special therefore to convince us that 3D is a worthwhile investment.

Erm, something exactly like this as it happens: new Sony patents that enable several people (up to three according to the patent diagrams) to view completely separate images simultaneously on the same television.

Woah! Rewind! How the hell does that work? Using the technology which outputs stereoscopic 3D, the layered image enables multiple screens to be viewed at once using the same display, with a switch on the 3D glasses stopping the shutters from alternating, thus allowing viewers to select one from a selection of flickering images to watch.

Translation? It works, and could potentially transform the way we play splitscreen multiplayer games by giving gamers a full screen rather than a piddly letterbox. Or it could be used to give one player information, while hiding it from the others.

Best of all though, you'll be able to blissfully game away while your significant other or anti-gaming housemates/parents watch television or a DVD. The future of gaming is here! Well not yet, but you get the picture. Or do you? It sounds great in theory, but it remains to be seen if it works as well as we hope it will in practice. Still, 3D just got a lot more interesting, that much is a certainty.

Woah, that's amazing!

07-16-10, 11:25 AM

Woah, that's amazing!

It's a pretty good idea. They must reduce it to 40 Hz per person in order to have 3 people watching. It probably gets pretty choppy under that.

General Lee
07-16-10, 11:41 AM
Sounds interesting, but you wouldn't see me buying anything like that until they:

1) worked out all the problems

2) made it affordable through competition

07-16-10, 01:07 PM
Just give it a few years...
You'll need very fast refresh and no ghosting for such an idea to work, but it may be the best use of shutter glasses people have thought so far. No more fighting for the remote, just display 2 different shows at once! of course, you'll need headphones for that to work ;)

Mr. Hunt
07-16-10, 01:25 PM
I actually had this idea years ago, but it wasn't for coop gaming. My idea would be more for watching different things entirely on the TV. Just add headphones to the glasses and bam, you got dads watching pron on the same TV as the kids watching Spongebob.