Acer SpatialLabs 3D Display Hands-On Review

Back in May 2021, Acer announced and teased SpatialLabs, a spectacles-free stereo 3D display technology/product aimed at 3D professionals such as CGI/CAD designers and engineers. What seemed like a far-off technology has now been launched by Acer equally a product embodied past the ConceptD vii SpatialLabs Edition laptop.

On its website, Acer presents the concept as follows: "Pattern, review, and present all your designs in eye-popping, glasses-free stereoscopic 3D… allows visual artists and engineers to get early previews of their work without needing to return."

I've been able to come across it for myself, and it'southward been performing better than I was expecting. Get-go, let's provide some background on how SpatialLabs works.

This paradigm from Acer is an artistic illustration of how the SpatialLabs tech should experience

SpatialLabs is built on a lenticular display technology that can piece of work in 4K in 2nd or 2x2K (2K per eye) in stereo 3D. Lenticular displays are built to show each eye a slightly different view of the scene, thus creating a depth perception that a regular screen simply cannot attain.

Beyond the physical display panel, Acer too provides software in the form of drivers, apps and utilities for doing things like turning 2D content into stereo-3D content. The company is also working closely with middleware developers such as Epic (Unreal Engine) to facilitate adoption.

~6-7 years ago, Japanese TV manufacturers attempted to commercialize glasses-less "holographic" 3D televisions based on lenticular technology. Back then, the result was not satisfying, primarily for a couple of reasons:

1. Dividing 1080p resolution in one-half yielded poor epitome quality
2. Lenticular displays work best when the display is tuned to a specific user position, and multiple people might be watching Telly

Later on seeing SpatialLabs with my own eyes, I accept to say that some demos are very compelling. I tin sit xx-27 inches from the brandish and the Acer software would suit the 3D rendering for proper left+right optics image separation and rendering. Try to stay still because in that location'south a small-scale lag between caput motion and stereo compensation.

You lot can perceive objects "coming out of the screen" past up to half-distance between you and the screen's surface (10-13 inches), which is impressive, and it works ameliorate for minor objects, correct at the center.

In my opinion, the depth cue can exist useful (from a productivity standpoint) to select professionals who design objects to exist manufactured later as it's not quite the same to see them in 2D vs. stereo 3D.

Unfortunately, it's incommunicable for me to take a picture that would accurately correspond what I'yard seeing, but if you've experienced 3D TVs with spectacles before, endeavour to imagine your best feel, but without the glasses, near-perfect stereo separation, and 4x the resolution.

That would be a adept approximation of what Acer SpatialLabs offers: vastly superior image quality and user experience.

For case, one of the demos was "Showdown", and y'all can see the 2d version in the video below. There are tons of objects flying by the camera that "popular out of the screen" if you take a stereo 3D setup like SpatialLabs.

Still, the 3D consequence has characteristics of stereoscopic 2nd: sometimes, yous see exaggerated parallax, and objects that are also close might bear witness some ghosting. But when the content is tailored for stereo 3D, it'southward easy to go avoid these.

Likewise, a laptop use case means the user typically sits at the proper location, right in front end of the screen. Furthermore, Acer has installed optical sensors to runway exactly where the eyes of the user are in space, to make real-time adjustments.

These sensors track your eye'due south location in 3D to adjust the stereo 3D separation in real-fourth dimension

Jewelry, toys, spare parts, and much more are great examples of industrial design activities that could benefit from better depth perception. Architecture could also do good from it as well as lots of models are constructed during these projects.

Realistically, lenticular 3D displays like this one won't totally supervene upon the need for sculpting, 3d-printing, or prototyping physical objects. However, they can lower the frequency (and cost) at which designers and engineers need to build expensive physical models. That is valuable.

Reducing the wait for physical prototypes can speed up the "iteration loop" and increment the productivity of expensive personnel. If truthful, that's another layer of potential added value. Each company will take to estimate the benefits for their specific employ case as it'due south a niche market place, for now.

As display engineering gets meliorate and with 8K displays on the horizon, I look lenticular displays to further improve. For at present, the results are great and although information technology'southward non quite "holographic" yet, Acer might exist leading a nascent high-margin niche market.

Filed in . Read more nigh Acer, Acer Laptops, CAD, Design, Stereo 3d and Workstations.

Source: https://www.ubergizmo.com/2021/11/acer-spatiallabs-review/

Posted by: rasmussenalwainter45.blogspot.com

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