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Sharp Actius RD3D Notebook

Moviemakers are getting better about injecting 3D into movies without begin obnoxious. But back in 2004 you had to live with movies that still made a spectacle of objects bouncing toward the screen. (Who can forget Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over? Luckily, most of us can.) And the gadgets available for home-movie 3D viewing weren't doing anybody any favors.



To make the 3D effect on a notebook without goggles, Sharp used a screen technology that could show two images at the same time, one for each eye. Sit at just the right angle and you could see the effect. Sit at any other angle and you'd get an immediate headache. And while early 3D laptops could convert many first-person shooters into 3D mode, you had to install and then endlessly tweak a driver for the right settings. Even then the effect was more like a mild protrusion than something that looked lifelike and entertaining. Thankfully, many recent 3DTVs that use goggles show the effect more realistically. Or at least Kate Beckinsale looks a bit more shapely. In a few weeks, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we'll finally get a peek at goggle-free 3D displays that are ready for the mass market.