Acer are bringing their no-glasses 3D screen tech to gaming laptops

rockpapershotgun.com:

3D gaming is… well, if not dead, then at best being kept in an iron lung by a teensy niche of enthusiasts. However, Acer will be making another attempt to take it semi-mainstream when it releases the Predator Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition gaming laptop in September 2022. Its 15.6 screen, powered by an RTX 3080 and Intel Core i9-12900H CPU, promises both standard 2D at 4K and glasses-free stereoscopic 3D-o-vision. A bit like the Nintendo 3DS, only much more powerful, higher-res, and costing $3400 / €3299.

The Predator Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition was announced during Acer’s virtual Next@Acer event, alongside a handful of other new gaming gear from the Predator and Nitro ranges. It’s by far the most ambitious of the lot, incorporating the stereoscopic 3D tech that Acer first introduced on their creative-focused ConceptD 7 SpatialLabs Edition notebook last year.

The SpatialLabs system works by presenting two images on the screen and using eye-tracking sensors (built into the screen’s top bezel) to keep one image refracted towards your left eye and one towards your right. Your brain then interprets the combined images as a single 3D image, which I think is how eyes just work when looking at real objects? Maybe. I’m not a biologist.

For this 3D-fied Predator Helios 300, Acer are also crafting SpatialLabs TrueGame software, which includes custom 3D profiles for “over 50 popular games” and more to come in the future. Only one of these was confirmed during the show, Forza Horizon 5, though it will be perfectly possible to play others games in standard 2D instead. This allows them to run at a higher 4K resolution too – in 3D, each image is rendered at 1920x1080, for an overall 1920x2160 resolution.

It's been a long old