Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always, his senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Great, Yes,
Speaker 1: shot the Invisible Swordsman reverted to movies. That was a quote.
Speaker 1: That was a quote switch up. I had a different
Speaker 1: quote lined up, but then Mr Pellette made a reference
Speaker 1: to a certain movie and I had to follow suit.
Speaker 1: I like silly movies. I love that movie. Man. I
Speaker 1: saw that film at least three times in the theater. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: well one for each, you know, amigo. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: drown love this time. So, but today we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a device that I actually got some hands
Speaker 1: on time with some pretty in depth hands on time
Speaker 1: with the Nintendo three D S. Yes, funny you would say,
Speaker 1: in depth. Yes, let me put it this way. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna have any more time with that particular device. No, no,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know I actually had a little time
Speaker 1: with that device too. And you said give me that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so the first time I after that, I'm bitter. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, I'm not playing with it
Speaker 1: anymore either. Um. The first time I laid eyes upon
Speaker 1: the Nintendo three D S was at the two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten E three conference the Electronic Entertainment Expo was
Speaker 1: at the time that when you laid eyes on it,
Speaker 1: where the shaft of light came down from the ceiling
Speaker 1: and the Angel Chorus started singing, except that the angel
Speaker 1: course instead of going oh said it's to me, I'm
Speaker 1: not and yeah, I know the It was a big
Speaker 1: deal at E three. I mean, Nintendo had revealed this
Speaker 1: new hardware. It had been years since Nintendo had done
Speaker 1: something besides the D S light right, it was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just a simple tweak of the DS. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty major leap forward. Yes, and uh and so
Speaker 1: you can actually see the forward because it's in three
Speaker 1: D exactly. That was the big deal, was glasses free
Speaker 1: three D in this device? Yep. Now, uh yeah, we
Speaker 1: usually say this at the beginning of the podcast such
Speaker 1: as this, but there was so much hype in this
Speaker 1: case that we've had several people asked us to do
Speaker 1: a show in the three D S, so we're happy
Speaker 1: to oblige, so happy in fact that how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com actually bought a three D S for us
Speaker 1: to try out because I wasn't at the show, so
Speaker 1: I didn't get to see it for myself. Well, and
Speaker 1: I only got a chance to see it for about
Speaker 1: three minutes because you stood in line for around minutes
Speaker 1: to an hour unless you had a v I P pass.
Speaker 1: So people like seeing that's Brian Tong jumped right to
Speaker 1: the front and people like shlubby old me got in
Speaker 1: line with all the rest of the peons and we
Speaker 1: waited and waited and waited. Dude, why didn't you get
Speaker 1: a fast pass? I don't I know. I know I
Speaker 1: know better by now clearly. I mean I know the
Speaker 1: right people, right, I just apparently I didn't leverage those
Speaker 1: relationships the way I should. My networking skills are are poor.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, we've got a few minutes to look at.
Speaker 1: And it was very impressive that when one of the
Speaker 1: games they showed off was this Mario platform game Go
Speaker 1: Figure U that know, that used the three D in
Speaker 1: a very effective way, and that the three D actually
Speaker 1: was adjustable. There's a slider on the right side of
Speaker 1: the screen. The three D screen, the DS, by the way,
Speaker 1: in case you have not seen one, is a handheld
Speaker 1: gaming device that has two screens. There's the screen that
Speaker 1: you're actually watching for the game and where the game
Speaker 1: action is happening, and then there is a touch screen
Speaker 1: interface system that you may use in the while playing
Speaker 1: a game, or you know, it may just be there
Speaker 1: is a decoration because you may be using the basic
Speaker 1: controls like the game pad and the buttons. Right, and
Speaker 1: it looks a lot like the the D S light,
Speaker 1: which of which I have one um, except that there
Speaker 1: are some some pretty different features. I'm used to the
Speaker 1: typical Nintendo uh four direction D pad, Yes, and it
Speaker 1: has one of those, and yeah, but it also has
Speaker 1: a circular pad, an analog circular pad, so it's like
Speaker 1: a little joystick that your thumb sits on. Yeah, kind of,
Speaker 1: So the three D S kind of up the anti
Speaker 1: with that. But yeah. The the cool thing was that
Speaker 1: the whole idea was that there was going to be
Speaker 1: this this glasses free three D experience And you might
Speaker 1: ask yourself, hey, how does that work? Well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: It's based upon a principle called parallax barrier. Now, in
Speaker 1: order for this to make sense, we got to talk
Speaker 1: about a few different concepts. First of all, let's talk
Speaker 1: about parallax. We've talked about this before in other three
Speaker 1: D podcasts as podcast about three D not podcasts, but
Speaker 1: we're in three D. Well they were, but you had
Speaker 1: to have a special kind of earphones to listen to you.
Speaker 1: You kind of had to be here in the studio
Speaker 1: while we recorded it to be at all three dimensional.
Speaker 1: And even then that's stretching it for us. Let's be
Speaker 1: on us. So parallax is based upon the whole idea
Speaker 1: that well, there are different things about parallax, right, but
Speaker 1: as far as three D vision goes, stereoscopic vision goes,
Speaker 1: parallax is based upon the fact that our eyes are
Speaker 1: not located in the same exact spot. Yeah, we would
Speaker 1: be a cyclops. So if if you are a human
Speaker 1: being with two healthy, regular working eyes, then you can
Speaker 1: use parallax to determine how far away an object is
Speaker 1: and part and that's kind of based upon, uh, the
Speaker 1: the distance that the picture that you're getting out of
Speaker 1: your left eye versus the picture you're getting out of
Speaker 1: your right eye. And your brain puts these two pictures
Speaker 1: together into a h an integrated picture. So you know,
Speaker 1: instead of getting instead of you sitting there and perceiving
Speaker 1: two different images, you actually perceive a single image based
Speaker 1: upon these two inputs, these two data inputs that are
Speaker 1: coming in at the same time. And so this is
Speaker 1: part of what helps you with your depth perception. It's
Speaker 1: not the only thing, but it definitely helps. And that
Speaker 1: you know, your brain kind of takes in that information, says,
Speaker 1: based upon this information, that person is so many feet away, right,
Speaker 1: And so three D what three D does because that
Speaker 1: presents you two sets of images. Each eye only receives
Speaker 1: one of those images, one set, and then your brain
Speaker 1: puts those two sets together and that creates this what
Speaker 1: appears to be a three dimensional image, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You're you're tricking your brain into thinking that you're perceiving
Speaker 1: something that actually has depth as opposed to just heighten
Speaker 1: with right, groovy, right, Yes, you were looking at me
Speaker 1: like I wasn't sure whether you're gonna say something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In our three D Cameras podcast, we talked about the
Speaker 1: ways in which you have to uh use technology to
Speaker 1: achieve this effect on the front end, you have to
Speaker 1: create the technology. And uh, in order to do that
Speaker 1: with with a movie or a TV show, Um, they
Speaker 1: will often use two cameras spaced with with lenses spaced
Speaker 1: about as far apart as your eyes, because they have
Speaker 1: to use these two different pictures and combine them in
Speaker 1: a way that will allow you to see them in
Speaker 1: phoe three D. Yeah, exactly, and in the way that
Speaker 1: your brain interprets as being three dimensions right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: the three DS has on its case on the outside
Speaker 1: two little cameras that are about that far apart, which
Speaker 1: aid and but that's not all of it. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of sort of interrupted the glasses thing
Speaker 1: just because I wanted to give you an idea that yes,
Speaker 1: this this plays into the creation of the games because
Speaker 1: there have to be more than one image and there
Speaker 1: has to be some way to make it fool your
Speaker 1: brain into thinking, uh that it's that distance apart. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the ways in which they create the
Speaker 1: game in order to do that. But then you have
Speaker 1: to see it. Now for TV or a movie, Uh,
Speaker 1: we usually think about having to wear the glasses and
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways to actually more than a
Speaker 1: couple there three or four different ways, right, But but
Speaker 1: basically the basic way is that you overlay these two
Speaker 1: sets of images on top of one another, and then
Speaker 1: you find some way to filter them out. Filter one
Speaker 1: set of images out per eye now, might be through
Speaker 1: color or or polarity of the light. Um, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, but that that requires glasses. Now,
Speaker 1: glasses free. This is something that Chris Knight got to
Speaker 1: see in person. We actually took a field trip a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago out to a company that does
Speaker 1: glasses free lenticular displays, yes, which was interesting and also
Speaker 1: kind of disorienting. Yeah. Yeah, Plus I was a little
Speaker 1: worried because I had to forge my mom's signature on
Speaker 1: the permission slip from the field trip because he had
Speaker 1: been a bad boy up to that I was distracting
Speaker 1: others in class. But um, yeah, on on on a
Speaker 1: big screen TV. Uh, you can use lenticular displays to
Speaker 1: achieve the three D effect without having to wear glasses. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had one of those little poster sorry
Speaker 1: postcards or uh, I remember actually when I had a
Speaker 1: drink that I got back in the days of atari
Speaker 1: pac Man For I actually have a pac Man sticker
Speaker 1: and it uses a lenticular film. Yeah, there's a lenticular
Speaker 1: film that goes over the the images because there's actually
Speaker 1: more than one image on that sticker, but but you
Speaker 1: can only see one image depending upon the angle you're
Speaker 1: looking from. Yeah, if you run your finger over it,
Speaker 1: or your finger nail even more specifically, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're walking in corduroy pants, you get that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a little you can feel the ridges. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I used to have a postcard that was Luke Skywalker
Speaker 1: and Darth Vader having a lightsaber duel, and you know,
Speaker 1: you tilt the postcard back and forth and it would
Speaker 1: look like they were fighting. It was a very limited
Speaker 1: amount of animation. And the way that worked is that
Speaker 1: those that plastic film you can think of those is
Speaker 1: actually little tiny lenses that, when at a certain angle,
Speaker 1: allow you to view the image just from you know,
Speaker 1: you could just view one set of lines and all
Speaker 1: those lines together make up an image. But if you
Speaker 1: tilt it a little to the right or to the left,
Speaker 1: then you're looking at a different set of lenses, and
Speaker 1: those only let you see a different set of lines,
Speaker 1: And so you can put several different sets of lines
Speaker 1: all crammed together. These are basically bits of information, and
Speaker 1: then by tilting the postcard back and forth, you're seeing
Speaker 1: this these different images, whole images in sequence, and if
Speaker 1: you do it fast enough, it looks like it's animated. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking we probably should since I'm sure
Speaker 1: someone will want to know about that TV. The TV
Speaker 1: works on that biggest scale. The The only problem is
Speaker 1: there are these little it's it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: explain in non three D, but they're little areas. If
Speaker 1: you've ever been in a perfect stereo set up where
Speaker 1: you're in the right exact space and you can totally
Speaker 1: make out the left and the right channel, but if
Speaker 1: you move a little to the left of the right,
Speaker 1: or forward or backward, all of a sudden, you lose
Speaker 1: that true stereo effect. It's it's like that for the
Speaker 1: t vs, because if you step just hair at a place,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the image gets distorted a little
Speaker 1: bit and you can't see it in three D anymore.
Speaker 1: Dead spots, Yeah, which is why you don't see that
Speaker 1: on every three D TV. Right. The way I I
Speaker 1: describe it usually is imagined that the television, or in
Speaker 1: this case, the three D S is in the center
Speaker 1: of a pie. I'll see you had to bring pie
Speaker 1: into it. Now I'm gonna be thinking about that. And
Speaker 1: and now a pie that's been sliced, right, so you've
Speaker 1: got the three D s's at the center of the pie.
Speaker 1: So you've got these slices that that converge at the
Speaker 1: three D S. If you happen to be positioned in
Speaker 1: the middle of a slice of pie, then you get
Speaker 1: the three D experience. But if you are bestride two
Speaker 1: slices of pie, if that slices in between betwixt thy feet,
Speaker 1: then then you've got to end up with this weird,
Speaker 1: muddled image. And it's gonna not it's gonna look really
Speaker 1: kind of cloudy. Your brain is not really gonna know
Speaker 1: what to do with it, and uh, and it really
Speaker 1: is disorienting. I can tell you from experience, because one
Speaker 1: of the things we found out while playing with the
Speaker 1: Nintendo three DS is it's a little disorienting. Disorienting when
Speaker 1: you're playing it yourself, but even more so if you
Speaker 1: try to watch someone else play, because you are going
Speaker 1: to be looking over that person's shoulder and you're not
Speaker 1: going to be in that sweet spot. Now That's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why that three DS was considered to
Speaker 1: be viable was because if you're playing a handheld device,
Speaker 1: generally you're holding it in front of yourself and you're
Speaker 1: holding it about the right distance away for that three
Speaker 1: D to work right, You're you're holding it around, you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen to eighteen inches away from your face. You're holding
Speaker 1: it in front of you more more likely than not,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of a controlled environment. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you were to put this in, say a television, well
Speaker 1: then you have to arrange your entire living room so
Speaker 1: that you are always seated in one of those sweet
Speaker 1: spots to get the three D or else you'll just
Speaker 1: get a massive headache. So if you were to sit
Speaker 1: a little to the left on the couch, suddenly you
Speaker 1: can't see the three D image anymore, and and it's
Speaker 1: just a jumbled mess onto television. So the three D
Speaker 1: S the idea was that the form factor suited that
Speaker 1: three D technology. Now you were talking about how you
Speaker 1: have to have two different sets of images, it's it's
Speaker 1: and that's true with these three D games if you
Speaker 1: have it on three D mode. And the nice thing
Speaker 1: about the three D S so you can turn the
Speaker 1: three D mode off if you If you slay the
Speaker 1: three D switch all the way down, it goes to
Speaker 1: two D mode and you only have a single set
Speaker 1: of images if you because you have to have two
Speaker 1: sets of images. That means that you have to have
Speaker 1: custom games for this device. Right. You can't suddenly start
Speaker 1: playing all your old Nintendo DS games in three D
Speaker 1: right then, Now it is compatible with those old games,
Speaker 1: but you are not going to get the three D
Speaker 1: effect because those old games were not designed with two
Speaker 1: sets of images exactly. Another thing I should point out
Speaker 1: is that if you have any problems with your site
Speaker 1: in one eye, like let's say that you you're blind
Speaker 1: in one eye, or you just have a medical condition
Speaker 1: um that that messes with your vision in one eye,
Speaker 1: you may not be able to see three D through
Speaker 1: parallax views the way that a person with good vision
Speaker 1: in both eyes could. Right. Because of that, Nintendo kind
Speaker 1: of is kind of shying away from making three D
Speaker 1: an integral necessary part of games on the three D S.
Speaker 1: In other words, you can buy three D games for
Speaker 1: the three D S, but there won't be any games
Speaker 1: in which the three D component is necessary for you
Speaker 1: to be able to play that game. Now, that goes
Speaker 1: against the Mario game that I saw when I was
Speaker 1: at E three, Because the Mario game I saw, if
Speaker 1: you turned the three D setting off, you suddenly could
Speaker 1: not see the platforms that you had to jump on
Speaker 1: as you were running through the levels. You can only
Speaker 1: see them in the three D mode. So that meant
Speaker 1: that the three D was necessary for you to be
Speaker 1: able to play effectively. Uh. Well, now on Nintendo saying well,
Speaker 1: that may not be the best idea because there are
Speaker 1: some people who just can't enjoy games. Uh and so
Speaker 1: if it's in just three D mode, so we don't
Speaker 1: want to, we don't want to you know, discount them.
Speaker 1: We don't want to leave them out of the fun.
Speaker 1: So three D should just be kind of a feature.
Speaker 1: It's at that point one could argue, and I have
Speaker 1: made this argument, the three D feature on the three
Speaker 1: D s becomes more of a gimmick than a feature
Speaker 1: because it's not necessary to the game. It's not like
Speaker 1: the WE games where the WE remote is integrated part
Speaker 1: of gameplay, right, I mean with those games, like the
Speaker 1: games that use the WE remote or the the the
Speaker 1: WE fit board, those things, you know, that's part of
Speaker 1: the gameplay. If if there's not a simple way where
Speaker 1: you just switch that out and use a regular controller,
Speaker 1: that that's more of a game that was where it's
Speaker 1: integrated with the whole system, right Like for example, the
Speaker 1: Mario Kart WE has the WE steering wheel, but the
Speaker 1: WE stealing steering is essentially an inert piece of plastic
Speaker 1: in which you snap the uh WE remote, So you
Speaker 1: don't need the steering wheel to play that game. You
Speaker 1: just hold the WE remote sideways and you know, make
Speaker 1: room room sounds. You can argue, Yeah, you could argue
Speaker 1: that that that steering wheel is more or less a gimmick,
Speaker 1: although I would assume it would make it a little
Speaker 1: easier to hold and manipulate the WE remote in that case.
Speaker 1: But you don't need the little tennis racket thing either
Speaker 1: to play exactly yeah, or like one that shaped like
Speaker 1: a wand to play a Harry Potter game or something
Speaker 1: along those lines. Yeah, So it feels almost more like that,
Speaker 1: like one of the kind of superfluous WE accessories. That's
Speaker 1: kind of how the three D feature on the three
Speaker 1: D S feels. If you remove the three D as
Speaker 1: an integrated part of the game, but let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about you know, we we mentioned lenticular displays.
Speaker 1: The way Nintendo actually implements this technology is what we
Speaker 1: call the parallax barrier, and a parallax barrier is kind
Speaker 1: of neat. Yes, okay, So the screen that you're looking at,
Speaker 1: the three D screen, is an l c D screen.
Speaker 1: On top of that screen is a second l c
Speaker 1: D screen that uses these little liquid crystals to create
Speaker 1: kind of like shutters, and the shutters block off the
Speaker 1: way light bounces or projects off of the back lit
Speaker 1: uh three D screen, And by shuttering off the light
Speaker 1: just right, it directs light in two particular directions, the
Speaker 1: left eye and the right eye. So it's blocking the
Speaker 1: right eye's image to the left eye and it's blocking
Speaker 1: the left eye's image to the right eye. Now, if you, uh,
Speaker 1: if you haven't been following us on Facebook, and if not,
Speaker 1: why haven't you? Um, you probably are unaware of what
Speaker 1: we are about to get into. Actually, I was going
Speaker 1: to bring up next, which is that when I wasn't
Speaker 1: here one day, they took it upon themselves to tear
Speaker 1: this thing apart. If you want, I'll give it to you.
Speaker 1: It's in a bag. Thanks. Most bits in a bag.
Speaker 1: We can eBay that the chunks of it. I had
Speaker 1: to throw away some of the pieces they were Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so could you actually pull these screens apart? Can you
Speaker 1: actually see this for yourself? Well, because it's liquid crystal display, No,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna I mean, I wouldn't recommend it. Um,
Speaker 1: first of all, you can avoid your warranty, and second
Speaker 1: of all, you're gonna break your three D s Uh.
Speaker 1: If I had a heat gun, I could have weakened
Speaker 1: the adhesive enough to pull apart the screens. But I
Speaker 1: didn't have a heat gun, so I didn't bother to
Speaker 1: try and force that. UM. I took the I took
Speaker 1: the protective covering off of the three D screen so
Speaker 1: that you could see where the speakers are mounted. The
Speaker 1: speakers are mounted on the three D screen, not on
Speaker 1: the base. UM you can see where the forward facing
Speaker 1: camera was. Uh, that kind of stuff. But you could not.
Speaker 1: I couldn't pull out the screen and then uh split
Speaker 1: in twain, but uh, yeah it was. It's It's interesting
Speaker 1: that the little UM three D switch on the left
Speaker 1: on the right rather of the screen, if you put
Speaker 1: it all the way down, it turns the three d off. Well,
Speaker 1: if you start sliding it up, it actually adjusts the
Speaker 1: three D and the way it adjust the three D
Speaker 1: is the width of the little crystal shutters. By by
Speaker 1: sliding it up, it adjusts the width so that you
Speaker 1: get more or less light coming to you from the
Speaker 1: various screens, and it will actually offset the pictures a
Speaker 1: little bit more too, which means that you can adjust
Speaker 1: the depth of field. And the reason for that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about how these displays kind
Speaker 1: of mimic how our eyes are are spaced on our heads. Well,
Speaker 1: most of the time, you have to estimate that, right, Sure,
Speaker 1: you base it on an average, so you see, the
Speaker 1: average person's eyes are so so many centimeters apart, and
Speaker 1: if your device doesn't have any way of adjusting for that,
Speaker 1: you just have to go for the average. And you
Speaker 1: realize that any individual person who views that is going
Speaker 1: to have a variable experience based upon how far apart
Speaker 1: their actual eyes are. So let's say that the average
Speaker 1: is a certain amount, and that my eyes happened to
Speaker 1: be a little closer together than average. That means that
Speaker 1: if I'm looking at a fixed parallax display, like there's
Speaker 1: no way to adjust that three D I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get as good an experience as someone who whose
Speaker 1: eyes are closer to the average. Well, this, this little
Speaker 1: switch allows you to change the offset of those images
Speaker 1: and the width of those uh those crystals to be
Speaker 1: able to uh to get it closer to what your
Speaker 1: your your physiological makeup is, so you can get as
Speaker 1: close to an ideal experience as possible. All that being said,
Speaker 1: after about ten minutes of playing with this on three
Speaker 1: D mode, I started to feel a little uh se sick,
Speaker 1: which is weird because I don't get motion sickness easily.
Speaker 1: I'm like a roller coaster fanatic, and I ride like
Speaker 1: the happy Go Pukis. I don't have any problem with
Speaker 1: any of that. But after playing with this thing for
Speaker 1: ten minutes, I was thinking out, feel so good? Well,
Speaker 1: and uh we did have other people comment on Facebook
Speaker 1: that they don't have that problem. Yeah, exactly. Most of
Speaker 1: the people I lent it out to had a similar
Speaker 1: response of Wow, this is making me, this is making
Speaker 1: my head hurt, It's making me a little dizzy. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: that might be that they just had not tweaked the
Speaker 1: three D setting properly so that it wasn't ideal, you know,
Speaker 1: because again, if it's set a little off to you,
Speaker 1: then it's just you may not be able to consciously
Speaker 1: put your finger on what's wrong, but you'll start to
Speaker 1: feel a little, you know, wonky. Yeah, so let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about some of the other elements.
Speaker 1: Since we talked about breaking this thing open and looking
Speaker 1: at it, I was going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about some of the stuff that's in it. And as
Speaker 1: an arm processor, as the CPU, uh, and it's uh
Speaker 1: between five mega hurts to a giga hurts and processor speed. Uh.
Speaker 1: You don't really need a super fast processor to play
Speaker 1: most of the games. And of course, the higher the
Speaker 1: speed of the processor, the more heat it's going to generate.
Speaker 1: And heat in general is bad, especially for a handheld device,
Speaker 1: because you don't really have the space to put in
Speaker 1: a cooling system like a fan or event or something,
Speaker 1: so you don't want to generate a lot of heat.
Speaker 1: So because of that, there's not just the CPU. There's
Speaker 1: also a graphics processing unit. We do know more about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's made by digital media professionals and it's the PEAKA
Speaker 1: two hundred chip and um it's ay. It runs at
Speaker 1: a four hundred mega hurts. So you've got a dedicated
Speaker 1: chip for the graphics, you've got another chip that's kind
Speaker 1: of running the rest of the horsepower for the games.
Speaker 1: And then there's other chips in there too, right, There's
Speaker 1: like there's a gyroscope, there's an accelerometer. Um, there's there's
Speaker 1: of course memory chips, both for the RAM and for
Speaker 1: actual storage memory. It comes to going gig of flash
Speaker 1: memory on board. And then you also get a two
Speaker 1: gigabye UH SD card that comes with us, a Toshiba
Speaker 1: SD card, and uh. The nice thing about is that,
Speaker 1: of course you can save content to this SD card.
Speaker 1: There's some limitations to that as well. Let's say that
Speaker 1: you save a game to the SD card and then
Speaker 1: you you load it onto a new three D S
Speaker 1: and then you try and go back to your old
Speaker 1: three D S and run that you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to access that content because it's it's d r M.
Speaker 1: The basis of that is that they don't want you
Speaker 1: to be able to start copying games and then distribute
Speaker 1: them to all your friends. What about saved games? To
Speaker 1: save games I think are a little different, um, but
Speaker 1: I mean your your progress and things you could play
Speaker 1: if you had the game on another d S, you
Speaker 1: could play where you left off. I would have I think, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really for games. Like let's say you download
Speaker 1: a game because you can't as a good point, we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about you can download games from Nintendo service,
Speaker 1: and uh, if you were to save it to your
Speaker 1: SD card just so you don't take up all your
Speaker 1: space on your actual device, then you could port it
Speaker 1: over to a different three D S, but then you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to play it on your first one. Okay,
Speaker 1: same thing like if you were to port it over
Speaker 1: to a third D S, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: play it on the first two. And that that's just
Speaker 1: protecting Nintendo so that you don't end up, you know,
Speaker 1: distributing a game ad infinitum to all of your friends. Um,
Speaker 1: but there, I mean, there's also a Wi Fi chip
Speaker 1: in it. That's what allows you, of course to access
Speaker 1: not just WiFi hotspots, but Nintendo hot spots, which are
Speaker 1: few and far between here in the States, but they're
Speaker 1: pretty big in Japan. Um. There's also an i R
Speaker 1: chip so infrared that allows you to do probably three
Speaker 1: DS to three D S communication. Although that not a
Speaker 1: whole lot has been said about that particular feature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't surprise me if that capability isn't available,
Speaker 1: because it's already available on other Nintendo handheld. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there there's definitely there's definitely some some collaborative uh
Speaker 1: technology there. Right, there are ways where you can you
Speaker 1: can gain content just by encountering other people who happened
Speaker 1: to have a three D S Really, yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. The idea here is that you you keep
Speaker 1: the three DS on in sleep mode, and you carry
Speaker 1: it around with you, and when it comes within range,
Speaker 1: it's constantly sort of sending out a little signal, a
Speaker 1: ping sort of yeah, that's not going to kill your battery. Now,
Speaker 1: battery life for this thing, by the ways, around five hours, um,
Speaker 1: five hours of playtime that's on a full charge, um.
Speaker 1: And that's if you have the brightness turn. The higher
Speaker 1: you turn up the brightness, the less time you'll have, right,
Speaker 1: because you need the electricity from the battery to power
Speaker 1: the brighter exactly. Yeah, you're you're putting in more lumens
Speaker 1: well you know when yeah, you make luminated so yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it pings out this signal and if it
Speaker 1: if it finds another three d S, it can exchange information.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you both are playing a game
Speaker 1: where you have tool pets, or perhaps you've created some
Speaker 1: means on your three D S. You know, those are
Speaker 1: the little avatar characters that Nintendo uses the Nintendo WE also,
Speaker 1: and I think they were introduced with the Nintendo we Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you could create an me using the three DS. Well,
Speaker 1: if you walk by a whole bunch of people holding
Speaker 1: three D s s, it may turn out that when
Speaker 1: you open up your little me plasa, you start seeing
Speaker 1: these other means that other people have created. Because you
Speaker 1: know your three DS has made this connection and you downloaded,
Speaker 1: you ended up downloading automatically this information, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. It creates this sort of community experience, even
Speaker 1: with people you've never met. Although it makes you wonder
Speaker 1: if you can make your me a real jerk face
Speaker 1: so that you're me whenever you go into the meat
Speaker 1: plazas is really harassing the other means? Why does it
Speaker 1: not surprise me that you've considered this as a possibility. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I will say that there's a kind of
Speaker 1: cool feature where you can use the forward facing camera
Speaker 1: on the three DS to take a picture of yourself,
Speaker 1: and then the three D S will design a ME
Speaker 1: based upon that photo. That's very cool. Yeah, it'll it'll
Speaker 1: get it as close you know, trying. There's only so
Speaker 1: many preset features that the ME has at its disposal.
Speaker 1: It's not that many, but it will try and pick
Speaker 1: the ones most appropriate to your faces, shape and features.
Speaker 1: M Well, you can I actually take three D photos
Speaker 1: in general, yeah, on the three D S. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the forward facing cameras and is just a regular camera,
Speaker 1: but the rear facing cameras, those two that Chris was
Speaker 1: talking about before, those can take three D images. It
Speaker 1: takes two sets of photos and then overlays them and
Speaker 1: then you can get a little three D image and
Speaker 1: it looks like you've got some real depth there. That
Speaker 1: actually is really cool. The downside of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is that the only thing you can view that on
Speaker 1: is the Nintendo three D S. Yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: you could pop the SD card out and put it
Speaker 1: into a digital frame and something. You have all these
Speaker 1: three D photos because of the digital frame lacks the
Speaker 1: parallax barrier. So without the parallax barrier, you just get
Speaker 1: a two dimensional image. I'm sorry, that just sounds like
Speaker 1: a major science fiction construct. Pretty sure Admiral Akbar had
Speaker 1: to reach the Parallax Barrier in order to destroy the
Speaker 1: Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Okay, he was
Speaker 1: mon Calamari. Well, so I'm sorry, I just kind of
Speaker 1: got me. Um See, it's a little on the expensive side,
Speaker 1: which is more expensive than the we now, right, and
Speaker 1: it's a hundred dollars more than what you're gonna find
Speaker 1: with the regular DS models. Uh and with a feature
Speaker 1: like three D is its main big feature over the
Speaker 1: other DS models, right, And they're gonna be games that
Speaker 1: are gonna be designed just for the three DS that
Speaker 1: will not run on the d S or d S light.
Speaker 1: Not all of those games are in three D, by
Speaker 1: the way, some of the games that are coming out, well,
Speaker 1: by the time this podcast goes live, they may already
Speaker 1: be out. But like the New Street Fighter game for
Speaker 1: the three D S is not in three D. It's
Speaker 1: for the three D S, but it does not have
Speaker 1: a three D mode. That's kind of cheesed off some people,
Speaker 1: by the way, I was gonna say, I imagine it
Speaker 1: will confuse some people who are expecting a three D
Speaker 1: s only title to be three D. Yeah, but as
Speaker 1: the case, the case is just that not avery title
Speaker 1: is gonna take advantage of the three D capabilities. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing it does do that's kind of cool that
Speaker 1: the other DS games don't do. It has augmented reality abilities. Ah. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: for the uninitiated, augmented reality is uh basically taking a
Speaker 1: an image of something that's in real life. Say you're
Speaker 1: looking through a camera at a a building that is
Speaker 1: in front of you, and uh, and an augmented reality
Speaker 1: solution would lay a virtual layer of information over that
Speaker 1: to tell you maybe who the tenants inside the building are,
Speaker 1: or the address a building you're looking at right right,
Speaker 1: or you know, the things that are down the streets.
Speaker 1: Say you shift the camera and it says, oh, well,
Speaker 1: down the street you have a bookstore and a coffee shop.
Speaker 1: And if you turn the camera the other way, it
Speaker 1: might say, you know, there's a restaurant here, and then
Speaker 1: it might even have a review of the restaurant up
Speaker 1: or perhaps the menu of the restaurant. And yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of cool applications. You see this a lot
Speaker 1: with smartphones right now, because smartphones have more and more
Speaker 1: features that allow this to happen, like GPS, the compass,
Speaker 1: the camera. All of these elements give smartphones the capabilities
Speaker 1: they need in order to overlay information on top of reality. Well,
Speaker 1: the three DS also has this capability, although it's in
Speaker 1: a very specific feature right now. When you get a
Speaker 1: three DS, you'll get a series of cards with it.
Speaker 1: Most of the cards have characters on them like Mario UH,
Speaker 1: sam Us from UH from was It Metroid Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Link from the Zelda series. I find this ironic because
Speaker 1: Nintendo started as a playing card company long long years
Speaker 1: before electronics. Well, the one of the cards is one
Speaker 1: of the the infamous coin boxes, the question mark boxes
Speaker 1: that you find in the old Super Mario Brothers game
Speaker 1: and then in lots of Mario games since then. If
Speaker 1: you put that down on a table and you activate
Speaker 1: the Augmented Reality Games feature on your Nintendo three D S,
Speaker 1: pointing the cameras at that that UH card will start
Speaker 1: a scanning process. They will detect the presence of that card.
Speaker 1: Based upon the image, they can detect what angle the
Speaker 1: you're holding the three DS, like, what's what angle of
Speaker 1: view you have? You hold it about fourteen inches away
Speaker 1: from that card and then it'll start this augmented reality
Speaker 1: feature where a three D virtual box coin box pops
Speaker 1: up and it appears to be standing on top of
Speaker 1: the actual real card that's on the table. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at the table as a third person,
Speaker 1: you know, observer, you're just gonna see a person pointing
Speaker 1: a three D S at a card, right, because the
Speaker 1: object is not the little virtual avatar guy is not
Speaker 1: really there. But if you're looking through the three D S,
Speaker 1: there appears to be a three dimensional animated objects standing
Speaker 1: on top of the card. And then you can initiate
Speaker 1: various games playing UH and play with this this card,
Speaker 1: the first one being an archery game where you actually
Speaker 1: have to physically move around the table in order to
Speaker 1: get a view at all the different targets that you
Speaker 1: have to shoot at, which is pretty cool people. It
Speaker 1: was a big hit here at the office. People thought
Speaker 1: it was really a neat idea. Yeah, and I thought
Speaker 1: that the augmented reality UH applications really had a lot
Speaker 1: of promise to them. It's still kind of limited because
Speaker 1: it was relying on this this card and if you
Speaker 1: if you lost the card, then you could always go
Speaker 1: to a Nintendo's site and actually, um, download an image
Speaker 1: that you could print on a color printer and then
Speaker 1: you could use that instead. UM. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like you could point the three D S at
Speaker 1: anything and then create a game on top of it.
Speaker 1: It's you know, these very narrowly defined parameters that that
Speaker 1: it will work with. And that's pretty much the state
Speaker 1: of the art or augmented reality right now. UM. Anything
Speaker 1: that's relying on object recognition is pretty fairly primitive right now.
Speaker 1: So you're usually working with some sort of UM, predefined pattern,
Speaker 1: and the cameras are able to map the pattern and
Speaker 1: uh and generate the proper virtual data on top of
Speaker 1: the the physical appearance. It's UM that part I thought
Speaker 1: was really neat. I'm not sure that again this one.
Speaker 1: It was this one game that came with than into
Speaker 1: no three D S. I don't know how many more
Speaker 1: applications will see of that. I don't I assume that
Speaker 1: there's nothing stopping a developer from creating other augmented reality games.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that would be entirely possible, And personally,
Speaker 1: what I think would be really cool is create a
Speaker 1: tabletop map, all right, and then invite a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people over and each person has their own three
Speaker 1: d S and they all point the three D s
Speaker 1: at the map, and the three DS is, because of
Speaker 1: their WiFi capability, can be network so you network together
Speaker 1: and then you play a role playing game on top
Speaker 1: of a real map with your virtual characters and they
Speaker 1: can interact with each other. That would be very cool.
Speaker 1: That would be super cool. Can you imagine, Like I'm
Speaker 1: going back to my D and D game gaming days,
Speaker 1: but I could. I mentioned playing a D and D
Speaker 1: game where you're looking at a virtual representation of your
Speaker 1: you know, barbarian uh who is going to kick down
Speaker 1: the next door and you know the wizards right behind
Speaker 1: you with a spell and he cast magic missile at
Speaker 1: the darkness for damage. Right, So, um, I didn't make
Speaker 1: my saving throw against dorkiness unfortunately, But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that that would be a really neat feature. Now are
Speaker 1: we going to see that? I don't know. I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know if people are going to try and develop
Speaker 1: for the augmented reality features of the three DS, but
Speaker 1: I would love to see that happened, because well, the
Speaker 1: three D gaming was cool. It disoriented me enough where
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't want to play it very often, and
Speaker 1: since it's not integrated into the games necessarily, there's not
Speaker 1: much point in ever turning the three D on if
Speaker 1: it's going to disorient me. But if you were able
Speaker 1: to push that augmented reality feature, then I'm saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is a really compelling new form of gaming that
Speaker 1: I am genuinely interested in, because eventually we're gonna have
Speaker 1: the that um that Star Wars Chess set where you
Speaker 1: let the Wookie win. Well, I have to say that
Speaker 1: um at the price point and it's it's at right
Speaker 1: now and with the features, you know, I'm just not
Speaker 1: willing to fork over the money for it. But but
Speaker 1: quite a few people did. It sold pretty well it's
Speaker 1: first week. Yeah, I'm curious to see how those sales
Speaker 1: hold up over time. I you know, we don't do
Speaker 1: reviews here on tech stuff, but I have to completely
Speaker 1: agree with you, Pulett. It's it's a really cool device
Speaker 1: and I see a lot of promise in it, but
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not I don't feel a need to
Speaker 1: buy one. Now that being said, I should also add
Speaker 1: that I am not really a handheld gaming enthusiast in
Speaker 1: the first place, So I'm probably not the right market.
Speaker 1: I when I game, I like to be sitting in
Speaker 1: a comfortable chair at home, controller in hand, looking at
Speaker 1: a big screen. So I'm not the right audience, so
Speaker 1: it's probably not fair to ask me. But yeah, I would,
Speaker 1: I would skip it. Yeah, but still it's phenomenal technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and there's nothing else. Uh, nobody else has
Speaker 1: got a version of that. In fact, Sony as of
Speaker 1: the week we're recording this, Sony pulled the PSP go
Speaker 1: off the market. Yes, the PSP go is no go,
Speaker 1: no mo wells just continue anyway. Yeah, so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of an a league of its own right now. Um, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you guys want to hear more about
Speaker 1: various devices, whether they be gaming or otherwise related, let
Speaker 1: us know, shoot us an email at tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff arks dot com or letten Know on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. You can find us there with the handle
Speaker 1: text stuff h s W Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics is how stuff works dot com.
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