Toshiba Launching Glasses Free 3D Laptop with Simultaneous 2D Function

Apr 21, 2011 7 Comments by Jonathan Tustain

If further proof that Toshiba believes 3D has a glasses free future was required, the Japanese giant has announced a new glasses free 3D laptop that does not require the user to be positioned in a ‘viewing zone’ and can also display 2D content at the same time as 3D. The Toshiba Dynabook Qosmio T851/D8CR will be available in Japan this June.

The 3D with 2D functionality is a first. Users will be able to view 3D graphics, games and videos in one window while viewing 2D applications such as the Internet in another.

The Toshiba Dynabook Qosmio T851/D8CR uses parallax barrier technology and polarisation. However, glasses free 3D technology usually only works when a user is in a certain position. Move away from that position and the 3D effect is lost.

Toshiba claim to have removed this restriction using “face-tracking” and an “active lens”. The web cam integrated in the laptop tracks the user’s eyes. This information is sent to an active lens which controls the polarisation of the light from the display. Apparently this ensures two separate images are sent to each eye even when the viewer moves his or her head.

It is the active lens technology that will enable only parts of the screen to be 3D. When it is turned off, the entire screen will be 2D by default. When it is turned on in a part of the screen, a user is able to view 3D content in a window. In 2D mode, a 1920 x 1080 resolution is offered which is reduced to 1366 x 768 in 3D mode.

The Toshiba Dynabook Qosimo 3D laptop is another device which claims to achieve real time 2D – 3D conversion.

It uses the SpursEngine – a quad-core HD processor which is based on the Cell Broadband Engine, and can process the conversion of a 2D terrestrial broadcast. New technologies to facilitate 2D – 3D conversion are “Face3D” – a high speed face detection system that recognises human faces in a 2D sequence and then applies a human “depth template”. This is said to give people a 3D appearance with graded shading. “Caption stabiliser” locates all captions such as subtitles and positions them in the same depth space; in front of the screen, at all times.

There are no indications of price but it is likely to be priced towards the higher end of the market due to its premium features. The Dynabook Qosimo includes 8GB of RAM, an LED clearview full HD screen, a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics card and a 3D Blu-ray player.

Toshiba’s press office told 3DFocus.co.uk that the Toshiba Dynabook Qosmio T851/D8CR will be available outside of Japan (where it is released in June) but could not speculate where, when or for how much.

It will be interesting to find out how effective the face tracking technology and active lens system is. Current glasses free 3D technology is, although effective, very restrictive so if this laptop could track the users eyes quickly and without error than this would be a real achievement. Unfortunately it is unlikely such technology could be incorporated into glasses free 3D TVs due to television often being watched by multiple viewers.

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