Something to look forward to: Stereoscopic 3D has never gained popularity with a mass audience, but Asus is making another attempt in a couple of its latest laptops. The company’s new display technology aims to eliminate some of the biggest 3D problems with a combination of special panel features and gaze tracking.
This week, Asus unveiled laptops with 3D OLED screens at CES. The displays are autostereoscopic, meaning they create a 3D effect without the use of special glasses. The company advertises technology for creating content, watching movies and games.
Spatial Vision promises a 3D effect that persists at different viewing angles. The Verge writes that two people could see a 3D image on the screen at the same time. Asus achieves this with the help of two cameras above the display, which track the user’s gaze and constantly adjust the 3D image even when the viewing angle changes. Lenticular lenses in the screen transmit separate stereo images to each eye to create an effect.
As for content, Spatial Vision supports a wide range of platforms, such as Steam VR, OpenXR, Vulkan, WebXR, Nvidia CloudXR and others. It also supports 3D software such as Blender, SketchUp, Nvidia Omniverse, VRED, Twinmotion and eDrawings. Most 3D file formats, such as 3ds, obj, fbx, gltf, glb, stl, stp, mp4, avi and sbs, also work with Spatial Vision.
To simplify the search and use of 3D content, Asus Spatial Vision Hub will assemble a collection of 3D-compatible model viewers, media players, photo viewers and games. According to The Verge, outdated 3D content works in Spatial Vision, but it doesn’t look as good as software specifically designed for this system.
3D screens will debut in new versions of the ProArt Studiobook 16 (H7604) and Vivobook Pro 16X (K6604). Both are equipped with Intel i9-13980HX processors, Nvidia RTX 4070 GPUs and up to 64 GB of DDR5 RAM. The screens of both laptops have a frequency of 120 Hz, but use an unusual resolution of 16:10, which Asus calls “3.2K” — 3200 x 2000 pixels. The company hasn’t announced pricing or release dates yet, but the most affordable 16-inch Vivobook Pro costs about $1,600, and ProArt Studiobooks of this size cost over $2,000.
In addition to 3D screens, the new Asus laptops join the trend of laptops that debuted at CES 2023 with Intel Raptor Lake 13th generation processors and RTX 4000 series graphics cards. These include new models from Alienware, Razer, Acer and MSI. Future flagship MSI laptops are among the first to support PCIe 5.0 solid—state drives.
