Remember the first time you saw a Nintendo 3DS running? The glass-free 3D effect was truly mind-blowing, and there's still a part of us that is deeply sad that the technology proved to be something of a dead-end.
Still, if you've got a hankering for something along the same lines and you have exceptionally deep pockets, then you might be interested to learn that game designer Seth A. Robinson has come up with a way of playing the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania on a $400 Looking Glass Factory holographic display.
In case you hadn't heard of this device – and we certainly hadn't before today – the Looking Glass Portrait can turn static photos into holograms. It's described as "the first system for personal 3D holograms" and allows users to "seamlessly turn Portrait-mode photos from your phone into holograms, create 3D masterpieces with our Blender plugin, or make interactive holographic apps with our powerful Unity and Unreal plugins."
Robinson has cooked up HoloVCS, a free plug-in for the device that allows certain games to run on the Looking Glass Portrait. You'll need the Looking Glass Portrait (of course), a Windows PC, the Holoplay driver and a reasonably decent graphics card to pull all of this off – and while the NES titles will run at 60fps, only the supported pair will display depth and 3D effects currently. Atari 2600 classic Pitfall! is also supported.
It's certainly a cool trick, and something of a bonus for those who already own a Looking Glass Portrait.
[source 80.lv]
Comments 21
That looks brilliant! I still enjoy the 3D effect on the 3DS from time to time.
Looks really good. Eye candy
A physical 3D effect looks awesome. If Nintendo would release something with this kind of technology, I'd love to play that.
Still love my 3DS, the 3D slider always is on max.
nice. looks like it might be playable without causing an epileptic seizure as well. I couldn't play the 3DS with the 3D on for more than five minutes before starting to feel uncomfortable
The future is here!
This is so cool! Especially since I've used Blender for a little over 20 years. Hmmmm... maybe.
So it's basically 3DSen but set up to work on specific hardware. Interesting, if a little derivative.
That's really cool. Regular Mario becomes Paper Mario. At least the 3d creates a similar flat cutout effect.
No idea what this is, but that looks pretty damn cool.
I love the 3ds. Maybe this could be developed into then next gen of 3d handhelds?
Nifty. Landscape mode possible...?
I really hope Nintendo does another 3D handheld someday.
But can it run doom?
At first I thought this was just an LCD panel with the backlight removed. Hell, for $700 (+3090 GPU) you could probably just do 2 LCD panels, one with the backlight removed and only foreground layer, and the other to display the background layer.
Anyone else notice that the SMB music is just slightly... off?
Oh yeah, i remember watching a Linus tech tips video about it, and it's a seriously awesome device. Don't really see any good home use, but in the commercial space, this would really catch a lot of eyes.
That does look pretty cool, would be even better to see it do SNES games with the brighter palette.
@RamenNumerals Ah, the good old days when computers had phone numbers instead of IP addresses. I remember them fondly!
New Virtual Boy incoming??
I had to double check when I heard that name, and yep, it's the same Seth Able Robinson that made Legend of the Red Dragon back in the BBS days. Glad to hear he's still in gaming.
okay, now we need a version of Luigi's Mansion that takes advantage of this 3D technology.
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