Glasses-free 3D screens might finally be ready for prime time

Remember years ago when they tried really hard to make 3D TVs a thing? Remember when everyone hated it because you had to wear cumbersome glasses? Remember when they tried to make 3D screens without the glasses, and that flopped harder than a Sound of Music remake starring Steven Seagal? Well forget all that, if you can even remember what I was talking about: Acer’s latest Predator laptop with a glasses-free 3D screen might just nail it. Gordon goes hands-on (and eyes-on) on the PCWorld YouTube channel.

At GDC 2023, Gordon Mah Ung got a chance to try out the latest in screen tech built into Acer’s Predator Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition gaming laptop. Acer’s system has a couple of advantages over “old-fashioned” glasses-free 3D, achieved with a lenticular screen showing two images at once. The laptop’s integrated cameras track your eyes and adjust the picture accordingly, and the high-quality 4K screen (essentially 2K for each eye) blows previous attempts out of the water.

But whither developer support? Acer’s got that covered, too. Acer is adding support for the system itself, and has already gotten 70 of the top PC games onboard, and they’re working on more. Getting to see this tech yourself might cost a bit, though — the laptop is $3500, and the 15.6-inch screen alone (repackaged into a standard monitor with eye tracking) is $1100. Hopefully it’ll get a lot more accessible in a newer generation. For more hands-on looks at the latest in PC hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.