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By Andrew Liszewski

Ok, I’m going to get this out of the way. I actually liked Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, and anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my stinging, watery, burning, bloodshot eyes! Now I’ll be the first to admit that the VB wasn’t the pinnacle of gaming devices. It awkwardly fell somewhere between a console and a portable game, but its size meant you always had to play it while sitting at a desk, which got uncomfortable real quick. However, for $20 on clearance, with a stack of games for $2 each, I happily overlooked the downsides.

And of the 10 or so Virtual Boy games I’ve ever tried, Mario’s Tennis was, and still is, the most entertaining of the lot for me. You got to choose from seven different characters like Mario, Luigi and other staples in Nintendo’s roster to compete in a singles/doubles match/tournament, but other than that, Mario’s Tennis was pretty basic. Thankfully it had solid tennis gameplay (given the era) and of course a novel, but convincing, 3D effect. I know a lot of people complain about the VB’s infamous red on black display, but I never had a problem with it, and due to a broken set of ‘legs’ I actually discovered that wearing the VB like a mask while laying on your back facilitated hours of gameplay without the discomfort.

P.S. If anyone has a set of Virtual Boy legs in good working condition they’d like to part with, I’ll gladly take them off your hands.

[ MobyGames - Mario's Tennis ]

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By Evan Ackerman

This transparent touchscreen at the Intel booth was being used to demonstrate how powerful their new Core i7 processors are. The screen was performing all kinds of fancy interactive visual tricks with a framerate readout in one corner that managed to hit 1500 fps (!) on occasion while never dropping below 400 fps.

The screen itself is nothing more than a capacitive touch panel (single touch, boo) sandwiched between two sheets of glass, which allows it to create a sort of glasses-free 3D effect. At first glance I got all excited thinking that this WAS the entire display, but it’s actually just a screen of sorts with a projector behind it. Oh well.

There’s no way this transparent touchscreen is going into production, which is a shame… It’s gorgeous, and would work brilliantly paired with one of those ultra short throw projectors.

[ Intel Core i7 ]

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By Evan Ackerman

Anyone want to count the number of TVs in that Samsung display? They look all blurry to me, but that’s probably due to a combination of lack of sleep, electronics overload, and cheap booze. $1 beers FTW! Anyway, it’s a lot of TVs. Last year it was all about size, this year it’s apparently all about quantity… All the big names have about a hundred vaguely different TVs on display, and Samsung was certainly no exception.

Dynamic 3D TV. A chip inside this TV is able to take 2D high def video streams (like from an Xbox 360), analyze them for relative perspective and motion, and then modify the video to give it a faux-3D effect, all in real time. Basically, it turns everything 3D. Of course, there is no 3D data contained within the 2D stream, so the TV is basically making it all up. I tried it out; there are some disconcertingly weird things going on if you look closely, but overall, it’s quite a convincing effect, at least with something as straightforward as a racing game. I bet the quality of the effect degrades quickly in complex virtual environments. And, you have to wear special glasses. Blech. But a very cool feature nonetheless. No production plans at present.

OLED digital picture frame. Gorgeous, as all OLED displays are. No production plans.

A prototype Papyrus e-diary, part of Samsung’s plan to “eliminate paper,” a rep told me. On display right next to their new lineup of printers. No production plans.

[ Samsung ]

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By Andrew Liszewski

The OLED Association brought some of it’s cooler toys to CES this year, like this proof of concept foldable AMOLED display from Samsung. It’s just a prototype at this time, but it works, and shows just how flexible and durable an AMOLED display can be. There was even a crease in the middle from where the screen had been constantly folded (it can actually close all the way like a book or clamshell PDA) but it didn’t seem to interfere with the display whatsoever.

This transparent AMOLED worked so well that it apparently caused my camera’s autofocus to look right through it. While it wasn’t as transparent as glass when powered off, it did manage to create the ghostly illusion you get when projecting video onto steam or a waterfall, but with the color and crispness of an AMOLED display. Might not be useful for everyone, but I can see every casino in Vegas using something like this.

And I guess I’m not as gung-ho about 3D video displays as everyone else at CES this year, but if you found just the right angle when looking at this glasses-free AMOLED display, the 3D effect was rather impressive.

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