Thursday 7 April 2011

DIY My3D viewer review. Yes make your own!


http://gallery.holga-magic.com/zen-cart/foldable-3d-photo-viewer-p-240.html

So I am still waiting for my actual proper Hasbro My3D viewer case to arrive, sent from America via a YouTube buddy who I've previously traded with. He PM'd me the necessary code to unlock the software. There are 7 apps available right now downloaded via the App Store for free! 2 are actually fair stabs at being proper games and will cost money at the end of May 2011 so download them now whilst they are still freebies. But you have to ask, how does he view the 3D content whilst his Hasbro viewer is still in transit? Well...I can verify for you that naked eyeball viewing via cross eyed method works, but the Gyro games mean moving the iPhone around, immediately knocks you out of that perfectly aligned zone-of-3D-working. However, "if" you have common items around the house such as a HB pencil, some sticky tape... and crucially a Holga 3DCV folding portable slide viewer (as you no doubt do)  hey presto! a makeshift My3D viewer... of sorts. The pencil helps raise up the iPhone for better alignment with the lenses. Liberal application of sticky take helps make the thing stable.  Peeking through the eye holes, I can report that it works! You can even control the UI with your fingers via the open sides fairly effortlessly. The screen is in focus, but as the images are closer set together than the eye holes. I think I am going a bit cross eyed to work it's magic. The actual official My3D viewer, I expect, has the iPhone screen placed further away from the lenses and maybe has lenses that converge to overcome the closeness of the images. In case you were wondering, the magnified retina screen looks good even zoomed up! The pixel mesh is visible, sure,  like looking at an LCD computer monitor from about 30cm, but hardly detracts from the fun. Can't imagine the lower resolution non-retina screens to do quite so well in this department. The 3D effect is impressively... 3D! In-game instrument panels are displayed with a sense of floating up in front of the backdrop in the space shooty game. The Sharky game where you swim about looking for fish to eat, gives a sense of oceanic depth if not width. All content is in a portrait aspected image. The Gyro control is a lot of fun too. Though having had my fill of fish for one evening, I must say I have a bit of an aching neck. The elements all add up to make a rather novel experience that you should try for yourself (minus the neck ache perhaps). I can only expect the games to get better and gawd I hope some proper developers take this SDK of Hasbro's My3D and run with it.

Can't wait to try this again once my REAL viewer arrives.




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