Hacker News Reader

Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

The fire phone did this 7 years later with 4 front facing tracking cameras and nobody cared

The New Nintendo 3DS was based around this, and although they abandoned it I think there's still a lot of room for something like it. It's more AR than AR is.

Did it do head tracking?

It always seemed gimmicky to me, but I’ve heard that the Mario brothers 3D worked a lot better with the depth element than in any of the remakes (I did it enjoy it just fine on my switch)

The original 3DS didn't but the "New" one did eye tracking like this, and for both eyes since it had a 3D screen.

No, it relied on the fact that the player would ~always be looking straight at the screen at a relatively fixed distance. There was a slider you could use to set the strength of the depth effect, all the way to disabling it completely.

It was fun and worked pretty well, but it was very much a gimmick.

EDIT: Just saw the other comment, I didn't know the New 3DS had actual eye tracking. Neat!

I bought a new 3ds and it was absolute bliss. The mario bros 3d game was incredibly intuitive to play, that 3ds has spoiled any 3d platformer for me. I tried playing the new 3d game on the switch and even though it has shadows, I kept missing platforms etc.

I think the original 3ds's lack of tracking is what turned it off for most people, though.

The 3DS don’t do head tracking, it was a real 3D display that displayed a unique image to each of your eyes.

The New 3DS also did eye tracking, which is why I said it did.

nobody cared because you had to buy new hardware (the fire phone) to get it, at the expense of the current hardware you already really liked. In this case, you don’t have to get any new hardware.

Relevant video by DankPods: https://youtu.be/nJRYDbV7jr0

He managed to get a brand new in box one, not spoiling if it works or not you'll have to watch to find out...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com