Skip to Content

Hasbro making 3D goggles for iPhone

by Sam Abuelsamid Nov 9th 2010 at 9:00AM


The whole 3D movement may now have officially jumped the shark with the introduction of the My3D from Hasbro. The idea of sitting in front of the living room TV and wearing a pair of goofy glasses in order to see an artificial reproduction of the real world is bad enough, but we really can't see many people going for My3D.

Think of the US$30 My3D as a 21st century answer to the old View-Masters that many of us had as kids. Instead of slipping a disc with seven pairs of color transparencies into a slot, the My3D has a slot that can hold an iPhone or iPod touch. Viewing content in 3D will require custom content available through apps that you buy on the App Store. It's not clear if the 3D content will take the form of View-Master-style side-by-side stereoscopic images or more modern digital 3D with polarized lenses in the device. Given the relatively low cost, it's probably the former.

The Hasbro My3D is currently set to go on sale next spring with content available from DreamWorks, Discovery, Sony, and IMAX among others.

View Tags

Related Stories

The whole 3D movement may now have officially jumped the shark with the introduction of the My3D from Hasbro. The idea of sitting in...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

12 Comments

Filter by:
Olivier Ozoux

I'm surprised that absolutely no-one has raised the question of how you are actually expected to interact with a touch-screen device when you can no longer touch the screen?

November 12 2010 at 7:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
james.husted

The best follow up would be a lens array that an iPhone would snap into that would let you TAKE 3D pictures to view with this thing.

November 10 2010 at 3:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Will

Or you could simply make a DIY iPhone-based handheld 3D viewer/stereoscope using a few spare business cards and some tape :)

http://www.kybervision.com/Blog/files/3D_on_iPhone_Part1.html

November 09 2010 at 7:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Will's comment
cheezorg

Looks awesome. Price is right and creating content for it will be easy. This article jumped the shark.

November 09 2010 at 9:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bob6stringer

I'm in the "it's cool" camp vs. the shark-jump camp. For $30, my daughter could get some major if temporary yee-haws outta this. When dealing with toys and gifts for It's all about price point, and realizing that all toys are ephemeral. A few months of chuckles is well worth 30 bucks.

Of course, this follows the Gilette razor model, where the goggles -- the razor's handle is the loss-leadeign hardware. The longevity of this product, and the profits for Hasbro, money are in the value of in-app purchases for more content. Give my daughter ongoing fun and/or educational content and this could be a hit. (But do I really want my daughter going cross-eyed instead of going OUTSIDE and playing with her friends? lol and all that.)

I think we're all spoiled by the great apps in the App Store that are priced too cheap!

November 09 2010 at 11:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Edsel

"The issue with this is whether they are going to get enough content for it," Wu said.

I'm sure the porn industry is on top of this already. LOL

November 09 2010 at 10:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RobbyT

From the price and look of the attachment it could just be simple stereoscopy but that seems rather unlikely...doesn't it?

November 09 2010 at 9:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to RobbyT's comment
RobbyT

...should have read the rest before posting, hey ho.

November 09 2010 at 10:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Laur

Are you kidding me? This is actually rather cool. As an easy and very cheap way to view stereo images or stereo video it will probably do rather well, particularly since it seems it just splits left/right eye images down the middle of the display, so there is no barrier to creating content for it.

The ViewMaster products still sell pretty well even today.

November 09 2010 at 9:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JAQ

It can't be based on polarized lenses, because the iPhone doesn't produce polarized light. Wondering if the iPhone would work with that kind of 3D glasses is like wondering if you can watch color programs on a black and white TV if you wear special glasses.

November 09 2010 at 9:33 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
James Norton

If you think no one will buy this then you vastly underestimate the power of marketing to kids.

November 09 2010 at 9:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to James Norton's comment
Jeff

Not just kids: I'm sure there are other grownups like me who are into stereoscopy.

If this thing is just made of a few lenses for cross-type viewing, I already have a bunch of images I took with the "3D Camera" app.

...and with the Retina display, the iPhone4 is already one of the best cross-type stereoscopy viewing screens out there.

I'm SOLD. :)

November 09 2010 at 6:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.