3D

With a new 40-nanometer manufacturing process behind it, AMD announced the ATI Radeon HD 4770 3D graphics chip this morning. Available now on 3D cards starting at $109 (before a $10 online rebate), the Radeon HD 4770 is the first 3D chip built on the 40-nanometer process, which allows for faster, more power-efficient hardware than AMD's previous 55nm chips.

The various enthusiast review sites found the 512MB Radeon HD 4770 fast enough to play most current games at lower resolutions and image quality settings. Think 1,680 x 1,050 or lower and with little-to-no anti-aliasing. The Radeon HD … Read more

Even at the cutting edge of cloud computing, Web-based applications can be frustrating to write and to use.

Spreadsheets can't sort data well, there are lags between mouse clicks and the program's response, graphics look Mickey Mouse rather than lavish. But Google, among the most aggressive cloud computing advocates, is trying to address some of those shortcomings.

The company has released experimental but still very much real software that brings in some of the power of the PC, where people often use Web applications. Google Native Client--first released in 2008 but updated with a new version Thursday--is a browser plug-in for securely running computationally intense software downloaded from a Web site. And on Tuesday, Google released O3D, a plug-in that lets Web-based applications tap into a computer's graphics chip, too.

The projects are rough around the edges, to say the least. Native Client--NaCl for short--is more security research project than usable programming foundation right now, and O3D exists in part to try to accelerate the arrival of some future, not necessarily compatible, standard for building 3D abilities into Web applications.

But both fundamentally challenge the idea that Web apps necessarily are stripped-down, feeble counterparts to the software that runs natively on a personal computer, and they come from a company that has engineering skill, a yen for moving activity to the Internet, and search-ad profits that can fund projects that don't immediately or directly make money.

"There are things you can do in desktop apps that you can't do in Web apps. We're working very hard to close that gap, so anything you can do in a desktop application you can do safely and securely from a Web application," said Linus Upson, a Google engineering director. … Read more

Updated at 11:20 a.m. with links to the project.

Google on Tuesday released software called O3D to bring accelerated 3D graphics to browsers, a significant effort but not the only one to try to endow Web applications with some of the computing muscle that PC programs can use.

O3D is a browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome that works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, but Google hopes that eventually, the technology will be built directly into browsers. It provides an interface that lets developers' Web-based JavaScript programs tap directly into a computer's graphics chip, which could mean better games and other applications.

Google touted the technology in a blog post. It includes a video demonstration, complete with a soothing voice-over and a spacey ambient-music soundtrack, for those who don't want to install the plug-in. … Read more

Search Cube is the latest in a string of search engines that forgoes displaying search results in an easy-to-parse, ordered list, in favor of a whiz-bang 3D interface. It grabs its results from Google and site preview thumbnails from Thumbshots, then combines them in a 3D cube that you can rotate freely either with your mouse or keyboard.

What's clearly missing here are which results are worth clicking on, something you get with Google's search result relevance algorithm. On the flip side (literally), you get to see a lot more results at once, and with a little visual … Read more

Let's Golf offers up great graphics, solid gameplay, and is reminiscent of the popular platform golf game, Hot Shots Golf. Drawn in smooth 3D graphics with a cartoonish appeal, you can play three skill levels, on four courses, with your choice of four cartoon-drawn players of varying skill. Surprisingly, the touch screen almost performs better than traditional controllers, making it easy to aim shots via the touch screen and quickly check an overhead hole map to precisely aim your shots. You have your choice of playing the front or back 9 of any of the courses, or go in … Read more

BumpTop replaces your desktop with a visual environment unlike any you've used. It's a bit like a futuristic gesture-based interface, but it's tied to your mouse. Were it capable of simultaneous Web browsing, its utility would be much more apparent.

BumpTop makes the items on your computer's desktop more like their real-world counterparts. Icons and folders are assigned a virtual weight based on the amount of memory they take up and their importance to you. You can move them by click-and-drag, or fling them across the BumpTop space. The program determines their importance based on how … Read more

Last month, I did a first take on the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Kit. At the time, I'd only very briefly tested it and not at all thoroughly. Since then, thanks to help from Nvidia (new glasses, video card, and monitors) I've been able to move past the bugs mentioned in the first take.

This time, I did it big with an NVidia GeForce 280GTX, baby! Playing around with this card made me weep, as it's only $330, vs. the $600 ATI card I bought three years ago that's starting to disappoint me.

With the new … Read more

120Hz LCD gaming is now officially here! What? Oh, I'm late to the party? We've been able to do this for years now? Oh. OK. Let me rephrase that then. 120Hz gaming on a 22-inch LCD computer monitor is officially here! Does that satisfy your anal retentiveness? Well, it better.

Last month I reviewed the ViewSonic VX2265wm. The first 120Hz LCD computer monitor CNET's reviewed. I gave it points for its compatibility with the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Kit, but its lack of features and overall average performance didn't win my recommendation.

This week, I have … Read more

There's an interesting article over at Slate titled "The problem with 3D." I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but the subtitle pretty much sums it up: "It hurts your eyes. Always has, always will." Author Daniel Engbar argues that today's digital-assisted 3D technology isn't so far removed from earlier incarnations of the 1950s and 1980s, and that it's still effectively hacking your brain's depth perception triggers--and putting a lot of strain on your eyes in the process.

This matters, of course, because Hollywood is doubling down on 3D technology in a big way. In addition to new movies like "Monsters vs. Aliens" and James Cameron's upcoming "Avatar," studios are repurposing existing favorites for eventual 3D releases. And why not? With increasingly affordable giant-screen TVs in the home (and ever-shrinking theater-to-DVD release windows), the industry needs new and more elaborate gimmicks to get customers into the theater.

But it's not just the movie theater.… Read more