I bought myself a New Nintendo 3DS (not just a brand new one, but the device named "New Nintendo 3DS"). I had been for quite a long time pondering about buying a 3DS, and the new version of the console finally gave me the impetus of buying one.
One of the major new hardware features of the console is better 3D via eye-tracking. The original 3DS has a parallax barrier 3D screen (which in practice means that the 3D effect is achieved without the need of any kind of glasses). Its problem is that it requires a really precise horizontal viewing angle to work properly. Deviate from it even a slight bit, and the visuals will glitch. The New 3DS improves on this by using eyetracking, and adjusting the parallax barrier offset in real time depending on the position of the eyes. This way you can move the device or your head relatively freely, and the 3D effect is not broken. It works surprisingly well. Sometimes the device loses track of your eyes and the visuals will glitch, but they fix themselves when it gets the track again. (This happens mostly if you eg. look away and then back at the screen. It seldom happens while playing. It sometimes does, especially if the lighting conditions change, eg. if you are sitting in a car or bus and the position of the sun changes rapidly, but overall it happens rarely.)
There is, however, another limitation to the parallax barrier technology, which even eyetracking can't fix: The distance between your eyes and the screen has to be within a certain range. Any closer or farther, and the visuals will start glitching once again. There is quite some leeway in this case, ie. this range is relatively large, so it's not all that bad. And the range is at a relatively comfortable distance.
Curiously, the strength of the 3D effect can be adjusted with a slider.
Some people can't use the 3D screen because of physiological reasons. Headaches are the most common symptom. For me this is not a problem, and I really like to play with full depth.
There are a few situations, however, where it's nicer to just turn the 3D effect off. For instance if you would really like to look at the screen up close. Or quite far (like when sitting on a chair, with the console on your lap, quite far away from your eyes.) Or for whatever other reason.
The 3D effect can be turned completely off, which makes the screen completely 2D, with no 3D effect of any kind: Just slide the slider all the way down, and it turns the 3D effect completely off.
Except it didn't do that! Or so I thought for one and a half year.
You see, whenever the 3D effect is turned on, no matter how small the depth setting, the minimum/maximum eye distance problem would always be there. If you eg. look at the screen too closely, it would glitch, even if so slightly, and quite annoyingly. With a lower depth setting the glitching is significantly less, but it's still noticeable. Some uneven jittering and small blinking happens if you move the device or your head at all, when you are looking at the screen from too close (or too far).
Even though I put the 3D slider all the way down, the artifacts were still there. For the longest time I thought that this might be some kind of limitation of the technology: Even though it claimed that the 3D could be turned off, it wasn't really possible fully.
But the curious thing was that if I played any 2D game, with no 3D support, the screen would actually be pure 2D, without any of the 3D artifacts and glitching in any way, shape or form. It would look sharp and clean, with no jittering, subtle blinking, or anything. This was puzzling to say the least. Clearly the technology is capable of showing pure and clean 2D, with the 3D effect turned completely off. But for some reason in 3D games this couldn't be achieved with the 3D slider.
Or so I thought.
I recently happened to stumble across an online discussion about turning off the 3D effect in the 3DS, and one poster mentioned that in the 3DS XL there's a notch, or "bump", at the lower end of the slider, so that you have to press it a bit harder, and it will get locked into place.
This was something I didn't know previously, but somehow this still didn't light a bulb in my head. However, incidentally, when I was playing with the 3D slider, I happened to notice, when I looked at it from a better angle, that the slider wasn't actually going all the way down. There was a tiny space between the slider and the end of the slit where it slides, even though I thought I had put it all the way down.
Then it dawned on me, and I remembered that online discussion (which I had read just some minutes earlier): I pressed the slider a bit harder, and it clicked into its bottommost position. And the screen became visibly pure and clean 2D.
I couldn't help but laugh at myself. "OMFG, I have been using this damn thing for a year and a half, and this is the first time I notice this?" (Ok, I didn't think exactly that, but pretty much the sentiment was that.)
So yeah, the devil is in the details. And sometimes we easily miss those details.
I have to wonder how many other people don't notice nor realize this.
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