Acer arrives at CES 2015 with the 17-inch Aspire V17 Nitro in tow. Like its 15-inch sibling, it’s a low-key, elegant device with a Haswell processor and the Maxwell-based Nvidia GTX 860M. It also comes with the Kinect-inspired feature RealSense.
The V17 Nitro has a built-in stereo (3D) camera and technology from Intel that brings (hopefully) intuitive and useful gesture controls to your laptop. Previous attempts to integrate such technologies directly into laptops, such as Leap Motion, have been mildly successful, but with Intel behind it the technology might just take off.
Intel’s RealSense concept consists of a regular camera, an infrared camera and an infrared laser. It not only detects the users’ movements, but can also scan 3D objects, among other things. The gesture control technology recognizes hand movements, but also head movements and even facial expressions.
Needless to say, this also enables in-game gesture interactions. In its press release Acer introduces the “Warrior Wave”, which lets you manipulate in-game characters and objects. Additionally, the feature “3DMe” will 3D-scan your face for use in supported games, or to order 3D-printed action figures of yourself.
Of course, the Aspire V17 Nitro is also equipped with an array of powerful hardware that should handle all current titles in Full HD resolution. Other than th 17.3-inch display, there’s an Intel Core i7-4710HQ and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M with 4GB of VRAM under the hood. The laptop can hold up to 16 GB of RAM and a 128/256 GB SSD combined with a regular hard drive of up to 1TB (2.5”) for additional storage space.
