The comeback of a forgotten device

TL;DR

NASA's Artemis 2 stereoscopic 3D imagery made the discontinued Nintendo 3DS relevant again, as it's one of the only devices that natively displays the MPO format.

Key Points

• 1.NASA released stereoscopic 3D imagery from the Artemis 2 launch. It's the first crewed moon mission in over 50 years, and the images are stored in MPO format — two slightly offset images packaged in one file.
• 2.The Nintendo 3DS is uniquely suited to display these images natively. Its parallax barrier display — a layer of vertical slits sending different images to each eye — requires no glasses, using optical tech understood for over 100 years, sold in 75 million homes at $250 each.
• 3.Modern flagships and 8K TVs cannot display NASA's 3D images as intended, but a 15-year-old kids' handheld can. The broader point: discontinued hardware doesn't go obsolete, it becomes niche — and niches are sometimes exactly what's needed.