Panasonic has unleashed the follow up to the FT2, its popular rugged compact, with the Lumix DMC-FT3 - bringing 3D to the party as well.

The FT3 (TS3 in the States) isn't your run of the mill point and shoot compact, it's a seriously tough mo-fo, which is firmly aimed at the types of people that say words like "gnarly", "sick" and "buttery".

It's a 12.1-megapixel snapper with 1920 x 1080 full-HD AVCHD video shooting on board, and also packs a built-in GPS function, a compass, an altimeter and a barometer so you won't get lost when you're off-piste or in the middle of the ocean.

The GPS function, shows the name of the country, region, state, county, city or town that the pic was taken with the area information covering 203 countries or regions. Plus, there's more than a million landmarks from over 78 countries in the database as well.

The major upgrade from the FT2 though, is that the FT3 has 3D photo shooting, which works by taking 20 consecutive pics and overlaying the best two, to create a 3D image which you can look at on any MPO compatible 3D display.

The FT3 is also more rugged than its predecessor and is now waterproof to 12m, shockproof to 2m and freezeproof to 14ºF (-10 degrees C). It's also dustproof, which is handy for deserts and haunted houses.

It has a 28mm wide-angle Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens, complete with a folded optics design and has a 4.6x optical zoom.

It's out in March, price TBC.