GeForce 3D Vision: Stereoscopic 3D From NVIDIA

Final Words

All in all, this is like a very polished version of what we've had since the turn of the century. No flicker, less headaches (though there may still be some issue with people who have motion sickness -- I just don't have a large enough sample size to say definitively), and broad game support with less of a performance hit than other solutions. NVIDIA has a very good active shutter stereoscopic solution with GeForce 3D Vision. But the problem is that its value is still very dependent on the application(s) the end user wants it for. It works absolutely perfectly for viewing stereo images and 3D movies (which might be more of a factor when those start coming to bluray) and applications built with stereo support. But for games, though it works with 350 titles, it's just a little hit or miss.

We really hate to say that because we love seeing anyone push through the chicken and egg problem. NVIDIA getting this technology out there and getting developers excited about it and publishers excited about a new market will ultimately really make this a reality. But until most devs program in ways that are friendly to NVIDIA's version of stereo rendering, the gaming experience will be either good or not so good and there's just no way of knowing how much each individual title's problems will bother you until you try it. And at $200 that's a bit of a plunge for the risk. Especially if you don't have a 120Hz display device (which will cost several hundred more).

If you absolutely love a few of the games that works great with it, then it will be worth it. The problem is that NVIDIA's rating make is so that you can't rely on "excellent" as being excellent. Most of the people who played with Left 4 Dead loved it, but one person was really bothered by the floating names being 2D sprites at screen depth. Which is annoying, but the rest of it looked good enough for me not to care (and I'm pretty picky). If NVIDIA wants to play fast and loose with it's ratings, thats fine, but we don't have time to tests all their games and confirm their rating or come up with our own. They really should at least have another class of rating called "perfect" where there are absolutely no issues and all settings work great and we get exactly what we expect.

Shutter glasses have been around for a long time. Perhaps now the time is right for them to start pushing into the mainstream. But NVIDIA isn't doing the technology any favors if they put something out there and let it fail. This technology needs to be developed and needs to be pervasive because it is just that cool. But until it works perfectly in a multitude of games or until 3D movies start hitting PCs near you, we have the potential for a set back. If GeForce 3D Vision is successful, however, that will open the door for us to really move forward with stereoscopic effects.

What we really need, rather than a proprietary solution, is something like stereoscopic support built in to DirectX and OpenGL that developers can tap into very easily. Relying on NVIDIA to discern the proper information and then handle rendering images for both eyes off of one scene is great as a stop gap, just like CUDA was a good interim solution before we had OpenCL. We need the API to be able to handle knowing if there is stereo hardware present and making it easy to generate images for both eyes while duplicating as little work as possible. Giving developers simple tools to make stereo effects cooler and more real or to embed hits about convergence and separation would be great as well.

And hopefully GeForce 3D Vision is a real step toward that future that can become viable right now. I could see some World of Warcraft devotees being really excited about it. Those out there like me who love 3D technology in every form will be excited by it. People who want to create there own stereo images or videos (there are lenses available for this and techniques you can improvise to make it work) will like it, but people waiting for 3D movies will need some content available at home first. But the guys who we would love to see drive the adoption of the technology might not be as into it. The hardcore gamers out there looking to upgrade will probably be better served at this point by going with a high end graphics card and a 30" display rather than a 120Hz monitor and shutter glasses.