Audio Visual month - NVidia 3D Vision

In the spirit of Audio Visual month - NVidia 3D Vision

 

In the spirit of Audio / Visual month I will take a look at a new development in Visual technology:

NVidia recently announced their new 3D technology. I could not personally test because it is not available in S-A yet (you can import it for a lot of $$$ but I do not have a lot of $$$). However people that have tested it say it is – well, um, ok-ish.

All it is, is a pair of 3D glasses that work together with a NVidia graphic card to produce very life like 3D images while you are playing games.

People that have personally experienced games with this new tech say that the 3D is really good. It is a lot better than previous attempts where the 3D were just red and green shadows that looked more 2D that 3D. If you have recently seen the movie Coraline in 3D you would know what I mean. Objects appear to float in front of the screen and sometimes seem to come right at you.

Setting up the whole system is very easy. A wizard guides you through most of the installation and technical stuff. After the installation is done, the user can tweak a few of the settings on their own.

If the 3D is so good and it is so easy to use, why would they just give it a so-so rating? It is the fact that the overall experience is not very good.

First of all, prolonged used could give you headaches. Second it will only work with Windows Vista. The third reason, there is only a very limited amount of games that really work with this technology and than there is the price tag.

You need to buy –

• the glasses;
• a graphic card that can support the glasses;
• a screen that can support the card and the glasses.
• (and of course a game that will work with all of the above)

It is by far the best attempt yet to bring 3D to computer games and although there are a few snags, it is definitely a technology to keep your eye on.