Print
Email
Discuss this article ( Comments)
zoom
Wearing slightly 'dorky' red and green paper glasses to watch '3D movies', and staring squint at dots on a page until an object ‘jumps out' have long been means of viewing 3D images on certain 2D planes. But stereoscopic technology has come a long way in recent years with nVidia's GeForce 3D Vision Glasses Kit, Vusix's wearable screen glasses and 3D monitor displays from manufacturers such as Samsung, Viewsonic and Zalman. Windows takes a look at the latest developments in 3D display technology.
Stereoscopic Head Gear
Headaches and blocky graphics have traditionally been par for the course whenever donning a 3D headset to play video games. Despite these drawbacks though, there have been a number of generatiions of 3D glasses over the last few years that have appeared on the scene, with the latest generation looking most likely to be a relative commercial success.
In a nutshell, game developers for the first generation of glasses had to modify the games themselves so that they could be compatible with the 3D glasses. This meant that the glasses you bought wouldn't necessarily work with a number of games you would play. The second generation of this technology allowed for the 'screen' to take over, but this would just end up taking up processing time and made the whole process slower. It further resulted in bad resolution and blocky images, but it did work with hundreds of games.
The third generation modified the graphics driver but maintained the resolution of the image and this meant that only a few games could be played with these glasses. It has therefore only really been the fourth generation that looks as if it might be taken up more readily by consumers. The fourth generation involves the graphics card doing a lot of the work and light-weight LCD glasses flickering rapidly between two images so that we can see a 3D image. The result is that a lot more games are compatible with this setup.
NVIDIA have been at the forefront of the fourth generation with their GeForce 3D Vision Kit that works with NVIDIA graphics cards and which gives end-users the ability to play their games, watch their movies and even view their photographs on their PC in full-3D.
When it comes to gaming, the software that comes with the glasses automatically converts what Nvidia says are approximately 350 games into full-blown 3D vision without the need of special game patches. The glasses themselves are shutter glasses that provide the person wearing them with wide 3D vision. It delivers 2 times the resolution per eye and a wide angle view. It works in conjunction with 120 Hz LCD monitors, which enables 60 Hz per eye.
Now, there are a number of companies that manufacture these monitors, such as Samsung and ViewSonic. There's also a few HDTVs that the glasses are compliant with such as the Mitsubishi 1080p DLP Home Theater TV. It is also compatible with a number of projectors such as the DepthQ HD 3D Projector by LightSpeed design.
The glasses themselves also happen to be wireless, and a single charge on a USB cable means that one can get 40 hours of gameplay. It even has free photo viewer software that gives you the opportunity to view photographs in 3D. (From a PC perspective, one will need Windows Vista or Windows 7.)
The reality is that if you want to play games on this 3D format, you'll have to be using an Nvidia GeForce GPU as the other vendor AMD, is not heavy into the development of graphics cards. Of course, all of this places a huge amount of demand on the graphics card as it requires the creation of 2 images to generate the 3D effect.
But Nvidia is not the only player in the 3D glasses market. Vuzix have also got into the eyewear game with the company attempting to make its glasses a lot more chic than ‘geek'. The company says it has achieved a ‘sunglasses' look, but by judging by the image on the right, the verdict is still out on whether it looks dorky or not.
The Vusix glasses are more geared towards big screen viewing as the company has made what it refers to as the world's first wearable 16:9 screen. But some one of its glasses range is 3D compatible such as the AV230 XL+ and the AV920.
The AV230 XL+ is a wearable display that transforms a small portable video player screen into a personal home theater with a virtual 44-inch screen as viewed from nine feet. It is worn like regular glasses, and it includes separate focus adjustments for each eye and removable high-quality stereo earphones. Vusix says that a single removable AA battery affords up to 7 hours of viewing time and all this comes with 3D video support. It is compatible with all popular formats of 3D stereoscopic video including side-by-side and anaglyph.
Then there's the AV920 from Vuzix that features a wearable virtual 62" big screen compatible with almost any audio/video device. You can watch your movies with portable DVD players or personal media players in high resolution 2D as well as enhanced 3D. The AV920 even works with a video iPod and it has a small built-in lithium ion battery that allows for five hours of continuous use. Then there are also companies such as SeeFront that are looking to remove the need for the 3D glasses altogether by developing panels that project 3D images in themselves.
