3D Vision Mega Evaluation – Gimmick or Gaming’s Future?

The 3D Vision movement

Cinema and movies are the natural leader for S3D with many new box office releases of 3D titles since they are making money from them.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of really bad S3D movies – mostly poor conversions from 2D – which are turning off consumers and giving it a bad name.  PC games and console games appear to be the next most popular platform as there is already a lot of 3D content that are automatically converted by drivers to 3D.  And 2D games look much better than 2D to 3D converted movies and there are literally hundreds of relatively new PC games that are well-supported by stereoscopic 3D drivers.

Unfortunately, 3D HDTV is caught in a chicken-egg situation where not a lot of sets yet offer S3D and therefore there is not a lot of programming for it.  Unfortunately, you can only watch a limited number of 3D movies on BluRay.  However, it is guaranteed that 3D TV content will improve. Just last week, Panasonic executives shook hands on a deal to broadcast the 2012 Olympics in 3D.  That will surely drive adoption of 3D by sports fans.

Currently last in popularity are the S3D mobile platforms which are sorely lacking in content as we note with Nintendo’s new handheld 3D system that required a major price cut to just save the possibly of its being successful.  However, we can expect that not long in the future, the handheld S3D devices will become the most popular S3D platform because they are by nature, “glasses-free” and they will be relatively easy to develop 3D content and applications for.

Glasses or Glasses free?

In survey after survey, consumers said that they generally have no issues with wearing 3D glasses.  If the glasses are comfortable and well-designed, as Nvidia’s active shutter 3D Vision are, they can be worn for hours upon hours.  Every one of our twenty guests tried on the 3D Vision glasses – some for hours – and everyone remarked how comfortable they were compared to the cinema 3D glasses.  And as long as the lenses are spotlessly clean, there are generally no issues with wearing the 3D Vision glasses over prescription eyeglasses.

Nvidia's Wired Glasses; $99 and ideal for LAN parties

Nvidia chose active shutter glasses for 3D because they consider that it gives users the best experience for PC gaming.  On the other hand, AMD relies on an open initiative with their HD3D and polarized 3D glasses seem to be popular with their partners.  There are also anaglyph glasses in use and each method has its own strengths and weaknesses for displaying the illusion of depth.  Polarized cuts the resolution in half horizontally.  Anaglyph has color and light transmission issues and active shutter is relatively dark.

Compatibility

One of the major stumbling blocks for stereoscopic 3D gaining widespread adoption in the home is that there are many suppliers of the S3D technology and no clear standard – not even among active shutter glasses.  For example, Nvidia glasses won’t work on a LG TV nor will LG’s active shutter glasses work with 3D Vision.  And there are companies (Toshiba) that claim “glasses free” is the only way to go, prompting bitter ad wars with their rival (Samsung) in the Far East.  However it is noted that glasses-free for larger TV sets have their own issues with multiple viewers.  And glasses free is much more expensive than using S3D technology with glasses.

Advantages of Stereoscopic 3D over 2D in PC gaming

The most important part of this evaluation addresses is what S3D actually offers the player over simply “looking cool”. Ideally, 3D should present a more realistic and immersive presentation, plus the advantages that depth perception can offer in something like a racing or flying game or even for a shooter. Unfortunately, most games are in the “looking cool” category – which in of itself can be great.

However, we need to explore how important that 3D look is when other elements of a game need to be downgraded in order to accommodate S3D. To provide a full 1080p stereoscopic 3D effect, game requirements including fill rate double, and its geometry also needs to be processed twice. This is why so many 3D games have framerates approximately half compared to playing the 2D version.  So again, we will be looking at the “worth it” aspect for PC gaming.

Demonstrating S3D

One of the challenges for S3D to gain mass consumer acceptance is to get people to actually see it for themselves in their homes.  It is impossible to demonstrate 3D to someone who has no way to see it properly on their 2D screen.  It would be similar to attempting to demonstrate color television to someone with a black and white set.  Actually a small percent of the population cannot even see S3D properly and it would be very wise to have a means to return the 3D hardware to the retailer/etailer if the experience proves to be unsatisfactory.

Let’s look at how the illusion of S3D is produced on a 2D display.