Now that I’ve got my new system running its time to start churning out some information about how well various games work in 3D and if it brings anything new to the table. Before I do that however I thought it best to give a quick overview of nVidia 3D vision itself and what is needed for it.

First off this is by far the best 3D experience I’ve seen. Although it changes depending on the content you are viewing you can expect to see models displayed in 3D in a 3D world with a realistic amount of depth. Mileage may vary depending on your eyes but for me I can comfortable sit there with the glasses on for a couple of hours without any problems. I was slightly worried that I was going to be disappointed, this was not the case in the slightest. This might not be the final technology however looking forward 3D is going to be the future.

3D Vision works by rendering each image on the screen from two slightly different angles. Using active shutter glasses it then blocks each eye rapidly in sync with the screen so that each eye only sees the one image. Your brain then does what it normally does and combines the two images in to a stereoscopic view.

Most modern games can be used with 3D vision. Results vary from game to game however nVidia does have a chart showing recommendations. 3D vision ready titles are those which have had special attention to 3D and will often have old school colour based 3D as well, these include Lost Planet 2, Dead Rising 2, Batman: AA and Civ5 . Other games will still work but may have various quirks. The main offender tends to be the cursor or cross-hair. The problem being that you have a targeter on a 2D plain in the 3D world. nVidia has work around for this where it disables the game reticule and adds its own one but this isn’t possible on every single game. If there are any know quirks for each game an overlay will tell you that you should turn off Bloom or HDR lighting.
For 3D Blu-ray playback you will need to buy software separately. The usual company’s like cyberlink and roxio have these for sale however they are currently at a bit of a premium. I haven’t currently got any 3D blu-ray disks to test but I’m sure I will report back in time.

To use 3D vision you need:

• A modern nVidia graphics card, anything from the 8800 GT onwards. Low end ones will do it however you should take in to account that your computer will be rendering each image twice so there is a big performance hit.
• A 120Hz 3D Vision ready monitor. You will also need a dual link DVI cable which is normally supplied with the monitor
• 3D vision Glasses and IR sender kit
• Windows Vista or Windows 7

Once you have those it should just be a case of setting your refresh rates to 120hz and installing the 3D vision software. The software setup will then guide you through the process. The result…..