NVIDIA Pushes 3D Vision Outside the Gaming Box

The Idea of 3D movies and other entertainment is not a new one. The idea goes quite a way back; if you think about it, the first large scale use of 3D projection was in the 1950s. This was though the use of filtered glasses and a red/blue projection. A few of the more iconic images of the 1950s in the U.S. are of kids wearing those glasses.

After that, the industry shelved 3D viewing for some time. When they pulled it out next it was again for the motion picture industry and it caught on for a small time in the 1980s. This actually followed with various attempts to bring 3D to the computer world. Of course, it was not until the mid-1990s that graphics technology was good enough to make this viable. The problem was that it was still basically the same technology, so you ended up with a very poorly done product that cost more than it was worth.

This has been the history of 3D gaming on the computer and would have been the end of the story if it were not for the effort put in by NVIDIA recently. Over the last year or so NVIDIA has resurrected the idea of 3D Gaming. They released this under the name of 3D Vision and have now incorporated the software for this into each new driver release package.

Of course, there are a few items that you have to put in place to get this working. The first is the need for NVIDIA's 3D Vision RF transmitter and glasses set. The next is the need for a 120Hz LCD panel. These two high end requirements have usually put 3D Vision out of the reach of casual users, but as the technology drops in price and the number of game (and application) titles that support it rise, we will see larger adoption of this new (and potentially game changing) standard.

But as with most things, you cannot please everyone. 3D Vision has been tied to the desktop and also to lower resolution products (up to 720p). The lack of large high-resolution panels and support on mobile devices has also prevented a larger adoption of 3D Vision.