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NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Tested - [hardware] Digg icon StumbleUpon icon del.icio.us icon Facebook icon
08:42 PM EST - Jan,08 2009 - post a comment

AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Bjorn3d, Elite Bastards, HotHardware, nV News, and Overclockers Club take a look at NVIDIA's GeForce 3D Vision, new stereoscopic technology being introduced by NVIDIA using wireless shutter glasses and NVIDIA accelerators. Unlike previous such glasses these will offer stereo by alternating between eyes, offering 60 FPS for each, which means this set-up will require specific LCD monitors that support a 120 Hz refresh rate or a 3D-ready DLP television. The glasses have an MSRP of $199.00, not counting the monitor or video card. Here's a bit:
In many games we tested there were some serious drawbacks. Even games that NVIDIA rated the experience as "excellent" we felt were subpar at best. Fallout 3 had some ghosting effects that we couldn't fix, and it just didn't feel right for example. Games with an excellent rating most of the time still require reducing some settings to a lower level like FarCry 2 where the lower quality shadows really take away from the experience. If anyone is going out of their way to buy a 120Hz LCD panel, a high end NVIDIA graphics card and a $200 bundle of active shutter glasses, they are not going to be happy when told to reduce any quality settings. But thats just how it is right now.

Other games, like Crysis Warhead, that received a rating of "good" were nothing if not unplayable with stereoscopic effects. Even turning shadows, shaders, postprocessing, and motion blur and using NVIDIA's stereo crosshairs didn't help when there was any fire, smoke, explosion, or water anywhere around. When those effects pop up (which is all the time) everything goes to hell and you can't focus on anything. It just destroys the experience and you get reduced image quality. A great package.

RTS like Age of Empires or games with a 3/4 view tend to look the best to me. There is a fixed depth and you don't need to do lot of refocusing, but the 3D really grabs you. It actually looks a bit like one of my daughter's pop-up books, but infinitely cooler.

First person shooters are sort of hit and miss, as one of the best looking games was Left 4 Dead, but large outdoor environments like in Fallout 3 can degrade the experience because of the huge difference in actual depth contrasted by the lack of stereoscopic depth at extreme distances: you can only go so deep "into" or "out of" the monitor, and big worlds just aren't accommodated.

Simulation games can look pretty good and Race Driver GRID worked well. It would be nice to keep shadows and motion blur, but the tradeoff isn't bad here. The depth actually helped with judging when to start a turn and just how close other drivers really were.

The two effects that stand out the best right now are the out of screen effects in World of Warcraft and the volumetric smoke and lighting in Left 4 Dead. In L4D, fire the pistol real fast and you can see the smoke pouring out of the barrel curl around as if it were really floating there. Properly done stereoscopic volumetric effects and out of screen effects add an incredible level of realism that can't be overstated. Combining those and removing all problems while allowing maximum image quality would really be incredible. Unfortunately there isn't anything we tested that gave us this satisfaction.


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