How It Works and Looks

The idea that 3D technology is cheesy is certainly not new, but keep this in mind: this isn't the red-blue lens tech that makes objects fly from the screen and at your face -- it's not even the polarized lens tech that we see in modern cinemas; nVidia uses 'active shutter lenses' (which flicker at 120hz -- 60hz per eye, in conjunction with a 120hz monitor) to sharpen and intensify visuals in games or compatible movies. In my experience with the product, I primarily noticed greater sharpness to the edges of characters, cars, or other 3D models. This sharpness tends to help with anti-aliasing issues on mid-range cards, and even at the lowest depth settings possible (1%, for example), 3D Vision still tends to make things a bit crisper.

Of course, introducing depth to the en-crispified image does add a level of roundness and immersion to games unachievable by non-3D technology. Some games are entirely incompatible at depth settings higher than 1%, which is a complete let-down, but many of the major games (listed on nVidia's website) are more-or-less functional with 3D Vision. GRID: Race Driver is a fantastic sample of 3D Vision's limitations -- let's first define what 'depth' is in nVidia's eyes:

Depth, as its name might suggest, allows objects within the game to be rendered at seemingly-differing distances from your focal point. Imagine a table is presented to you in real life, and four levels of depth are illustrated by varying distances of objects placed upon the table -- an apple is four inches from you, another some eight inches, and so on.

In GRID: Race Driver's cockpit view, the steering wheel of a Formula 1 racecar will appear closest to me (not my face, as the cheesy red-blue technology might do), while its steer-shaft renders one step further back, the dash buttons another level back, and finally the dashboard at the final level of depth. Of course, after these comes objects like cars or signs outside of the car, viewed through the windows: cars certainly don't fly out of the screen at you, but the acceleration is more pronounced by 3D technology, making it slightly more noticeable when a vehicle is gunning it and leaving you in the dust; conversely, rear-ending a car in the apex of a corner will give the best view of the other driver's vehicle -- you'll see his bumper at the closest levels, the side mirrors at a far depth, and the car's interior (through the rear window) at a middle level.

Whew. Hopefully that made sense, because I'm not about to try and explain that again (just kidding, ask me anything in the comments below!).

All of these visuals are received by a pair of wireless glasses that communicate with the monitor within given parameters (they operate best, from my experience, when you are positioned at about two feet from the screen, with your head centered). Nvidia earnestly tried to make the glasses look cool, and they sort of succeeded, but I can already hear the cries through the screen: people don't like glasses. Unfortunately, there's not currently a lot that can be done about that in the PC gaming space. The DS style of multi-layering screens wouldn't necessarily scale to larger devices affordably or efficiently, so for the time being, you'll get the best 3D rendering from glasses-based 3D technology.

The glasses (which are incredibly durable) have an extended battery life, several hours at a minimum (they would easily hold up to a day-long gaming extravaganza), and they are charged via a standard USB to Micro USB connector (as found for most wireless headsets, camcorders, or cameras). They have extra thick temples that eliminate peripheral vision and cut-down on the real world's intrusion of your 3D view (to use 3D technology without these would introduce light pollution that severely decreases the quality of the visuals). When closing one eye or the other, you'll notice that the 3D effects are diminished back into normal 2D -- this is because, as you may have learned in science classes, depth perception is impossible without both eyes coordinating their efforts. Closing one eye will also display the layers perceived by that eye (using our previous example: the steering wheel and rear-view mirror may be displayed for the left eye, while the dashboard may be shown for the right eye).

All of this in mind, the glasses are surprisingly incompatible with larger headsets (specifically those like the Razer Carcharias and Electra, even the Astro headsets). How, you may be asking, could a pair of glasses be 'incompatible' with a headset? Earphones. The very temples that enhance the 3D view make it impossible to wear a headset of any reasonable quality. Technically, if I really jam the glasses under the earphones, I can get it on -- but then I lose my sound cancellation and sound location perception. I can also slant the glasses so that the temples are above the earphones, but then we run into worse issues: 3D images are now skewed and painful to the eyes. Unless you have a behind-the-ears headset, don't plan on using 3D Vision simultaneously with anything other than speakers. Astute and handsome readers such as yourself may have just come to a sudden realization: "Wait, most exquisite reviewer, I can't talk to my friends without my headset! I need my headset to play multiplayer games with friends." You're right. And that is boiled down further in the next page.

Head-movement transmitting technology (like TrackIR), if configured to be minimally sensitive to your movements, is not necessarily friendly to the construction of the glasses -- moving your head left and right will produce blurred images and de-interlace the two transmitted images, effectively causing you to "see double." This can be resolved by increasing head movement sensitivity, although that can have adverse effects if you, for example, sneeze. Just don't aim at the monitor, man.

Nvidia's lenses are tinted black when in use, primarily due to the shutter technology's activation scheme, which darkens the lenses when 3D tech is in use. The good of this is passive -- it won't work without doing that, so it is sort of irrelevant for me to point basic functionality out as "good;" the negatives here are barely noticeable, but anyone who uses hotkeys heavily in RTS games or, in general, has a hard time finding control keys on the keyboard will be hindered drastically by this tint: you won't be able to see the keys. Even with my G11 keyboard backlight on max settings, I still can't see the keys when 3D mode is active. Now, if you haven't noticed, I type quite a bit. A lot, in fact. Several tens of thousands of words in the past few months alone -- I have a relatively solid understanding of where my keys are. That's why I was surprised to find that when gaming, especially in a game where hotkeys are all over the keyboard (lifting up a building in SC2 is default to 'L,' control groups are 1-0, building something could go from 'b' to 's,' attack move is 'a,' and so on), I had trouble locating some of the keys in a pinch - you know, 'cause my APM is about 10,000.

This deficiency was noted to the nVidia team when we first met them at PAX East, and acknowledged with some embarrassment -- it is our hope that this issue will eventually be remedied by some clever tweak.

Of course, a 3D Vision ready video card is also required. For this test, we primarily used an nVidia GTX 570 (though other cards were tested infrequently). More comments on the AMD vs. nVidia debate in our "honest opinion" section below.

TL;DR: The technology is impressive, to say the least, in its methods of perceiving images as different 'layers,' which creates the depth that is viewed by the gamer. The technology is sorely incompatible with some games, however, and restricts use of certain settings (like shadows, which produce graphics tearing and double-vision issues). The glasses are durable, have long battery life, and are constructed to eliminate external light pollution, thus producing a crisp experience; however, they make it impossible to see the keyboard or wear larger-sized headsets when gaming in 3D.