Nvidia 3D Vision Stereoscopic Glasses

Introduction:The concept of using Bifocal lenses to project 3D images is no new concept. We have been doing it since the early theater. Over time that technology has come to PC's and has been available in many forms from various companies. Early 3D stereoscopic glasses were limited to just specific colors. Either done in LED or early Green/Red monitors. Some might even remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy which used scanning technology per eye. More recent solutions would divide a monitors 60 Hz into 30 HZ per eye. And tended to be rather low resolution. Which caused flicker and eyestrain. All the devices I mentioned tend to cause headaches after prolonged use.

Introducing 3D Vision Stereoscopic Glasses: Nvidia and many Monitor companies have worked together to solve many of the problems of early 3D Stereo devices. The first and foremost thing is the glasses run at 60 HZ per eye which will greatly reduce flickering. Also Monitor companies are releasing 120 HZ monitors too which can support these glasses. The beauty of it is. Most devices will be rendered at least 1680x1050 resolution now. Rather than the super low resolution that accompanied older glasses.

So How do they work?: Nvidia 3D glasses work at the driver level. And on a 3D compatible display such as the Samsung Syncmaster. The image will get rendered twice at various depth. ((Something I will explain further in the article)). The glasses will take image and shift between them rapidly creating the illusion of a more 3D image. This illusion is very real. Each lense will render @ 1680x1050 with 60 HZ refresh rate. Each frame will be synchronized back and forth between the lenses making the image appear to be "whole". I could go into great depth about optics and how human eyes percieve a single image. But to make a long story short. The glasses are bifocal in design so each lens will be rendering a different object. Thus creating the very realistic 3D illusion. Unfortunately since the entire concept of the technology works behind the concept of bifocal optics. You will not be able to "shown" the effect by screenshots.

The IR emitter

What the Dahookey: The IR Emitter is essential for the 3D Stereoscopic glasses to work. A USB cable connects to the PC to the IR Emitter which sends the signal to the shutter glasses on how to render the scene. Its very small and has a wide radius to which you can use it. You dont have to be sitting straight in front of it. I put mine under my monitor but I have been able to set it numerous places so long as it is front of the goggles. I was able to use the glasses to up a 20 yard range.

Getting Started and Setting it up: In order to use these glasses there are some strict requirements which must be met. Nvidia says that these requirements are needed to ensure the optimal Stereoscopic experience. Judging from past uses of these technologies. I tend to agree.

GPU Requirements:Nvidia requires a Geforce 8 or higher GPU for the 3Dvision glasses.

Supported GPUS

-Geforce 8 Series
-Geforce 9 Series
-Geforce 200 Series
- SLI Supported

Unsupported

- Geforce 7 and Below
- 3 Way And Quad SLI (Pending Support from Nvidia)

Monitor Requirements: A monitor with a 120 refresh rate is completely required. Which means you'll need to make a 1 time update of your monitor to make use of this technology. The reason for this is simple. To keep from having awful eyestrain of low refresh rates. In this case you will get dual "60 Hz" per eye. Dual Link DVI is also essential due to the extremely high refresh rate. The benefits of 120 HZ can also be seen beyond just using 3D Glasses so this is an upgrade in more ways than one. For this review I will be using a Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ. Other compatible displays include Viewsonic FuHzion VX2265wm and various other DLP HDTV displays. Nvidia will be maintaining a list for use. When that list is ready I will be providing a link in this guide. Nvidia will be certifying displays as "3D Vision Compatible Displays" to make it easier for end users to find compatible displays.

Monitor Compatibility List

Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ: Completely Beautiful Display

USB 2.0 is a required connection because of the power requirements of running the IR emitter. This shouldn't be a problem for most people but some keyboards and other connectors still only offer 1.1 compatibility.