3D Vision Review

Here at FiringSquad, we receive unsolicited emails from companies peddling their latest “gaming” products practically on a daily basis. Whether it’s gaming mice and keyboards, books and strategy guides, mousepads, notebook cooling, etc, chances are we’ve seen it.

One topic we see a lot of is 3D. Whether its 3D glasses or 3D displays, that’s another popular subject that pops up every year or so in our inbox.

If you’re like us, when you hear the words “3D” and “glasses” together in a sentence, your first instinct is to roll your eyes and let out a large chuckle. We’ve all seen the the cheap paper glasses you get for free at the movie theater, and we all know of numerous companies that have tried and failed to make 3D a reality. Heck, many of NVIDIA’s own board partners are on that list. Back in the Riva TNT days FiringSquad/Gamers.com veteran Tim Hsu (Timmus!) took a look at ELSA’s 3D Revelator glasses, ultimately finding mixed results in games, and the ASUS VR100 glasses were crippled by poor driver support and ASUS’ insistence that they only be used with ASUS graphics cards – back then ASUS was very new to the graphics scene, and as such their cards weren’t as popular as they’ve become today. Wicked3D’s eyeSCREAM were also popular back in the days.

More recently NVIDIA has partnered with companies like iZ3D and Zalman to bring 3D touting displays to market. The idea here is NVIDIA provides the GeForce hardware and graphics driver, while iZ3D and Zalman provide the LCD display and 3D glasses. The problem has been price: iZ3D’s first 3D LCD launched with a price tag over $1,000, considerably more than comparable 22” displays, and the poor 2D display quality and limited 1680x1050 resolution made iZ3D’s first foray into 3D displays a pretty forgettable experience. (Today the price on iZ3D’s display has come down to $399 and the company is working heavily with ATI, offering all Radeon card owners a $50 mail-in rebate on the purchase of an iZ3D monitor.)

Zalman, best known for their CPU/GPU coolers and cases, just got into the 3D display game with 19” and 22” monitors, but their displays have received rather tepid reviews so far.

Even LCD heavyweight Sharp got into the 3D display space at one point, pitching their 3D monitors towards gamers and the professional workstation market. That went over like a lead balloon.

Now NVIDIA’s back in the 3D glasses space yet again, only this time with a product of their own dubbed 3D Vision. Apparently NVIDIA’s either sick of relying on one of their partners to advance the 3D concept, or they’ve learned from previous failed attempts and think they have the formula right this time around: with 3D Vision sporting higher quality optics and improved driver support, as well as the advent of faster, 120Hz capable LCD displays, they may be right. Or this could end up as yet another failed attempt to take 3D glasses mainstream. Let’s find out shall we?