So, its pretty much still an expensive pseudo-gimmick thats better than it was last time around but still not "There".

Basically, wait 3-5 years until support is built into pretty much every new title, 120 Hz monitors are standard, and the current round of "Console-itis" with graphics requirements becomes even more obvious.

Now how about AMD/TI get their version of this out and speed things up with some good old competition.

The really need to build the a bluetooth headset into the thing so the Borgdork look can be complete.

Nintendo's Virtual Boy already tried this gimmick and it had failed.

Nvidia is trying to find another way to justify the cost of SLI solutions and high-end GPUs. While the mid-range stuff is more than sufficient if do not need to feed a 24" or larger monitor at native resolution.

So, would any <=8ms display do?

Funny you mention TMJ... one of my ex's from several years ago had that, and I remember the first time she brought it up. Me, being smartass on autopilot, once again let the mouth get in front of the brain. "What's that, Too Much Jawbone?"

It wound up being a bad night.

It looks like you can see...BOTH points of view...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHYYYYY!

/CSIMiami

Why is Valve always the only company to do something and do it right?

Heh. Takes me back to my Asus GeForce2 card with the LCD shutter glasses that plugged into the back of the card. It's interesting that in nearly a decade they haven't fixed some of the problems I had back then, mainly the floaty lights and "reflections".

I'd like to see how these things perform with MAME games, or even old school games like DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D, or Jazz Jackrabbit, if that's even possible. It might require a new monitor, but the lower GPU requirements would effectively cut the price of admission in half.

I'm also a little bit curious about the technology behind how the goggles work, both from a curious technical standpoint, and what kind of EMI they produce.

Perhaps by next holiday season, there'll be an adaptation of this technology for a portable gaming system. Imagine if the next Nintendo, Sony, or Apple portable system is built with a nice GPU and fast screen. All you'd need is a nifty pair of glasses, and you can sit on the train and game in 3D. You know it's coming, admit it! ;)

I nearly shot milk out of my nose when I saw the performance chart hit, and I wasn't even drinking milk.

What fresh hell is this?

I'm waiting for the screen technology that can produce such stereoscopic depths of field on its own.

Oh wait, it already exists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window

Gimmick resurfacing for the Nth time.

Will flop like it did many times before, call me when there are real 3D displays at conventional prices...maybe I'll be on social security by then. (or not, since it'll go bankrupt first but I digress!)

A couple of questions:
1/ Any word of this being used by the film-industry? With all the movies coming out in 3d, I could see something like the PS3 being able to use this via USB (it has an nVidia GPU, right?)

2/ Multiple glasses? Since it's a simple IR port, I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't be able to have multiple glasses for viewing. ie, if you were playing a console game, then you could have multiple people on the couch watching. Again, PS3 games or movies could be fun, even if they're simple. I could see them being reasonable if there were priced at $50 for additional glasses, or roughly the price of a controller.

3/ Has nVidia mentioned how many games they're going to add to the catalog? I can see this being very nice for slightly older games because they wouldn't be quite as processing intensive. It would also give good reason to go back and play some older games, like Far Cry. I could almost see Steam incorporating this someway.

This looks like a better technology than the old ELSA shutter glasses from 2000, but IMO, give me the goggles with an independent LCD display for each eye. The old school goggles of the 80s and early 90s worked, they just ran at a low resolution and a low framerate, with flat-shaded polygons on an expensive SGI machine. Do this on a modern graphics card with much more realistic graphics, at 1024x768 in each eye at 60 fps. Sony, this is a console I would line up outside of a store in the cold to pay $600 for on launch day.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/left-4-dead-3d-gives-you...

3d on the cheap...

Great writing, as usual.

Horrible. Looking at the first screenshot of Crysis, this thing gives all-wrong "depth", which creates the cardboard effect you mentioned. It shouldn't display cardboard cutouts, at any level of the knob.

Where's the perspective? Where's the point of focus? The point of focus should not wiggle between the eyes, it's the area that should, optimally, be under your crosshair (games don't dupport dynamic DOF/focus yet unless you aim down the sights). Everything nearer than that should be more to the left/right for each eye, and everything farther than that should, as well. For these glasses, however, [I said something screwed up and I was corrected appropriately]. No, I'm not talking about copying the output, I'm talking about shifting the game camera to the right and aiming it to the point of focus, and shifting it left in the same manner for the other eye.

Basically, it's more complex than what nVidia has done, based on your not-high-resolution images, and in all honesty, it wouldn't be more computationally expensive the way I suggested.

About built-in support, World of Warcraft introduced it a week or two ago, but I understand you don't have the game to try it. Since the developer themselves added support, I'm inclined to believe that fidelity is about where Valve stands.

when we play L4D its always a competition NOT to be zoey.. because if you are, you are your girlfriend/wife... And heven forbid you are not that person, and then you are perceived to be that person the rest of the night by girfriends/wifes first name. its a hoot. and it sucks to be zoey.

"As you can see, the performance hit is sizeable—maybe even bigger than the hit Michael Phelps took off of that bong."

Aaaaaaaaaaahhahahaa.

Friends, booze and 3D glasses. Good idea there.

Sooo, unless I have a high-end SLI machine, this thing is useless.

Yeah, Zoey is pretty hot.

Didn't Nvidia offer very similar glasses back in 1999 together with the original Geforce?

There are simply too many problems, far too few specifically tailored titles, and too high a performance hit to justify the asking price of 200 dollars.

nVidia might need to bite the bullet with this one and subsidize sales of the doohickey, or it will not take off at all. After all, the thing forces you to buy faster gpu cards, and, specifically, *nvidia* cards at that. That has to be worth the financial hit incurred from selling at a low price.

100 dollars is barely acceptable, for what currently amounts to an interesting novelty and has a whole host of additional requirements with it (100hz displays, fast nvidia gpus). 200 dollars are way off the mark.