3D Vision Blog

You should know that GeForce 3D Vision is not only intended to be used just for gaming, but also for watching 3D Stereo digital images and even for 3D movies. But in order to use the shutter glasses for watching moves you should first get a special player that can play 3D stereo movies the right way and they you should get movies that are supported. Nvidia provides a free Stereoscopic 3D Video Player that should be more than enough to get you started in the world of 3D movies, but there are also some other solutions that I’m going to talk about some other time. Nivida’s Stereoscopic 3D Video Player has built in support for playing back 3D Stereo videos in the following file formats: AVI, AVIS, WMV, WMVS, ASF, MPG, MPGS, MPEG, M1V, MP2, M2TS, VOB, MP4, SVI and SPP. There is also support for playing 3D Stereo movies in DVD Video format if you own any of these of course and they are in the right format. And by the right format I mean movies that are not encoded for anaglyph viewing, but provide a video with two full separate frames for each eye. You should know that most of the DVD video 3D movies are designed for paper anaglyph glasses and these will not work with the shutter glasses form the GeForce 3D Vision kit!

To get you started there are some short videos in 3D Stereo that are looking quite well when played with the Stereoscopic 3D Video Player and the GeForce 3D Vision kit. There are 6 short movies, two of which are animated and the other 4 are of different real world scenes and places so you can actually see the difference. You can also look around over the net for more compatible videos, these should be quite a few more that will look and work great with the added depth perception. Have in mind that all those videos can be viewed in normal 2D mode on a normal or 3D-compatible monitor and in 3D Stereo only on a compatible display. When you run the player and a movie on a Samsung 2233RZ for instance when you switch to full screen the movies automatically goes in 3D mode, otherwise when it is being displayed in a small window it is in 2D mode by default.

- To download Nivida’s Stereoscopic 3D Video Player
- To download the demo 3D Stereo video clips for testing the player

Recently Nvidia is making quite a few new products that are not in their main focus and by that I mean the GPU business. Some of the new interesting products coming out from nVidia are for instance the ION platform or the Tegra, products based on which are just now slowly starting to come out in the market. Actually there is one more interesting solution that was announced a few months back, but just recently became available in Europe – GeForce 3D Vision. These are basically LC shutter glasses (often referred as LCD shutter glasses which is not entirely correct) that are designed to work with a suitable display that can provide at least 100 Hz or higher refresh rate. Now as normal LCD displays cannot provide such a high refresh rate or actually we better use the term frame rate here when talking about LCD displays we are going to need a new type of LCD displays. So Samsung and Viewsonic provided a solution in the form of 22-inch LCD displays with 120Hz refresh rate so that they can be bundled with the 3D Vision glasses to provide the best experience. So far ViewSonic VX2265wm is only available on the American market and the Samsung 2233RZ is available in Europe both bundled with nVidia’s 3D glasses or as a standalone monitors. Apart from these two monitors you can also use the GeForce 3D Vision glasses with a normal CRT display (that can provide high enough refresh rate) if you still have one of these lying around. There is also support for some DLP TV sets and 3D projectors, but these are still not very popular and widely available so the best way is just to get the 22-inch Samsung or Viewsonic LCD display available where you live. By the end of this year other LCD display manufacturers should also start to provide suitable models with high refresh rate, bigger resolution and size, but we will have to wait and see.

With the help of Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision you can start enjoying a way more impressive 3D gaming experience, watch suitable 3D movies and even look at digital photos in 3D. Of course the most interesting and impressive features is the use of the technology for gaming, making most of the new titles and a lot older games a lot more impressive. By utilizing the 3D Stereo shutter glasses you can experience all 3D games in a new way, even games that you can completely finished playing will seem different to you when you’ll be able to see the depth of the 3D world around you. Of course not all games work perfect out of the box, but most of them have built-in profiles and provide information and good enough result by default and then you can tweak them a bit to achieve better results based on your personal preferences. But even if a game doesn’t have a profile there is a high chance it will work fine with some minor tweaking or even without having to do anything special, you just have to try. And the list of games that have serious problems or are not working at all is very small indeed and there is a chance that they may become supported in later updates of the drivers. I’ll tell you some of the games that provide the best results combined with GeForce 3D Vision that you should definitely try if you have the chance to test this 3D Stereo product or even if you buy one yourself. Anyway there is way more to come about Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision and not only about it, so stay tuned for more information… ;)