Neil Schneider from MTBS started telling the histstory of the stereoscopic 3D gaming in the form of a YouTube 3D video, then in the second part of that video he continued with more recent development around S3D gaming. This time, in the third part, Neil is talking about what happened in the last two years – things like Zalman Trimon 3D monitors being launched with Nvidia stereoscopic 3D drivers, updated only to work with this monitor. iZ3D and DDD extending their driver support for additional hardware, but they still did not offer shutter glasses support. Then Nvidia demonstrating their new 3D Vision shutter glasses along with a 120Hz LCD monitors and new 3D drivers. And at the end he also mentions that other companies are already working on alternatives like for example Bit Cauldron’s upcoming shutter glasses.
It seems that Sony is planing to include the much anticipated 3D support for their PlayStation 3 console in the upcoming firmware update version 3.20. Or at least there are such hints coming from from some leaked pictures of the 3.20 firmware that seems to be already in the hands of some developers. The current firmware version for PlayStation 3 is at 3.15 with still no official release date of the anticipated version 3.20, but it is expected this to happen before the official summer release of the first 3D-ready HDTVs from Sony. Prior to having a compatible 3D-ready high-refresh rate HDTV, along with the required active shutter glasses (the preferred tech for all upcoming 3D TVs) there is no point in having this feature available on the console. Also, it seems that the much anticipated Blu-ray 3D support for the PS3 console will require an additional firmware update that is supposed to be available at a later time, after the summer release of the firmware with 3D gaming capabilities, but most likely before the end of the year.
I’ve been using my pair of 3D Vision shutter glasses for about half a year already, very actively every day, so they’ve seen a lot of putting on and putting off and the results from all that that have started to appear. It seems that the green rubber ends on both of the frames are the weak spot in 3D Vision, as they started to peel off from the black plastic frame (they were glued). It seems that for version 2.0 Nvidia should think of a solution to improve things a bit, because when the green rubber is removed the hard plastic makes the wearing of the glasses for longer periods of time uncomfortable. So after applying some glue the rubber can be affixed again for some time, but after a bit of usage it might still start to fall off again. The good thing is that Nvidia has designed the glasses to be quite strong and resistant to active usage, even when not being handled with care. And if for version 2.0 of the glasses they also improve a bit the frame around the lenses in order for the glasses to block more of the external light they’ll be almost perfect… ;)
