I got myself the new Nivida 3D Vision stuff from Nivida last night, and Bolan asked me to just write a fast ”review” here.

The actual 3D Vision hardware isn’t really that expensive, but the minimum requirement may be.  In my local shop this costs about 130 euros, which consits of a set of glasses, a few cables (USB), and a IR transmitter (the glasses is wireless). The glasses can be recharged via the USB, and one charge last about 40 hours (apperently). These glasses fit well outside on my normally prescribed glasses, and these are not as heavy as some other 3D glasses I have tried out.

Then the minimum requirements (quite important):
1)    Monitor has to have real 120Hz refresh rate. This rules out about 99.9% of all new flat monitors on the market.

There is currently only two (as i know) of supported flat panel monitors, and that is Samsung 2233RZ and another brand. This one is a bit expensive, costs about 380 Euros. I did buy a package with the monitor and the 3D vision for 450 Euros. If you got one the latest old CRT monitors still, you may just need the glasses .

2)    Windows Vista or Windows 7. Don’t think XP is supported, will check this when i get home though.

3)    Only Nivida graphic cards supported (8800, 9600, 9800 and the new GTX 2xx series).
You will need a relative good pc to get high FPS, but the game itself isn’t using more resources when run in 3D, since there is no external softwares that control it, it is built into the gfx driver. This also makes all games to be potensial supported by this system. Just one note, any ”faults” in the grahpics will be alot more annoying in 3D, since every bad effects kinda get magnified alot (especial tearing). If you do have a slower PC this may result in lesser good experience in 3D.


My experience:
Was looking forward to this stuff, but wasn’t really convinced when I decided to buy it. This feeling was increasing when I tried it.

Tried the new Champions Online game...didn’t work very well.

Tried EQ2 with it...didn’t work very well (no real 3D feel, and it tried to make the UI in 3D too, which really didn’t work.

Tried a third unnamed mmo, which the 3D view worked quite well, but the UI got real blurry and unreadable.

About this time I kinda found out, which I already suspected, that playing mmo’s with this is out of the picture. So, time for other type of games.

Fired up the new ”Call of Juraz 2” game, and it kinda worked, but I got real much of tearing, and the edges was bad. But, the 3D effect where there, but not worth the money.

Fired up Mass Effect, where the system actual worked perfect. Nice 3D view there, but when I played 10ish minutes it didn’t really give me much more in the game play. It’s a nice touch in the game, but I’m not conviced its worth it to get the system for this game.

At this point I have tasted the feel of the 3D, but wasn’t real happy about it, was very happy about the monitor, since the quality of the picture on that was nice, but the 3D glasses I was a bit meh. Then after the grouping last night I started the FPS Left for Dead...wow. I almost fell off the chair when I tried that. That was just perfect. No tearing, no bad effects, just perfect. The ui was working, the 3D effects was working. Heck, I was just sitting still in the game and watched the gun I was holding in my hand for 5 minutes, and then 5 minutes to just watch the other characters in the game.

So, I got into bed way too late last night, since I didn’t manage to put the game down for a long time.

How does it feel and look?
There is hard to actual get a screen shot of this, so we will never actual know how this is until you tries it yourself.  All of the picture that tries to explains it shows a 3D object that comes out of the monitor. It isn’t anything like that. The easiest to explain is to think of an old CRT monitor, take out everything inside it, and replace the glass panel infront with a clear glass panel. Then put real objects inside that box, and watch it. That’s how I feel it is. Effects like flies, splinters, volumetric smoke, light beams (flash lights etc), gives a whole new dimension to the game. There is no doubt I will enjoy those FPS games alot more in the future now!

Pro and cons
Cons:
1)    Expensive monitor (if you got the money its well worth it)

2)    Limited to 22” monitor, I got a 24” monitor too, so I will never consider playing EQ2 on a smaller monitor than 24”. So, if you only use one monitor, and that is 24, I cannot recommend going down for this. If a larger monitor is avaiable, I will really considering getting that.

3)    Personally I think it only works in FPS games (as far as I have tested it), where I like playing MMO’s the most, which it seems not to work at all.

4)    Some times I ends up seeing two pictures for some reasons, and two aims. I don’t think that is a problem with the equipment, more a problem on how I sees things. But this have slight influence on how I hit things (think of taking a sip of that brell beer in our guild hall). It isn’t really a big problems, just a few seconds some times.

Pros:
1)    Backward combatibility. The 3D effects may work on older games too.

2)    Works out of the box. Was no issues installing it and get it to work (except in games that it didn’t really work).

3)    Tested to work with more than 350 titles (Apperently)

4)    It looks real good when a game is fully supported.

5)    Gives a new dimension to the game.

6)    Flashy new toy!