To clear up some misconceptions about what 3D is:

Your brain does indeed form a 3D image based on each eye seeing a slightly different image. That is what stereoscopic vision is and does, and any 3D system that it truly 3D works like that. Computer games with proper 3D abilities have been around for a while; the old game Descent could be set to produce a 3D output to send to a pair of 3D goggles. This obviously requires twice the power expended for rendering - it has to render each image twice, with a small amount of separation between each image - but it is exactly how your eyes see objects in 3D in the real world.

The only thing that's going to be a problem for most people is if they were wearing a VR-type 3D headset that was essentially a pair of very small monitors, one for each eye. Focusing on things that close to the eye can produce eye strain, especially for those of us who've reached our forties and presbyopia has set in - but if a television can produce two images at once, using alternately polarized light, a pair of properly polarized lenses can have the left eye see only the left image, and the right eye see only the right image, to once again produce truly stereoscopic 3D images.

Not sure why people claim this is hard on your eyes.

I just huff Glade and everything is in 3d.

I've seen the 3D pictures and I must say the picture quality is much more crisp and vibrant. But for all intents and purposes, my old monitor is still fine, so won't be looking at what to replace it with, till such time arises.

Edit: There is also the new 24 bit hardware colour monitor that I am considering as well.

Yeah, I can see how a maladjusted image separation would screw things up. I had no idea people were sensitive to flicker rates comparable to television, though. Does anything have a rate slower than 60 hz, which is what my laptop's LCD display uses? I wouldn't think anything higher would be a problem.

Although...if polarized lenses were used, would this mean that each eye was only seeing things at 30hz? But even that I wouldn't think would be a problem; film is shot and played at 24 fps, after all, and video runs at 30fps even though the TV displaying it is at 60 hz.

Also also, doubling the power required to render the scene could be troublesome. Lots of people might be faced with the choice of having settings set on high and seeing it in 2D, or turning the settings down and seeing it in 3D.

Your point? (thats a rhetorical question)


I bet skyrim would be amazing in 3d. Unfortunately I bought a new TV (32" 1080p for tv and computer) like 2 years before 3D tvs, so I can't justify buying a new one right now.

Gaming would really be amazing in 3d, much more so than movies or TV I would think.

OH OP, what TV did you end up going with? using TV's glasses or 3d vision(or ati thing?)?

So when will Stereoscopic 3D become outdated? Or is it already? This stuff changes way too fast.

I just don't get how people that don't have Stereoscopic3D gaming ability or have ever seen a good example of game play in 3D can be so against it. Given the amount of "hate" that detractors have tossed onto this thread, you'd think there would be countless number of them at the Nvidia/ATI/Tridef forums screaming bloody murder that 3D gaming is the worse thing in the world and want refunds!

The reality is that while less than 5% might be displeased that their favorite titles are not 3D capable the overwhelming majority that are able to play games in Stereoscopic 3D are happy. Personally I've gotten to the point of not playing 2D titles anymore. (or titles that can't be rendered in 3D)

Were not talking about the "yawn" difference between 2D/3D Nintendo handhelds here, Skyrim really comes to life on the big screen in 3D.

I'm thinking of making a short 3D Skyrim playtime movie and giving it to some of my local Electronics retailers. If people could only see for themselves the difference it makes the Gamers alone would be keeping the 3DTV industry busy!

Well, how much does a television that can show 3D cost? And what does it look like for normal 2D video?

I hate 3D but that's just me. Some of you kids sound like salesman.


Way overpriced around $5K.

Not only would each eye be seeing the image at 30Hz, but each eye would be seeing alternating black frames at 30Hz. The flicker between bright and dark, alternating between eyes, can cause problems in some people. The advantage of the passive-glasses system I mentioned is that each eye sees an image at the full refresh rate of the TV; the disadvantage is that in 3D mode the vertical resolution is halved (one eye sees the even lines, the other sees the odd). I suspect it only looks a bit worse than full resolution because of the brain merging the two images, but I couldn't swear to that.

More like $1,300 for a 42" screen - and that's in the UK where electronic goods tend to be overpriced compared to the US . Still expensive for a TV, but not mad-silly money.

Rather a spoon like this: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/terex/terex0812/terex081200103/4075181-the-plastic-big-spoon-on-a-white-background.jpg
It depends on your weight though, it goes from 20g to 100g. By itself of course. But you will puke it all out before it kills you anyway.

Truth be known I spent a whole whooping $650US on mine. (the same price I paid for a 15" viewsonic CRT monitor back in the day)

Most 3D TVs are high end 2D models. 2D content looks great on a Plasma.

Kids? Now YOU must be joking.

I have a 3D laptop that uses alternate line polarization. Yes the resolution is cut in half but its really not noticable at all as the 3D effect makes up for it. Here in the USA, 3D monitors are < $300 and my 43" plasma 3DTV set me back a cool $650 new.

(Gee.... as examples I remember spending $650 on a 486DX266, 15" Viewsonic CRT monitor and my 1st 19" LCD monitor)

I played Crysis in 3D on a friends PS3 recently and it was AWESOME!!! I was immediately dying to play Skyrim in 3D! It's immersive on a whole new level. If I had the money for a 3D/Surround setup like the OP describes, I would be on it in a millisecond.

If I could get something like a 21" 3D monitor to plug into my laptop I'd do it. It has both an SVGA out and an HDMI out, and 3D would look awesome if there were settings for it in Skyrim.

What I don't understand though: Proper 3D requires the computer to render each image twice, once slightly left and once slightly right to achieve the effect. Given that there are no settings for this in Skyrim, how do you get the game to do this?

I don't have 3D video, but surround sound is really nice. I don't know how many times I have heard something coming up behind and was able to miss getting hit.

Well, the way it used to work many years ago in the Nvidea Stereo drivers was that the drivers themselves altered the viewpoint co-ordinates before passing the rendering on to the graphics card. Very likely the same thing happens now. Games do need to be 3D aware so that they don't muck up the depth information with full-screen pixel shaders, or use graphics effects with no depth information (eg, a sun lens-flare effect that always renders at the screen depth). Giving the UI depth information as well helps to avoid some eyestrain.

3D is the best thing that happened to gaming in a long time. Skyrim is AWESOME in 3D and whenever I don't use it I realise how much I miss it.

I know exactly what you mean about looking through a window into another world it really is like that. Seeing arrows fly towards me game me a scared feeling in my stomach and made me jump hhaha.

Oh and about the glasses once you have gotten used to them you won't even notice you have them on!

I see. What kind of computer specs are required to run this sort of thing? I've got a large amount of RAM (6 GB) but I'm using an 18" Toshiba Qosimo laptop, so I imagine the NVIDIA "card" is really an NVIDIA chip on the motherboard. I don't even know if it has any VRAM at all.

I think you need to be able to run it twice as fast as your preferred framerate, this is because it renders every frame twice, one for each eye.

So my graphics card has to be able to render 120 fps to suit a 60 hz refresh rate? Oy. I have no idear what framerate the game is running at currently. Isn't there a console command that tells that information?

So, all the 3d hate aside, to the OP: how does your setup work, exactly? Is your computer's video card output sending Stereoscopic signal already and the 3dTV just displays it properly, with the glasses?

I'm wondering b/c I tried playing in 3d a few days ago just to see what it would be like, since my NVIDIA Galaxy 550TI or whatever-the-hell-it-is gave me the option. Anyway, I used NVIDIA's native Stereoscopic 3D function, on "Discover 3D" setting, did the setup wizard, etc. and the only thing I had to use is a pair of old cheapie red and blue 3D glasses. Well, I was able to see the test images, just fine, good red/blue filtering with no "ghosting"; in game, however, there was some ghosting, mainly on the 1st person weapon/hands, etc. and also on some lights in the distance (torchbugs, in this instance). Also, the 3d was a little disorienting to get used to and I spent alot of time trying to adjust the depth of field and another parameter (Frustrum, I believe). I didn't spend a whole lot of time, since I couldn't get rid of the ghosting anyway. I guess the disorientation might be a "normal" transition for most people, plus, the ghost images were causing my eyes to shift focus back and forth from the 3d false "depth" and the true screen distance.

Although the results weren't good enough to play with the S3D enabled, I could tell that the effect would add alot to the immersion, as it shows a much better representation of "reality" than a flat screen. For example, looking at a collapsed fort tower, I could immediately tell the dimensions and nature of what I was looking at, whereas, when I had passed the same fort before without S3D, I had never noticed so much detail in the structure before.

It would be awesome to play with this all the time, I think, or at least have the option to use it for certain battles/dungeon crawls, etc. b/c that little bit of time that I tried it already makes me occasionally yearn for that "visual depth" when I am playing the game regularly now. I unfortunately didn't play with the effect long enough to report on any eye-strain or headaches or anything that people sometimes have with longer S3D playing times.

So I'm thinking of getting the official NVIDIA 3d glasses to use with my video card if they aren't too expensive, but I hope they work much better than the cheap ones I tried (I expect they would...), also, if I can get the polarized ones, I'll go with that instead, since I've heard they give better quality than the red/blue anaglyph or whatever it's called now.

If you have any more info on any of my observations, please share. We should start an informational thread (like this one) for people who are curious about setting up 3d so that way people who use it can share their experiences and what type of set-up they are using. Love or Hate it, passing fad or no, you only live once, so you may as well try the fun stuff as long as it doesn't kill ya!

Well, I just thought of a question. You know those old http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewmaster that some of us had as kids? You know how their "3D" effect was sometimes just several flat images set in a 3D manner - meaning, the image as a whole was 3D, but each individual thing in the picture was flat 2D? Does the game render individual items in 3D? As in, if I look off into the distance and there's a cylindrical tower in the medium distance, is it going to look cylindrical to me, or is it going to appear as a flat item, but the whole picture is in 3D?

I'm not sure I communicated that well, but maybe you understand what I'm saying.

If you are correcting somebody on the fault of their claims, it may be a good idea to back your corrections with proof (like links to factual medical papers or articles written by those far more involved with these fields) or your post holds no more weight than the one/s you are responding to.