Ready to 
NVIDIA booth meeting
Robert Hallock
January 9, 2009 6:06 PM ET in Tech
Our first meeting of the day was with NVIDIA which was eager to demonstrate their new 3D goggle technology to us. These 3D goggles (MSRP $199) are radically different from other technology you may have used and seen before. Instead of relying on software manufacturers to make the game compatible with the tech, the NVIDIA drivers can interpret the depth information in the z-buffer to set the stereo depth.
The goggles are very lightweight and do indeed use shutter technology, but they were comfortable over glasses and very lightweight, even with a security dongle. More than that, the flicker symptomatic of other goggles was virtually unnoticeable. The goggles must have a dual-DVI card, which any modern NVIDIA card qualifies for. The performance impact is approximately 20-25% to produce the image, so you’ll have to keep your current frame rates in mind if you’re interested in the technology.
The goggles work with any DirectX game. Some games — like TF2 — render crosshairs differently, so the drivers can compensate by providing crosshair via DirectX overlay. There is no OpenGL support at this time, but it’s on its way in just a few months says NVIDIA rep Brian Del Rizzo.
Now for the bad news: it needs a 120Hz monitor to function correctly, and currently only Viewsonic and Samsung are on board. The 3D goggle tax for these displays is about $80-100 above the price of a regular display.
The good news: the technology was just damn impressive. Seriously. These are not your ugly 2002 goggles. If these were cheaper, I’d spring for a pair in a heartbeat.
After CES, we’re receiving a press kit and will be setting up a review sample.
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