Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 70—NVIDIA's 3D Vision 2 kit
them for a long time, while my best friend can stomach them for only a few
minutes before the effect induces an acute headache.
If you're the only person who will use the glasses to watch movies or play
games, this kit has everything you need. But if you want to watch the 3D
content together with a friend or family member, you will have to buy a second
pair of NVIDIA's 3D glasses, which is nearly two-thirds the cost of the full 3D
Vision 2 kit.
The final consideration on whether to pay for the privilege of 3D viewing on
your PC is the fact that 3D is no longer enthusiastically supported in the
marketplace. Only a trickle of 3D blockbuster movies are released in Blu-ray
3D format and almost no new games in development are being designed to
specifically take advantage of NVIDIA's 3D kit. Even so, there are more than
600 existing titles that range from meager to excellent 3D-supported repro-
duction. And there is also video-playback software (which I'll mention in the
next section) that can do a surprisingly decent job of converting 2D video into
3D imagery. Watching old family home videos in this way brings an exhilarat-
ing feeling of traveling back in time to be an immersed historical spectator.
Blu-ray Drive
The other part of the equation for taking full advantage of 3D glasses is the
ability to play back 3D movies. Since 3D movies are really two movies playing
back at the same time (one movie for each eye), Blu-ray optical discs are the
go-to playback media since they have the capacity (and digital copy protection)
to make physical distribution of this content possible.
