Gaming in the Third Dimension

Each successive generation of hardware brought with it a major graphical upgrade. NES games looked better than Atari 2600 titles; PlayStation graphics kicked the snot out of Genesis graphics. The jump from Xbox to Xbox 360 has again brought crisper textures and slightly higher detail, but with each emerging generation, the gap between old and new seems to be narrowing. According to Eric Sexton, a lead artist on Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo and Diablo II and currently design director at L5 Games: “We’ll [eventually] have photographic representation of characters, and we won’t be able to make them look any better. We're only going to be able to make things look as real as reality.” Sexton isn’t the only one who believes that game graphics have reached a plateau. “People can do high-definition until they’re blue in the face,” says Aaron Rapp, marketing manager for hardware manufacturer iZ3D, “but at some point, everyone will look at an HD monitor and say, ‘I don’t see the difference.’ You have to go further.”

THE POWER OF THREE
Further…say, into another dimension? iZ3D has developed a 3D monitor specifically for PC gaming. For about $1,000, gamers receive a 22-inch flat-panel LCD and two pairs of polarized 3D glasses. The technology found in iZ3D’s monitor, as well as that of many other true 3D devices, is known as stereoscopy, a technique that fools the eyes into believing that what they see is a true 3D image. Here’s how it works: iZ3D’s monitor takes a game’s data — primarily anything related to the Z-axis, or the three-dimensional depth of the objects in the gameworld — and renders a left and a right image of that object in real time. The monitor consists of two LCD panels, one on top of another; an algorithm interprets that data and displays it slightly differently on each of the twin panels. Pop on the glasses (forget the kitschy blue/red lenses — iZ3D’s goggles look more like tinted sunglasses) and all that visual data aligns so that what you see appears to be leaping off the screen.

DIFFERENT SHADES
The glasses are required to bring your eyes together for a common goal. Your eyes are only a few inches apart, but “because each eye is different from the other, they’ll both see a different image on the actual monitor itself,” explains Rapp. The monitor’s images must be polarized — concentrated into two different areas — and the lenses are polarized to match. Your brain then decodes the data on the fly. For gamers with eyeglasses, wearing 3D shades has always been cumbersome. Could glasses be eliminated from the equation? Probably, but Rapp says it’s not a practical solution. Some technologies do have solutions that ditch the shades, but most of these require viewers to stand in a “sweet spot” to see the projected images — try playing a game without ever moving your neck staring directly at the center of the monitor, and you’ll soon discover the problem. Additionally, this sort of technology can cause headaches and dizziness. The highly successful IMAX theaters use multiple projectors that switch quickly between the right and left eyes, and even that induces headaches in some viewers.

But if you don’t mind the glasses, iZ3D technology allows gamers to sit and play games such as BioShock and Command & Conquer 3 for hours without experiencing fatigue. “You’ll see rockets whizzing by you,” describes Rapp. “You’ll see true depth. You’re no longer shooting at a flat image. Your aim will get better.”

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