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.”

Rez HD would be a stunner in 3D on 360...but it just won't work.

XBOX 3(60)D?
That’s great for PC gamers, but what about us console folk? Could such a technology — even the iZ3D monitor itself — work with existing platforms such as Xbox 360? Unfortunately, no. Consoles send out only one video signal, and since left and right images are crucial to stereoscopic technology, dual output channels are a necessity. Some PC-gaming video cards have this ability, but no current consoles are built with this in mind. And it’s not just the hardware: software would have to change, too. Games optimized for stereoscopy would have to work in tandem with a technology similar to iZ3D’s — a technology built into a completely different kind of monitor or television. As it is, the PC editions of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Need for Speed Carbon, and both Halo and Halo 2 (among others) have been modified to support iZ3D’s system, so the software programming issues seem solvable. But the hardware angle is still the bigger hurdle. The mass market has just accepted HD sets, so it’s unlikely that a majority of console gamers would pay to upgrade to a 3D-capable display. Because of that, Silicon Knights Design Director Henry Sterchi believes that true 3D games will eventually have their own niche system. Of course, true 3D games did have their own niche system — Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. When it was released in 1995, the tripod-mounted cartridge system got a bad reputation after many users complained of headaches and eyestrain.

THE EYES DON’T HAVE IT
The health side effects bring up a different hurdle for 3D displays — the physiology of gamers. Depth is integral to true 3D, and not everyone has good depth perception. “You don’t have to be blind in one eye to lack good depth perception,” says Blizzard’s Sexton. “Just take the stereoscopy technology where you stare at a picture to see a 3D image. A lot of people can’t do it. Either they can’t properly control their eyes, or they don’t have good depth perception. Right there, you’re minimizing the number of people who can take advantage of it.” So could stereoscopy be the future of game graphics? Could we see an Xbox 720 with dual video outputs and a custom display? Maybe, but support for stereoscopic 3D visuals will likely never be the deciding factor in a game’s success. “Ultimately, people choose a game for how it plays,” says Kelly Johnson, lead artist at L5 Games. “It’s always been a popular idea to have games be immersive to the point where you’re feeling and experiencing everything: sweat, heat, physical pain, everything. Still, in the end, it all comes down to gameplay.”