The view through the glasses depends more on your computer's graphics card than the make of glasses, but you will find that different manufacturers offer extra software or other minor incentives. You'll find lightweight, wireless glasses, as well as more basic (and therefore cheaper) pairs. and other countries.Īlthough the basic technology is the same, there is a range of different glasses out there. Photo courtesy eDimensional, E-D and the eDimensional logos are registered trademarks of eDimensional, Inc. So what's on the market? What should you look for? Let's find out. In the fourth-generation models, compatibility is high, the complicated work is done by the graphics card, and the lightweight LCD glasses flick so rapidly between the two images that all we see is crystal-clear, 3-D images.
TIMELINE 3D PC DRIVER
The third generation worked in a similar way, modifying the graphics driver but also maintaining the resolution of the images - no more blocky graphics! Unfortunately, it wasn't compatible with many games, though it was a definite forerunner to the 3-D glasses we have nowadays. It did work with hundreds of games, though, and that was a definite improvement. The result was slower performance and low-resolution, blocky images. As far as the game was concerned, it was just doing what it normally did, except, of course, that some of the computer's time was taken up processing the image to make it 3-D. This second solution was to override the game, actually taking over the computer's screen and altering what was displayed. And after that, all you need is a way to get the correct image to the correct eye.
Since the computer is quite happy to create one point of view, there's no problem shifting the viewpoint slightly and creating another point of view. The computer works out what it needs to display on your screen and generates the appropriate view. In fact, everything you see on your screen in a modern 3-D game is produced the same way the game is like a gigantic 3-D model. Once that's done, they needn't worry about the different views - the computer has a 3-D model of the dinosaur in its memory, and the game simply works out where the player is looking and draws the correct view of the dinosaur using the 3-D model. Nowadays, games designers sit down with a 3-D graphics package and design their dinosaur in three dimensions. If you wanted a dinosaur in your game, you sat down and drew the different views of a dinosaur into the computer. Not so long ago, the graphics we saw on our computer screens were carefully drawn into the computer - every single frame of animation, every different view of a character. The answer is all about how games are created. But just how easy is it to create these two separate images, one for each eye? Nevertheless, the underlying principle is exactly the same: creating and controlling those two different points of view. Neither method is entirely suitable for playing games. The game itself may be in three dimensions, and the player may be able to look wherever he wants with complete freedom, but at the end of the day the picture is displayed on a computer monitor.and that's a flat surface.īoth methods have their disadvantages, of course - the red-and-blue glasses make it difficult to show color in the 3-D image, and viewing stereograms is an art in itself. Nowadays, gamers enjoy ever more complicated graphics - smooth, three-dimensional environments complete with realistic lighting and complex simulations of real-life physics grace our screens. Back then, it was revolutionary and quite amazing. It may have been constructed from blocky tiles, but the castle existed in three dimensions - you could move forward and backward, or hold down the appropriate key and see your viewpoint spin through 360 degrees. Back in the '90s, computer enthusiasts were stunned by the game Castle Wolfenstein 3D, which took place in a maze-like castle.
Most computer users are familiar with 3-D games. Put those two things together, and you'll see how 3-D graphics have really begun to take off. Scientists know more about how our vision works than ever before, and our computers are more powerful than ever before - most of us have sophisticated components in our computer that are dedicated to producing realistic graphics. It was great at the time, but 3-D technology has moved on. Only a few years ago, seeing in 3-D meant peering through a pair of red-and-blue glasses, or trying not to go cross-eyed in front of a page of fuzzy dots.
0 kommentar(er)
