Requirements for Real 3D Gaming

- a fast Windows 98/ME PC (Pentium 2/3/4, Celeron, K6/Duron/Athlon)
- a normal (cathode ray tube) monitor capable of at least 120 Hz vertical frequency (refresh rate); LCD-displays won't work!
- some LCD-shutterglasses
- a 3D-accelerator VGA-board (nVidia based boards are recommended for stereo-gaming)
- driver software for the card and for the glasses
Native Stereo3D Games are outdated!

Native Stereo3D Games are outdated!

In the past there were some games which had support for 3D-glasses build in. There were also some patches for certain games which upgraded them for the use with 3D-glasses. All these games and patches are now outdated.

Todays gaming: 3D-API's

Nowadays 3D-glasses can be utilized for almost any game which supports one of the 2 popular 3D-acceleration API's (application programming interfaces). These interfaces are the way the game communicates with the driver of your 3D-VGA-graphics-acceleration-board. Only two 3D-API's play a role in todays market. These are Direct3D by Microsoft and OpenGL. Glide by 3dfx is discontinued.

Duke Nukem 3D, Need for Speed1, Outcast >>> none
Need for Speed 2 SE >>>> Glide only
Quake 1, 2, 3 >>> OpenGL only
Tomb Raider 2, 3, 4, 5 >>> Direct3D only
Unreal, Descent 3 >>> Glide, OpenGL and Direct3D

There are countless 3D-accelerator boards on the market, all with fancy names. These names usually mean nothing. The only thing that counts is the 3D-chipset!
Examples for popular 3D-accelerator-chips are the nVidia GeForce series and the ATI Radeon series. There are many more. Almost all of them support at least Direct3D and OpenGL.

Real 3D for all Games

The reason why 3D-API's are important for 3D-glasses is the fact games written for these interfaces supply genuine 3D-information in a standard format. These 3D-informations (i.e. depth-informations, Z-values) can be utilized by special universal 3D-glasses-drivers to create real 3D-imagery

Popular 3D-Glasses Drivers

nVidia, market leader in 3D-chipsets released their own stereoscopic reference driver. It'll work for all nVidia based boards and is available for free