Lately there have been lots of posts about 3d gaming capabilities on consoles, specifically on PS3, and a lot confusing information is going around. Resolution drops? Inferior games? Reduced frame rate? etc...

Below I took the liberty of explaining to you what these gaming consoles are capable and what you can expect in the near future.

1. 3D formats currently available(taken from the brand new Samsung HDMI 1.4 3D TV):

There are polarized 3d standards such as RealD which are not supported by this Samsung TV, but other than that...this is it. All 3D tech available today.

The only tech on that list that stands out from the rest is "Frequency". As it is the only tech capable of showing 1080p resolution to each eye. All other 3D formats send a 1080p signal which contains 2 images, hence the signal is 720p x 2.

2. Console 3D gaming capabilities

Avatar is a game which came out last year supporting 3D. It supported the following 3d formats on PS3 and 360. "side-by-side, line-interlaced, and full checkerboard"

The "Frequency" 3D method was not supported for 2 reasons. There were no TVs available at the time to support that method (only PC monitors) and there is no advantage in doing 720p frequency 3D since results are same as side by side 3D and worse than checkerboard. Consoles are not powerful enough to render 1080p res X 2 and take advantage of this tech.

As is, Avatar on consoles sent out a full 1080p signal when running in 3D. Hence it sent out resolution 720p X 2. Both PS3 and 360 are able to run 720p 3D resolution per eye at 30 frames per second. PS3 could technically do 1080p per eye if the games graphics are kept simple and primitive but non 3d games have a hard time acomplishing this so only a few DLC games can achieve this resolution using "frequency" method.

3. PS3 3D update, HDMI 1.4 -

HDMI 1.4 is pretty much exactly the same spec as HDMI 1.3. The only difference is that HDMI 1.4 includes software which determines which 3D format is being sent to the TV and it automatically sets the TV to that format. PS3 uses HDMI 1.3, and because of this does it need a "3D update".

This update allows the PS3, through software to automatically tell the TV which 3D format the game is running in. Games can choose to run in any of those formats. We still don't know if Wipeout is going to run in "Frequency" format  @ 720p (No! Bad Sony!) or Checkerboard (Yes! please!). Maybe both! Lets wait till E3 and official announcements before we make any judgements.

Gaming devices that do not have HDMI 1.4, or a 3D update like the PS3, are sill perfectly capable of 3D gaming. However they will have to have the user set the 3D format in the game options menu, and choose the proper 3D display mode on the TV.

The End!

Thank you for clearing it up. I hope Sony will show some games built for 3D from the ground up, rather than just these retrofittings, where only SSHD runs without sacrifices.

I hope Sony include a 3D camera with the PS4 and have a more advanced Move as their main controller. Stereoscopic 3D augmented reality? Fuck yeah!

One can dream

I didn't realise tv makers had gone the active glasses route. As if there weren't enough expensive peripherals on games consoles, now TV's need some too?

Polarized displays would be great to keep the cost of glasses down...but a lot of people are saying that 3D quality isn't as crisp as with active shutter glasses.

To be honest, with these consoles doing 720p @ 30 hz...polarized 3D option and displays would probably be just as good.  They should include support for everything. Avatar included the RealD 3D format...on top of all active glasses formats 

Amazon released a thing called 3D 101 that i found pretty interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_352961342_3?ie=UTF8&node=2248313011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=top-1&pf_rd_r=1YF4YBQ2WG5CSAXK5N19&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=1261356542&pf_rd_i=3D

according the these videos, the polarized displays have trouble switching the polarization fast enough.  for anyone interested but feeling very noobish about 3D it was a pretty good series of videos imo and only took about 10 min to watch all of them.

edit: i rewatched it and i quoted them wrong - their reason was expensive.  guess i'm full of shit. xD

Heh. Nice find. However the guide seems very general, and is not correct a lot of the time. "PS3 upgrade converts all existing games to 3D..." lol. Not quite... The upgrade just will tell your 3D TV which 3D the developer is using if they want to go back and make the game work in 3D.

But yeah, with displays...all of them have issues. Even active displays...

Plasma has a burning phosphorus resedue which shows a green-ish tint.

LCD has ghosting due to pixel refresh rate which is still a problem

DLP TVs and projectors are perfect when it comes to picture, but they don't do 1080p 3D (only support checkerboard which is almost 1080p quality with 720pX2 res)

Its not perfect technology yet.

very true and that's a big part of why i hate being an early adopter.  i'd be especially pissed if i bought something expensive and it ended up discontinued like HD-DVD was....

...but 3D is soo shiny.

Marked for later read (are we allowed to make posts like that?).

They don't do any harm unlike bumps and trolling so I don't see why they should be banned.

(This reply is partly to mark thread xD)

Even more reason to wait. I suspect early adopters who are thinking of keeping their set for at least 5 years will be burned hard by these early 3D televisions. The technology is simply evolving too quickly and the image quality in 3D mode will evolve very quickly.

One major issue with shutter glasses is that it significantly cuts down the light each eye receives. You have to consider not just the time spent open, but the time spent transitioning between states. I saw somewhere that it was in the order of ~80% light blocked. Also this technology isn't particularly compatible with lower frequency lighting such as fluorescent.