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greenmedic88 on 25 April 2010
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Squilliam said:
greenmedic88 said:
Squilliam said:
disolitude said:

I am not going to comment on PS3 3D quality as it remains to be seen what it looks like and what games get supported (my guess is not many)...

I will say that if you want be part of the 3D craze you have 2 options.

PS3 - 299 bucks
50 inch 3DTV - 3000 bucks
Glasses + games (if you can even find any games you want to play) - 200 bucks + content

OR

Decent computer - 1000 bucks
Nvidia GTX470 SLI - 700 bucks
Mitsubishi 60 inch 120 hz DLP TV or 3 24 inch 3D monitors (surround 3D) - 1200
Nvidia 3D vision glasses (over 400 supported games) - 200 + content

Both will play 3D games, both will play 3D blurays. But my guess tells me that one is going to be much supoerior to the other.

I adjusted your numbers for accuracy and err um relevance to a normal effective budget. You're not gonna stick a pair of GTX4xx cards into a $50 case!

Some probably would just to support the notion that a hobo box only needs $600+ worth of VGA cards to turn it into high end gaming PC. Playing in the Danger Zone with cut cost components along the way I might add.

I think both lists just illustrate that 3D gaming really isn't very viable on either platform currently due to the prohibitive initial set up cost for what is likely to be a scant handful of titles that may not even warrant the initial investment in hardware. Lackluster games in full 3D are still... lackluster games. You just will have paid a lot more to play them.

Sure, I'd like to see Avatar in mindblowing 3D like I saw on IMAX. Would I pay $3000 for a special TV to watch it on? Probably... not.

I wouldn't say that. Most people reading this are enthusiasts who spendhundreds to thousands of hours a year gaming. If anything I would say most of the people here if they were enthused about 3D could justify the expense, the issue isn't what the above gaming computer costs but how much people value their entertainment time. The cost of the 3D is only what it costs above and beyond what you already have divided by the number of hours it would get used. At even a rate of 250 hours a year over two years $1000 worth of expenditure only comes out at $2 an hour.

Currently 3D gaming on PC is something of an expensive experiment, even for enthusiasts. Expensive from the standpoint of what you're getting right now for the money you put in.

Sure, it's only $200 for a pair of Nvidia 3D glasses w/ kit. About $400 for a 120Hz 1920x1080 LCD screen (seen 1680x1050 displays going for as low as $250), and about $300 for a decent current gen 3D capable VGA card(s) set up, which adds what, about $1000 or a little less to add 3D visuals? And the key benefit currently allows you to play current games with 3D vision. Games that were not originally coded to take advantage of the 3D visuals by incorporating them into game play.

So yeah, neat, but hardly compelling.

Maybe when 120Hz displays become the standard, but even when that happens, using 120Hz LCD panels isn't even ideal for 3D application due to the technology itself. A lot of users have been complaining about the smoothness of the display output (variances in refresh rates; google it) in 3D mode on the types of LCD panels currently available. DLP, plasma and OLED are all more suitable for 3D application, but all these display types are currently seldom used for desktop PCs. So either we need to start seeing better 120Hz LCDs or PC 3D gamers are going to want to switch to different display techs.

A lot of effort for what is currently pretty mediocre pay off.

But we'll see if it continues to take off. It just doesn't seem too compelling currently without the inclusion of 3D Blu Ray movies and 3D games designed to be played in 3D from initial concept.