Yesterday I had a chance to view an in-game, real time demo of Resident Evil 5 running on the PC using nVidia’s 3D Vision technology. The barrier to entry is still pretty steep, though, requiring the following:

• Compatible nVidia GeForce Graphics Card
• 3D Vision-Ready Display (120 Hz)
• nVidia 3D Vision Kit
• PC running Windows Vista or Windows 7
• 3D-enabled game

If you already have a compatible GeForce card and at least Windows Vista, nVidia’s suggest option will run you $600. So, is it worth the price?

This is a different 3D than you may be used to if you've been checking out some of the recently released 3D films. This isn’t about things popping out of the screen at you. This is about depth of field and being able to tell how far away each object is at a glance.

Capcom’s implementation of 3D in the PC version of Resident Evil 5 is very impressive. The depth of field is very detailed, with multiple levels of depth. This isn’t just foreground/background. Hell, even the background has different levels. You’ll be able to clearly place each building in the background. As for combat, it helps to prioritize closer targets at a glance, but it isn’t a completely different experience from looking at a simulated 3D picture in 2D.

You’ll also be taking a significant framerate hit. The demo I saw ran around 30fps with frequent dips to around 22-25fps. Such is the side-effect of rendering the extra visual information required for the glasses to interpret a 3D picture.

It’s not quite worth the cost of entry at this time, but it was certainly impressive. It spoke to the possibilities of the technology in the future. Could this be what the next-generation of hardware will be built around?