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CES 2010 brought a lot of 3D hype to both the movie and video game industries, as Sony and other TV manufacturers announced plans to release 3D TV's into our living rooms this summer. Sony also announced 2 firmware updates, one for 3D movies, one for 3D games, which will allow PS3 to be forward-compatible with all of this new 3D technology.
This left the nearly 38 million Xbox 360 owners wondering when or if they'd get such an update as well, because after all, real 3D in games is something we've all salivated over for ages (as well as those ugly VR helmets that would cost a fortune and are now pretty much obsolete). So, can the Xbox 360 do 3D? Let's take a look at the technical details.
First of all, we'll get to the fact that yes, there are 3D games on Xbox 360. That said, these games suffer from one big drawback. In order to create the 3D effect, it renders 2 sub-HD images which your eyes then combine into one 3D image. It cannot do full HD in 3D. In addition, the Xbox 360 only outputs video at a maximum of 60 frames per second, so only getting 30 frames per eye per second can lead to a headache after a while. I noticed this when trying 3D for the first time at E3 2006, and many reviewers who have tried Invincible Tiger at this year's E3 agree. I personally only got about 4-5 minutes to play Invincible Tiger, so I didn't have time for any headache to set in. That said, the lack of resolution was definitely noticable.
So what does it take to get real 3D that does not give you a headache? Well, having tried LCD shutter glasses running at frame rates above 60fps, I'm pretty well convinced that we have finally figured out a way to produce full color, HD, 3D images in the home that won't make your eyes bleed. In order to create this, you must be outputting your video at no less than 120fps. Being that HDMI 1.2 (which is found in Xbox 360) tops out at 1920×1200p at 60fps, the Xbox 360 finds itself very limited as to how fast it can send frames to the TV. Then you also have framebuffer issues. The Xbox 360 uses EDRAM as it's frame buffer, which it has 10Mb's of. A single 1080p frame occupies about 16mb's of space for both the front and back buffers, which requires some trickery just to get 360 to output in native 1080p at all. Even then, it's limited as to what it can do at that 1080p resolution. This is likely the reason we've seen more native 1080p games on the PS3. For those of you wondering, PS3 uses it's main video RAM as it's framebuffer, giving it 256mb's to work with. This presents disadvantages vs. EDRAM (the slower RAM speed makes effects like anti-aliasing much more costly from a performance point of view), but as you can see, also allows advantages like 3D and easier native 1080p.
How does the framebuffer effect 3D? Well, even at 720p with no anti-aliasing at all, you need at least 7mb of data to store one 720p frame. When you're only working with 10mb's for your frame buffer, you can see how difficult it can be to try to cram 2 720p frames (14mb) into a 10mb framebuffer to be processed in the exact same amount of time. It's like cramming the circular block into the square hole... don't even bother. So, without even taking into account that Xbox 360's HDMI 1.2 port just doesn't have the bandwidth, nor is it compatible with the new 3D TV's coming this summer, we can see that native 120fps 3D simply is not going to happen on Xbox 360. Not over HDMI 1.4 (the connection required for 3D on these new 3DTV's, and which PS3's HDMI 1.3 can be upgraded to with a firmware update), and not in HD even if hooked up to a specialized display over say, a VGA connection due to framebuffer bottlenecks.
OH NOEZ! 360 is teh doom3d!!!1!
Not exactly. While you won't be getting the 100% native HD 3D picture that the PS3 will offer, there are a number of 3D TV's out there which will upscale ANY game connected over ANY HDMI cable/port to 3D. While this only really works on certain games, most notably racing games which feature a fixed center character/object (the car) on a 3D plane that doesn't move much (the horizon), when used with those types of games, many who have tried it report that the 3D effect works well. The effect is essentially the 3D version of DVD upscaling. Just like with upscaling, you won't get Blu-Ray quality (or in this case, cinema 3D quality), but it definitely adds a sense of depth to the games it works best with. Also, you have the motionflow TV's that upscale frame rates. This tech could be applied to a 60fps 3D image coming from the 360 (30fps per eye), and then upscaled to a frame rate that won't induce headaches. Again, not the real deal, but for many, close enough.
Considering it came out a full year ahead of the PS3, it's a wonder that it has pretty much been able to come close to the PS3's available features the entire time, with the omission of Blu-Ray (though they did do HD-DVD). While few will disagree that PS3 has more raw power, the Xbox 360 has done a very good job of adapting itself to keeping up with, and in the case of online, exceeding the PS3. That said, we finally just now, 3 years into PS3's lifespan, are seeing features that the 360 simply cannot match. But in the end, it isn't all bad. 360 does have some 3D support, so you 360 only owners out there won't be left out in the cold when these 3DTV's start coming.
So, to summarize, 3D on the Xbox 360 is like PSN on the PS3... It's there (somewhat), it works, but it's just not up to par with the competition.
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