Conclusions
With all of the qualifications, caveats, gotchas, and frustrations I've expressed over GeForce 3D Vision, you probably have a good sense already that this technology just isn't ready for prime time yet. Few games work well enough to make it worth buying, and from a purely value-oriented standpoint, the math is brutal. Not only do you have to buy the glasses for $199 and a display for $349 or more, but you'll also need quite a bit more GPU power in order to keep 3D Vision performance up to snuff. Then, whenever you're not playing games, you'll be stuck with a relatively low-resolution, low-quality monitor. For somewhere in the same basic price neighborhood, you could instead pick up a 27" or 30" LCD, with an IPS or VA panel and much better color reproduction, and get higher frame rates with a cheaper graphics card. That's easily a better deal than a 3D Vision setup, no question about it.

Yet I can't help but feel sympathetic to what Nvidia is doing here. When I first saw this technology working properly at its full potential, I was struck by the fact that the GPU is already doing the math necessary to create truly 3D virtual worlds. Yeah, sure, we all know that, I suppose. But seeing it in action, in the third dimension, really drives the point home. The fact that a GPU maker would want to foster the development of 3D display technology makes perfect sense. The visual computing ecosystem would benefit greatly if this sort of thing became universally available and broadly compatible with existing applications.

So I hope Nvidia sticks with this. I'm still not sure whether or not they could get a large segment of the PC gamer population to embrace the prospect of wearing enormous plastic glasses when they play games, even if it worked perfectly. But if that's ever going to happen, Nvidia will have to persist in working with game developers on 3D Vision compatibility for the next year or so, at least. With luck, perhaps we can revisit this technology, say, next Christmas and find a host of new games that offer as compelling an experience as Left 4 Dead does now. In the interim, we'll have to settle for 3D Zoey, which is quite a bit better than nothing.