The Future of Stereo 3D Part I: Nvidia Geforce 3D Vision

A Closer Look at the 3D Vision Kit

Upon first glance, you wouldn’t be blamed if you thought that the 3D Vision shutter glasses were in fact some new designer sunglasses. They are extremely light and a bit bulkier than your run of the mill sunglasses but remember; they pack a ton of technology into their svelte frame. Another design queue which will probably tip you off that these aren’t sunglasses is the small bulge next to the left-hand lens which houses the IR receiver. Remember, these are wireless glasses so the IR receiver acts as a form of data port so the glasses can communicate with the emitter.


Basically, the leftmost portion of the shutter glasses’ frame holds the electronics as well as the battery pack. In the picture on the left, you can see that there is a small on / off button as well as an LED that displays the charge level. It should be noted that the bulge on the frame looks like it will hit the temple area of your head but it actually clears it by a wide margin.


The charge indicator LED has three states: green which signifies that the glasses have more than 3 hours of charge remaining, red to indicate low battery and off which means you will be scrambling to plug the glasses in. For those of you wondering, the glasses WILL function while charging.


Charging is done via a mini USB port on the underside of the glasses. Believe it or not, even though Nvidia doesn’t provide a wall charger my old Motorola V3 Razr charger worked fine with these but since it isn’t sanctioned by Nvidia, we really can’t recommend it.


The IR emitter is small enough that it will seamlessly blend into any setup you may have (it is only about 2” in height) and its glossy black finish makes it look like a high-end piece of AV equipment. Its front is devoid of any frills other than a small button with an Nvidia logo on it. This button can be used to turn the Stereo 3D effect on or off in real-time even when you are in the middle of gaming.

Meanwhile, the back of the unit holds a small wheel for on the fly depth adjustment along with a USB plug and a port for you to plug in the VESA 3-pin connector. According to Nvidia, it is important to plug the emitter into a USB port which is able to produce a sufficient amount of power. Believe it or not the unit would not work when plugged into the USB 2.0 port on the outside of my Gigabyte 3D Aurora case but was able to work without an issue when plugged directly into the motherboard’s rear USB port.