I have spoken in the past here about the importance of immersion in game playing, the suspension of disbelief, and how 3D gaming gives us a quantum shift in the quality of that immersion. When you try a properly executed 3D game the experience is deeply impressive. It is like going to the theatre for the first time after a life of watching television.

Which brings us to the NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses for the PC. Let’s get over the problems first. The box of equipment you get from NVIDIA costs $199, but you get a lot of technology for your money. It also only works with certain high end televisions and certain high end video cards, but these are technically required as they need to, effectively, display twice as much information.

The glasses work actively by switching off vision alternately in each eye whilst presenting left and right images alternately from the television. There is a full, in depth review here. The effect and level of immersion has met with rave reviews from everyone who has tried them. This really is a big leap forward in the gaming experience. And the really brilliant news is that this system already works with 350 different games.

What will be even more impressive will be when this 3D technology is combined with the Microsoft Natal gesture interface. Then you will have 3D input into a game that you are watching in 3D. A big step towards the holodeck experience.