Get out your anaglyph glasses

You probably have a pair of these that were given away with a promotion. Perhaps when Channel 4 did their 3D night and you could pick them up from Sainsbury’s? Even if you don’t have a pair they are a couple of pounds on eBay.

And they have more uses than you might think*.

Taken useing IZ3D driver and DirectX Quake

I have been playing around with IZ3D. The free version of their driver allows you to add red/cyan Anaglyph to a lot of your games, allowing you to experience 3D without the expensive hardware. If you have a Nvidia graphics card you can also use their driver to get the same effect. I have found that the IZ3D one works better, but it depends on the game and the glasses you have.

GRID with IZ3D

Of course rendering like this does take up more processing power. With GRID I managed to get a very playable 40fps, but I get over 60 and use Vsync with the 3D off. Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter was unplayable at high “HD” settings though, needless to say I have not tried Crysis…

Rufus is quite scary in 3D

Adjusting the settings can give you a widely different 3D effect, the following shot has Just cause working very well in my opinion. One issue I did have with Just cause however is when it gets dark. There is too much blue in the picture and as a result you feel like you have gone blind in one eye, this is one area where polarised or active shuttered glasses win over anaglyph but with them come the cost.

Of course it only works on DirectX games (though OpenGL is supposed to be supported) other games just run in 2D as you would expect them to with it off. Some games will simply crash when you try and load them in 3D, Half-Life and Deus Ex, despite having DirectX modes would not work. Some games are slightly glitchy, the shadows in Blood Bowl seemed to be depressions in the pitch. These are problems that I would expect to see even if you were using a more expensive hardware method to view your 3D, the way the two images are rendered will be the same after all.

I would hold off before buying a £600 monitor, but if you have some red/cyan glasses you might as well give them a go.

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*Yes I checked and there is anaglyph porn.