Upcoming Upscale PC Sales Uptick? Q&A with Jon Peddie

[metalqueen]

Jon's opinion of NVIDIA has sure changed since his debate with Neil.

Upcoming Upscale PC Sales Uptick? Q&A with Jon Peddie

By Erik Sherman


BNET:What is the emerging compelling technology?

JP: The newest thing in gaming is stereovision, introduced at CES by Nvidia. They weren’t the first, but they productized it better and their solution, which will be the dominant solution, involves new monitors with a refresh rate of 120 hertz. It’s two images side by side with special glasses. One eye sees one image for 1/60 of a second and the other eye sees another image at 1/60 of a second, and you get the stereoscopic effect. But you have to buy a new monitor. These new monitors are being very aggressively priced at about $300, so it won’t be a special pain to get one of these new monitors. That is very affordable, and I think it’s one of the things we’ll be seeing as a stimulus as well.

BNET:Who else is doing it?

JP: ATI also has it, but Nvidia is a stronger marketing company. Their technologies are almost exactly the same. Another company called iz3D, which is working with ATI. They can work with Nvidia as well. They have two LCD panels, one superimposed on top of the other. Each panel is running at 60 hertz. They have them polarized, one horizontally and one vertically. Then you wear glasses. Their monitor is I think in the $400 price range.

BNET: Do the games require special programming?

JP: The stereographic techniques are extracted at the driver level, and that’s something that the graphics manufacturers control. Because they’re all 3D models, making an offset isn’t that difficult. There are tricky things to it in terms of depth and certain types of objects not really in the game, like siting crosshairs. The point is that the game developers didn’t have to do anything. The drivers today have made all the games stereographics-capable, but in the future, which is two years away from us, the new games will be designed from the ground up with stereovision in mind. We’ll also have a larger installed base of these monitors.

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[Neil]

I think Jon's math wasn't quoted properly. An NVIDIA S-3D compatible monitor is about $300 to $400 US, but the required glasses are an additional $200 US.

However, it doesn't matter. It's good to see Jon onside with these technologies. I just discovered recently that he ran another article in February with some kind words about MTBS:

http://jonpeddie.com/blogs/i_love_stere ... reovision/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just to be clear, we don't only review iZ3D games (as Jon suggests), and yes, NVIDIA is supposed to send us samples to help facilitate our testing process.

Regards,
Neil