Remember back when 3D TVs, movies, live sporting events, and glasses were a thing? Yeah, well, Nvidia realises you don’t either, and as a result, it’s pulling support for 3D Vision, its platform for gaming with 3D glasses.
According to Nvidia, 3D diehards will get the last drivers for 3D Vision in April with Release 418. That will supposedly carry through until April 2020, but there won’t be any further support going forward. That also impacts gaming on 3D TVs, as Nvidia will bundle 3DTV Play with the Release 418. Meanwhile, the 3D Vision Video Player app will be available through the end of 2019, but not after.
3D entertainment has been on a slow march toward death for a long while — Nvidia just happens to be one of the few stragglers. Part of it is that, for gaming, VR headsets have become more affordable and accessible. Likewise, 3D TVs mostly bit the dust in 2016, due in part because 3D glasses were a cumbersome and expensive accessory for a largely unnecessary feature.
Plus, not all manufacturers used the same standards for 3D glasses, and buying a 3D-capable Blu-Ray player was also a hassle. As for 3D broadcasts, not even 3D Olympics was worth the effort, and lacklustre adoption led broadcasters like ESPN to ditch the format entirely.
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6 responses to “Nvidia Will End Support For Its 3D Glasses, An Incredible Technology You Definitely Use”
Good, I do not know why they keep bundling the 3D vision drivers with normal graphics drivers anyway.
It should have been a separate download for those that wanted it.
Yeah if this means the end of the 3D Vision shortcut getting put on my desktop everytime I update the driver then I’m very much in favour.
Crap on it you may, but playing Skyrim in perfect 3D 2 days after release was awesome. PC GTA 5 and 2013 Tomb Raider along with it’s sequel were also spectacular. Dev support was thin on the ground but there was a small dedicated community attached with community patches for hundreds of games.
I wish they would open it up now so that VR could use the damn thing for older games. Only having the anaglyphic mode available sucks.
I miss glasses-free 3D monitors. I had an old Alienware laptop with one which was amazing.
Just didn’t get enough software support. But WoW was brilliant 🙂
The only game I ever played in 3D was the first Tomb Raider reboot. Played the PC version on a Samsung 3D TV. Was a totally amazing experience. I never did watch a 3D movie on it, just felt weird being so close to the monitor etc.
Then the monitor died and I never bothered to get a 3D replacement.