What that crosshair aims at in one eye, isn't what it aims at in the other eye, and where you actually shoot is directly inbetween the two different things each eye thinks is being targeted. This works just great for 2D but doing this for each of our views leads to a problem. In most games where you have to aim, your crosshair is a little 2D image slapped onto the final scene right in the middle of the screen. One of the other ways things can go wrong is because the game developer didn't design the game for 3D and that can cause some gameplay problems with some things which are incredibly common tasks in gaming, such as aiming. Since the games don't know this is going on, some of the ways they might do things don't work so well with this technique, which is where things start to go wrong. By default what they aim to do is move the camera a little bit to make an image for one eye, and then a little bit the other way for the other eye. IZ3D and TriDef Ignition both understand that language, and that allows them to get involved in the rendering process. Direct X is sort of like a programming language for drawing things on screen.
So, how do they work? Basically most PC games use the same graphics API: Direct X.
IZ3D gives you way more options but it definitely isn't as user friendly. If you can only afford one, and you're looking for the easier experience TriDef is easier to get up and running and still offers a lot of customisation. There are a few key reasons why I feel IZ3D is still relevant. TriDef 3D has been getting updated a bit more often lately, but that isn't to say that newer games will always work better on it than IZ3D. Since some games often work a bit better on one than the other, having both means you can always get the better experience, that's why as we start looking at games that don't feature native support that I'll be letting you know how both options work out. The most obvious reason to get both, is because how well they work on any given game varies quite a bit. Personally I think it's affordable to get both, especially since AMD owners can run a validation tool to get 50% off the standard asking price, so lets take a closer look at why it's worth having both.
In other words, if you have a display that can show a 3D image from a Playstation 3, you can use these pieces of software to play PC games in 3D on that display.īoth cost about the same, and both have their own strengths and drawbacks.
The third is only available to Nvidia owners and isn't something I can currently look into, but I'm hoping to give it a spin in the near future.īoth of the ones we're going to look at today let owners of modern AMD graphics cards (HD5xxx series and newer) output in proper framepacked 3D.
The two we'll be taking a quick look at are IZ3D (pronounced I Zee 3D) and TriDef 3D Ignition. There are currently three options that allow you to try and play any Direct X game in 3D. While some PC games like Dirt 3, Sonic Generations and others feature native support for 3D most games currently don't.