Nvidia 3D Vision is a technology developed by Nvidia, [1] [2] a multinational corporation specializing in developing graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices. This technology allows games, movies, and pictures to be displayed in stereoscopic 3D. [3] [4] [5]
To play the following in 3D, as well as convert over 650 existing games, [6] requires Nvidia 3D Vision Glasses with a 120 Hz monitor, or red and cyan glasses with slower monitors, Windows Vista or later, enough system memory (2GB recommended), a compatible CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2 or higher) and a compatible Nvidia video card (some GeForce 200 series ones or later). [7] Since releasing the technology in 2009, by the end of 2013, only about 40 games [8] appeared certified as "3D Vision Ready", while others have noticeable defects in the 3D image.
In addition to NVIDIA's official list of titles, there is an independently developed stereoscopic 3D games database that is put together by end users. Featuring a rules based certification grade and numeric Quality Assurance score, GameGrade3D (GG3D) details required game settings and expected visual anomalies (if any).
Nvidia Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It is a software and fabless company which designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is also a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software.
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia and marketed for the performance market. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market, and later diversification of the product line covered all tiers of the PC graphics market, ranging from cost-sensitive GPUs integrated on motherboards, to mainstream add-in retail boards. Most recently, GeForce technology has been introduced into Nvidia's line of embedded application processors, designed for electronic handhelds and mobile handsets.
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, and adding hardware motion compensation for MPEG-2 video. It offered a notably large leap in 3D PC gaming performance and was the first fully Direct3D 7-compliant 3D accelerator.
An active shutter 3D system is a technique of displaying stereoscopic 3D images. It works by only presenting the image intended for the left eye while blocking the right eye's view, then presenting the right-eye image while blocking the left eye, and repeating this so rapidly that the interruptions do not interfere with the perceived fusion of the two images into a single 3D image.
The GeForce 8 series is the eighth generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units. The third major GPU architecture developed by Nvidia, Tesla represents the company's first unified shader architecture.
The GeForce 9 series is the ninth generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units, the first of which was released on February 21, 2008. The products are based on an updated Tesla microarchitecture, adding PCI Express 2.0 support, improved color and z-compression, and built on a 65 nm process, later using 55 nm process to reduce power consumption and die size.
The GeForce 200 series is a series of Tesla-based GeForce graphics processing units developed by Nvidia.
The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) forming part of its Radeon-brand, based on the 40 nm process. Some models are based on TeraScale 2 (VLIW5), some on the new TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) introduced with them.
Nvidia 3D Vision is a discontinued stereoscopic gaming kit from Nvidia which consists of LC shutter glasses and driver software which enables stereoscopic vision for any Direct3D game, with various degrees of compatibility. There have been many examples of shutter glasses. Electrically controlled mechanical shutter glasses date back to the middle of the 20th century. LCD shutter glasses appeared in the 1980s, one example of which is Sega's SegaScope. This was available for Sega's game console, the Master System. The NVIDIA 3D Vision gaming kit introduced in 2008 made this technology available for mainstream consumers and PC gamers.
The GeForce 500 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, as a refresh of the Fermi based GeForce 400 series. It was first released on November 9, 2010 with the GeForce GTX 580.
The GeForce 600 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, first released in 2012. It served as the introduction of the Kepler architecture. It is succeeded by the GeForce 700 series.
The GeForce 900 series is a family of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, succeeding the GeForce 700 series and serving as the high-end introduction to the Maxwell microarchitecture, named after James Clerk Maxwell. They are produced with TSMC's 28 nm process.
The GeForce 10 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, initially based on the Pascal microarchitecture announced in March 2014. This design series succeeded the GeForce 900 series, and is succeeded by the GeForce 16 series and GeForce 20 series using the Turing microarchitecture.
A stereoscopic video game is a video game which uses stereoscopic technologies to create depth perception for the player by any form of stereo display. Such games should not be confused with video games that use 3D game graphics on a mono screen, which give the illusion of depth only by monocular cues but lack binocular depth information.
G-Sync is a proprietary adaptive sync technology developed by Nvidia aimed primarily at eliminating screen tearing and the need for software alternatives such as Vsync. G-Sync eliminates screen tearing by allowing a video display's refresh rate to adapt to the frame rate of the outputting device rather than the outputting device adapting to the display, which could traditionally be refreshed halfway through the process of a frame being output by the device, resulting in screen tearing, or two or more frames being shown at once. In order for a device to use G-Sync, it must contain a proprietary G-Sync module sold by Nvidia. AMD has released a similar technology for displays, called FreeSync, which has the same function as G-Sync yet is royalty-free.
ZOTAC Technology Limited is a computer hardware manufacturer founded and based in Hong Kong. The company specializes in producing video cards (GPUs), mini PCs, solid-state drives, motherboards, gaming computers and other computer accessories. All its products are manufactured in the PC Partner factories in Dongguan City, China.
GeForce Now is the brand used by Nvidia for its cloud gaming service. The Nvidia Shield version of GeForce Now, formerly known as Nvidia Grid, launched in beta in 2013, with Nvidia officially unveiling its name on September 30, 2015. The subscription service provided users with unlimited access to a library of games hosted on Nvidia servers for the life of the subscription, being delivered to subscribers through streaming video. Certain titles were also available via a "Buy & Play" model. This version was discontinued in 2019, and transitioned to a new version of the service that enabled Shield users to play their own games.
The GeForce 20 series is a family of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia. Serving as the successor to the GeForce 10 series, the line started shipping on September 20, 2018, and after several editions, on July 2, 2019, the GeForce RTX Super line of cards was announced.
The GeForce 16 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, based on the Turing microarchitecture, announced in February 2019. The 16 series, commercialized within the same timeframe as the 20 series, aims to cover the entry-level to mid-range market, not addressed by the latter. As a result, the media have mainly compared it to AMD's Radeon RX 500 series of GPUs.
