Gamers are about to gain where TV viewers are missing

It has long been established that the vast majority of TV consumers are reluctant to use special glasses in order to enjoy 3D content. That's a given, and autosteoscopy is just around the corner for that purpose. But there still is a massive market of gadget seekers, who are not shy about adopting a new accessory - gamers!

Gaming mega-brand Sony, which is working diligently on providing the mentioned glasses-free 3D screens, has produced the ultimate 3D display system for its huge crowd of gamer-followers. Sony's HMZ-T1 takes the experssion "3D glasses" to a whole new level. The glasses are actually your screen. Or more accurately, your screens. Each eye is assigned an individual, high-definition OLED screen. This set-up is hardly innovative as it was used extensively during the 90's virtual reality technology, but as anachronistic as it may be it has a couple of major advantages over current 3D viewing formats. First and foremost - as each eye is exposed to one chamber at all times the separation between the different images to each eye is static. It does not require filters or flickering etc., in order to maintain that separation properly. This contributes to a higher picture quality but also might reduce undesired side-effects such as head-ache, nausea, etc.

The second, also important feature is the permanent viewing angle this set-up provides. In any other format, the viewers' position in relative to the screen is taken into account. With a headset, the viewer can't change his eye position relative to the screen, only to different areas of the screen. As the Nintendo 3DS demonstrates perfectly, skewed angles hurt a 3D effect that is remarkable from a direct angle. So Sony has all these elements in place, and might have a very good product on its hands.

Intended to integrate with Sony's PlayStation 3 as well as the company's Blue-Ray players, this intriguing product is still a few months away from distribution in the European markets (though Sony accepts pre-orders at £799.00). Take a look at the clip below to get a better sense of the experience encompassed in this cool piece of equipment:

I wonder if Microsoft & Nintendo are planning similar devices for their respective successful gaming-consols. If the 3D experience is indeed as good as reported, it might be the next big thing in gaming since the appearance of the kynetic systems.