The first and most important is feature is support for any game that uses Direct 3D. This is a great advance in this technology but further enhancement is still needed. The important factor to remember is that we are always seeing progress and that means that only time is holding it back. In the future, these glasses will need to support all the API's that exist to achieve maximum acceptability. They need to support OpenGL for sure because that is an immense and extensively used API. It would also be nice if they supported Glide, but 3dfx would probably sue them. My personal opinion is that Glide will die out unless major improvements are made, so really, support for Glide isn't needed.

Now, let's talk about the next thing that I think is holding back these glasses and may continue to do so for a long time. That issue is that each company's glasses will currently only work with their graphics cards. If you do not own this company's graphics cards then it is a major investment for a decent enhancement in games. In the future, even if it makes a big difference in games, people may not consider it worth the investment of putting more money into their computer. Some people may also have a computer that is non-upgradeable or they don't want to mess with having someone install a new one. They are afraid the installation guy will screw it up - unlikely but it does happen. Once these glasses support everyone's graphics card then that will open up a huge market that has previously been shut off because of companies developing this technology for only their own graphics cards.

Once these glasses support Open GL and Direct 3D, work with any graphics card, and make games a lot more realistic, look for this market to explode.

Note: Since I first wrote this article, the above has changed. Elsa's 3D Revelator Glasses are now compatible with almost all of the graphics cards out there. That is a gigantic plus for this technology and Elsa's glasses. Expect their glasses to be a hot commodity as they were a greatly need facelift for this technology.

by Kevin Perko

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