The Glasses

The $12.95 package includes two sets of cardboard Red/Blue glasses. When Metabyte first sent me the package, these were the only glasses they had available. However, for $17.95 they now offer the package with the plastic frame glasses seen in this picture. The newer glasses offer a cleaner picture and are obviously more durable.

Performance

I tried the glasses with two games - Quake3 and Alice. I set the stereo option to 100% and fired up the game. Wow! It didn't look 3D at all.... 100% was way too high to start out. The images were totally separated and I was very confused. I backed the setting down to 50% and tried again. This was what I expected. The games truly did look 3D. After playing for twenty or so minutes, it looked even better. Aiming wasn't that difficult and I didn't even need the crosshair companion. I didn't notice a huge difference between the plastic and cardboard glasses. However, the plastic ones didn't seem to alter the color of the game as much as the cardboard ones did. One thing that is very important is to set the brightness up high in the game and dim the lights in the room. The darker the room the better. Now, I wouldn't want to use the glasses every time I gamed, but they are quite enjoyable for a one player adventure every once in a while. I even popped on my RumbleFX headphones and got the full 3D experience!

Conclusion

You really can't beat these things for thirteen bucks. Sure, the 3D effect isn't quite as powerful as shutter glasses. But, the 3D effect is there and it works good. I took an in-game screenshot of Quake 3 with the stereo driver enabled. You can click on the picture above to view it. Be warned, the picture is large. If you have a set of 3D glasses, you will be able to see the 3D effect. In addition, you can download a trial version of the software from Wicked3D's site. I would recommend you try it first to see if you will like it. I'm sure that most of you will.

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