After several early hands-on sessions and an enthusiastic preview in our 3D: Coming to a Screen Near You feature (see PC Authority August 2009, page 80), a full GeForce 3D Vision kit finally arrived this month, sending the gamers among us into overdrive.

To experience games in glorious 3D you need two key elements: the GeForce 3D Vision set of battery-powered glasses and emitter, and a monitor capable of refreshing its image at 120Hz. Samsung and ViewSonic have produced the first two 120Hz-capable 22in desktop LCDs, and it's the former we have here.

The Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ is a fairly standard 22in LCD in most respects: 1680 x 1050 resolution, 300cd/m2 brightness and 1000:1 contrast ratio, along with Samsung's curved design and some rather odd flowers etched into the rear.

But that 120Hz refresh rate is the vital component, since it allows 3D Vision to produce a sufficiently smooth image to keep things headache-free.

Unlike standard polarised 3D glasses, in which the monitor has a filter over the screen to split the image for each eye, Nvidia's active shutter glasses do the hard work themselves.

The 3D Vision driver produces a slightly different perspective for each eye and rapidly alternates them onscreen. A signal - sent to the glasses using an infrared unit - tells each lens to open and close in sync, so each eye sees only its intended perspective at 60Hz. The brain does the rest to produce the 3D image.

The glasses are necessarily a little chunkier than traditional polarised specs, in order to house the battery and the USB port for charging, but as you'll get 40 hours out of one charge you needn't worry about being tethered to your PC.

The eyes-on experience

Setting up the system was as simple as installing the 3D Vision driver over the top of the standard GeForce driver, and plugging everything in. Many of the latest games are fully supported, with others rated Good, Fair or Poor.

A full list of compatible games can be found on Nvidia's website, and every game displays a status message on startup containing recommended tweaks to the settings.

Far Cry 2, rated Excellent on Nvidia's list, works brilliantly if you follow Nvidia's advice and disable bloom. Backgrounds come to life, proving far away objects are more than just flat window-dressing, while characters, vehicles and water are all rendered with believable depth. Only a few clouds noticeably fail to translate, but they don't spoil the effect.

Games rated Good by Nvidia prove the real test, though. Burnout Paradise works well, although there are noticeably fewer foreground objects to really show off the effect; it's more of an immersive world than any whizz-bang scenes that take your breath away.

Mirror's Edge failed to run at all in 3D on our test machine, although in previous hands-on tests we found it similar to Burnout in its immersive feel.

But then there are games such as Crysis. Put simply, it's unplayable in 3D. The Nvidia advice upon loading is that it's rated Good, but that clouds and water reflections don't render correctly; in play this means water is horribly blocky and stands out a mile from the environment.

Considering water features so prominently in Crysis it's a real deal-breaker, and that's before you see the flat muzzle flashes that simply don't work. Call of Duty: World at War has similar glitches, and the big problem is that even a small glitch in a title rated Good, if common enough in-game, is enough to totally kill the 3D effect.

Behind the scenes

So when it works properly - and compatibility should improve with every new game release - it's superb. But with two images being produced, we were keen to see just how much extra strain the 3D effect puts on the PC itself.

Nvidia is very clear that you'll need Vista or Windows 7, a dual-core CPU and at minimum a GeForce 8800 GT, 9600 GT or GT 140, all of which are roughly equivalent across the graphics card generations.

But we'd recommend a hefty gaming PC to do 3D Vision justice. Nvidia had told us previously to expect around a 50% drop in frame rates with 3D enabled, and that proved not far off. The precise figures varied between 60% and 40% slower than non-3D performance, so many gamers will need to lower settings or buy a faster Nvidia card, which is surely what the company is hoping with this launch.

The technology isn't yet available

at retail in Australia, and neither Viewsonic nor Samsung could confirm dates for 120Hz monitors, either. But this is a new technology aimed at early adopters, and once you see the results with your own eyes it's a highly tempting proposition.

Yes, it has its early flaws, but with Nvidia wielding such clout in the world of gaming we can see GeForce 3D Vision making steady progress towards the mainstream.

Second Opinion: Mike Jennings

True 3D gaming is undoubtedly a tantalising prospect but, having given it a thorough going over, I think Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision ultimately fails to deliver.

Don't get me wrong: in some games, it's fantastic. Far Cry 2 offers an immersive jungle crammed with detail, and GRID's in-car view looks great. Call of Duty: World at War includes superb atmospheric touches, including droplets of water seeming to run down the Samsung screen; the cars of Burnout Paradise look chunky and well-sculpted.

But then there's the list of games that might as well be played on a regular screen: Crysis looked terrible, Left 4 Dead showed barely any improvement, and Fallout 3 resorted to a couple of z-axis planes - one for your HUD and weapon, and another for the world itself, which was hardly affected by Nvidia's expensive technology.

Several vehicles in Call of Duty flickered, ruining the 3D effect, and Fallout 3's clouds and lens flare, which usually looks so convincing, seemed broken. It's far from certain if developers will patch their older games to improve support with the new technology, either.

And then there are the glasses, which can make games look as if they're being played through sunglasses if you don't dim the lights around you, even with the monitor's brightness at maximum.

I'm normally the first of the team to revere new gaming gadgets as they arrive in the Labs, but this time round I'm surprised to admit I'm not too impressed.

While early adopters may feel that these problems are a small price to pay for getting hold of this bleeding-edge technology, it seems too high a price for something that works sporadically at best with many popular titles. Things will look up as more new titles properly implement the effects, but until widespread support is on offer for most of the games I want to play, you can count me out.