If you've been to your local movie theater lately you've probably noticed a resurgence in 3D films with the biggest blockbuster so far being Pixar's "Up" and the band U2 even releasing a concert film entirely in 3D with many more on the way. Some television shows and even sports games have even been broadcast in 3D. Luckily the technology has come a long way in the years since it last fadeda way and things are looking better than ever. This may not make for better content necessarily, but there is definitely a new major push from film and television studios to market this and get 3D in their products.

When 3D glasses were popular video game technology was brand new and nothing more than a few pixels running across the screen. Obviously games have come light years since then with games such as Crysis offering photorealistic quality graphics and massive immersive 3D worlds. Nvidia, the other major player in the graphics world, seeks to also ride this new 3D wave with their Nvidia 3D Vision technology this time bringing gamers into the current 3D craze.

I'm definitely one to keep up with the latest tech, it may not be always what's powering my system or what I use at home, but technology news I follow daily and obviously write about. Yet somehow Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision went under my radar likely due to many new AMD products being launched at the same time such as Phenom II, Socket AM3 motherboards, and new graphics cards from ATI. I also hadn't read of it in any recent reviews and to be fair to my self, we haven't received as much Nvidia hardware for review lately as AMD. It's fair to say then that I had no bias or expectations for Nvidia 3D Vision coming into a meeting recently at QuakeCon and was a little surprised to see the 3D glasses they were showing off which I had heard of but hadn't seen anyone use as of yet.

We kicked things off with a game that has received rave reviews lately, Eidos's Batman: Arkham Asylum, which currently has over 90% score on average. The game is a third-person action-stealth game developed by Rocksteady out for consoles now and the PC in two more weeks and looks to be one of surprise hits of the year.

As soon as the game loaded the first thing I noticed was how Batman's cape trails him perfectly when he runs and leaps out from the screen at you. The cowl and the flowing cape are some of the iconic symbols of Batman and here they're done excellently. Batman also has a variety of gadgets at his disposable to take out fiends and the in-game heads-up display is perfectly removed from the rest of the scene to give depth. It is obvious this game has been tweaked heavily and is an excellent showcase for Nvidia's technology. During some moments you do come out of the 3D experience from the pre-rendered cinematics but for the most part the 3D is incredibly immersive and exciting. I remember moving back a bit as a bolt flied towards the screen as Batman removed a grate to sneak around Arkham. That seems like a minor detail or not very exciting but in action it is very, very cool.

As exciting as it was to watch, Arkham Asylum was only demoed to me and I didn't get any hands-on time to try it out in 3D. When I picked up Resident Evil 5 on my own things really got fun. I had played the demo previously on the XBox 360 and this was the same section that I played with Nvidia 3D Vision on the PC. I definitely had fun with the game, though I'm more a first-person shooter fan, it didn't quite pull me in to try the full game on the XBox. This same section of the game played with 3D was right away much more intense. These glasses definitely work and can make a very good game that much more exciting when playing. Not only did zombies pop out the screen but my character had definite space and everything had an extra level of definition to it that you just can't get watching a 2D screen. And since Resident Evil 5 uses a lot of in-game cinematics they also looked fantastic. It might be hard to believe but I think immersive is the key word for this technology when it works, it really gives you a much better feeling for what's going on in the game world. Unfortunately I can't recall many specific  graphics details from my experience but I can say it worked and was a blast to play. At no time did I experience headaches or nausea seen with other 3D systems. Resident Evil 5 is launched for the PC also a few weeks from now and seems to be a very good port.