[January 12, 2010] CES 2010 aims to resurrect 3-D [BC-VID-WELLPLAYED:MCT] Tweet (McClatchy-Tribune News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LAS VEGAS _ Las Vegas is a city of smoke and mirrors. It's appropriate then that the biggest new innovation of Sin City's Consumer Electronics Show this year is itself a bit of visual slight of hand: 3-D. Giving images a sense of substance and heft have long been a goal in video gaming. More than once, that has meant playing around with the idea of pumping graphics at gamers through glasses or peripherals meant to deliver an extra dimension. But there's a reason they've never taken off. Often the 3-D tech required wearing glasses to work, putting one more barrier between a gamer and the experience. What's different this time around? Very little. Speaking to a gathering of media at last week's Consumer Electronics Show, Sir Howard Stringer, chairman, CEO and president of Sony Corporation, detailed the interest the multi-faceted company has in 3-D, spending an hour pitching the technology and new Sony 3-D TVs to the crowd. He showed us a Jimi Hendrix concert in 3-D, sea turtles swimming in 3-D and even brought singer Taylor Swift up to sing and be recorded and instantly rebroadcast in 3-D. The heads of IMAX and Discovery promised us that the time was right for 3-D on TV. The head of ESPN took to the stage to explain how FIFA and PGA were getting the 3-D treatment. And it will be Sony's video game console, the PlayStation 3, that will bolster these efforts. "The PlayStation 3 will be our foothold for bringing more 3-D into the home," Stringer said. "All of our existing PS3 units will be firmware upgradeable." One upgrade to the console will allow the PS3 to display video games in 3-D on supported TVs, another will upgrade the Blu-ray player to support 3-D, he said. The mammoth CES Sony booth included playable versions of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Super Stardust HD. While Gran Turismo's 3-D visual added a bit of flair to the game, when seen in 3-D, the high-speed racing title seemed to have a few visual issues. Super Stardust HD, on the other hand, used the 3-D tech to give a sense of surprising depth to the Asteroids-like space shooter. The ship and the planet it floated over rotated in layers of graphics that appeared to drop away from the screen. But neither of the games playable in Sony's booth was built from the ground up for the new technology. That is coming, though. "We are going to announce a (3-D game) lineup soon," said Sony hardware marketing director John Koller. "The first and third-party lineup is going to be substantial, it's a pretty robust list of games ... new IP, new franchises but also existing franchises (that) really kind of place the player in the game." Sony may have been the only game maker at CES with so direct an interest in 3-D gaming, but they weren't the only ones showing off 3-D video games. Computer games have been chasing the 3-D dream for decades using an odd collection of video cards, peripherals and special glasses. This year's CES included a new offering from graphics card maker NVIDIA that can be used by game developers to add 3-D to a game. Capcom's CES showing included a PC version of upcoming third-person shooter Dark Void. In the game, players zip through an alternate dimension shooting robotic aliens. Adding 3-D to the mix gives the game an almost nausea-inducing level of realism. Many of the television manufacturers packed into the Las Vegas Convention Center also used video games to show off their television's ability to deliver 3-D video. There were TVs showing off Gears of War 2, Batman Arkham Asylum and a video game based on Avatar. Some TVs used polarization, some used alternate-frame sequencing, some could add 3-D to any video. But every one of them from LG's to Panasonic's to Sony's technology, television or computer, have at least one similarity: They all require the viewer to wear glasses. Over the course of the week I tried on a dozen different 3-D glasses. While some were more comfortable than others, I can't imagine wanting to wear any of them on a regular bases. More importantly, I can't imagine that my wife and my son would be willing to pop on a pair of glasses every time they sit down to watch television. It's one thing to wear glasses while sitting still for a 2 {-hour movie at a theater, but introducing such an unreasonable bit of technology into the home seems like a bad idea. It seems like an even worse idea when you consider that the 2010 3-D televisions could become obsolete in 2011 when Phillips hopes to introduce 3-D televisions that don't require glasses. Diehard early adopter that I am, I think I'll be sitting this one out. ___ Brian Crecente is managing editor of Kotaku.com, a video-game Web site owned by Gawker Media. Join in the discussion at kotaku.com/tag/well-played. ___ (c) 2010, Kotaku.com (Gawker Media). Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. KeyWords:: BC-VID-WELLPLAYED:MCT BC VID WELLPLAYED MCT [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]