In the past 12 months, 3D has become the new black in cinema with every major studio releasing at least one three-dimensional film, but for all our CG technology and on-screen wizardry, we’re still forced to cling to our lenticular goggles to see it with, as if you take them off you’re left with a movie that looks like the cameraman had the tremors. For a while that was also true in the relatively new arena of 3D gaming, luckily for most gamers appearing geeky was nothing new, but now (as MediaKick’s superb and very prolific E3 coverage has revealed) with the announcement of Nintendo’s 3DS device, providing a 3D gaming experience without having to look like Austin Powers seems to be the start of a whole new triple-dimensional revolution.

Providing a 3D image, or (to be insufferably pedantic) autosteroscopy, traditionally used specially adapted glasses which, most commonly through the use of colour filtering on anaglyph (red and cyan) images but more recentely through polarised lenses, block out one image of a 3D film, shot with two very similar but ever so slightly different angles, for each eye. As each eye receives a slightly different image, the brain attempts to marry the two angles into a comprehensible image and the effect is the appearance of depth.

However, this system has always depended on the ability to isolate one particular angle for one particular eye, relying on the glasses to do so. This is a perfectly fine trade-off for cinemas, where you go for the specific purpose of watching a movie and are in a suitably adapted environment to do so, but serious questions have been raised to the quality of 3D films in the home and how much people, who may only casually watch films, will want or use the 3D technology. For example, the increasing number of people who use the internet and watch TV or movies simultaneously suggests that, as 3D technology relies on peoples eyes remaining focused on the images, and behind filtering lenses, it would not be as successful or appealing as it has been in the cinema.

The same can be said for gaming, though it’s much harder to be multi-tasking whilst playing a video game (especially if you’re a man), and with the growth of so-called “casual games”, as you commonly see on the Nintendo Wii, making video games a casual pastime, ridding the world of these headache inducing specs seems like a good idea; the Nintendo 3DS is the first serious attempt at making that happen, by utilising ‘parallax barrier technology’. Parallax Barriers come in the form of a thin and (apparentely) transparent layer that is fitted in front of an LCD screen that is fitted with thin “slits” that filter out an angle to each side so that one eye sees only one angle and the 3D image is perceived. A massive drawback of this is that the full effect is only visible from a very precise angle with an extremely low margin of error, requiring anyone attempting to see a film in 3D to sit as though they are experiencing some manner of rectal insertion. With the growth of games, also announced at E3, to use movement controls, such as Microsoft’s Kinect, this is a totally opposite paradigm to the one sharply taking effect.

The recentely announced Nintendo 3DS uses the same parallax barrier on it’s upper screen to produce a three-dimensional image to the player, and carries all the limitations of the technology, though it does away with the glasses. From observation, no clear effort has been made by Nintendo to combat the disadvantages of using parallax barriers, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata insisting that the screen angle is perfectly suited for the way the average gamer would hold the device naturally, though this only mitigates the problem somewhat and the limitations are still very evidence. Although, a number of potential solutions, shown off by developers at E3 could be seen on later models of the 3DS; such as utilising the camera, face recognition algorithms and an automatically adjustable screen to constantly move the 3D screen to the correct angle as the player’s head (and thus angle of vision) moves.

It seems that 3D technology is continuing to develop just as any massively new innovation would, it has some limitations but looks very promising. Nintendo has jumped the gun a tad and released the 3DS almost, it seems, as an experiment and a “field test” would do wonders for accelerating the development and understanding of how 3D technology in gaming will be used. But for now, at least, the gamer is stuck with the glasses, unless they want to entirely boycott the upcoming motion-wars between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.