14 DAY TRIAL // When some technology appears to start gaining popularity, companies are usually skeptical and very careful about taking their chances on the nascent market. On the one hand, those that play their cards right usually end up in very favorable positions and, of course, richer. On the other hand, it takes a single misstep, a marketing tactical error or an inept product, to make life hard for any IT company. Such feelings have arisen as a result of 3D, but ATI, at least, seems to think that the future is bright for this display mode.
It should probably be mentioned that 3D, in itself, is not exactly a new technology. It has been around for many years, in fact, but the number of film-making studios willing to invest the time and money needed for a 3D title was rather low. This began to change after the 3D productions that had debuted over the past six months and, also, with the emergence of 3D TV broadcasts.
In the field of PCs, NVIDIA has had a technology known as 3D Vision for some time, which converts games and videos into stereoscopic 3D, while ATI has no such solution. This would normally imply that the latter doesn't have much faith in the trend. However, the situation, according to X-bit Labs, is completely the opposite. Apparently, the outfit does see 3D as very promising and believes that the only reason it hasn't ramped up quicker is the ongoing need for 3D glasses. Moving forward, AMD hopes to develop a stereoscopic 3D solution of its own.
“I feel graphics technology is now powerful enough to drive an incredible S3D experience. The big question is whether it will have mass market appeal while glasses remain a requirement. Will people balk at the $100 + price of active shutter glasses? I believe S3D is here to stay, and will grow in the coming years,” Neal Robison, the director of ISV relationship management at AMD, said.
“We have dveloped the quad-buffer capability required to support stereoscopic 3D games, so 3rd party middleware vendors can output stereo L/R images at 120 Hz (60 Hz per eye). At GDC this past March we announced our Open Stereo 3D Initiative and our intent to work with ecosystem partners, encourage cooperation and standards development with industry-wide participation to ultimately provide customers with more choice in interoperable hardware and software,” he added.