Gameworld: Videogaming enters the Third Dimension

By John Gaudiosi

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Videogamers, your glasses to transport you into three dimensional space.

Visual computing technology company Nvidia (NVDA.O) has unveiled the first mainstream 3D gaming technology at the inaugural NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, which focused on the convergence of technology with Hollywood, games and business.

With Hollywood migrating to 3D for event movies like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and next year's "Avatar" from James Cameron, the electronics and gaming industries have created new technology that lets home systems and PCs also deliver true 3D.

This technology uses clear 3D glasses similar to those used at an IMAX theater.

On the show floor, games like upcoming Spore and Call of Duty: World at War and recent releases like Race Driver Grid, Devil May Cry 4, and Unreal Tournament 3 were playable on 73-inch Mitsubishi 3D Ready 1080p DLP TVs and Viewsonic 3D Ready 120Hz LCD displays.

Publishers like Ubisoft (UBIP.PA), which is developing the game based on "Avatar," are already taking advantage of this new technology for new gameplay experiences to be released next year.

"Stereoscopic technology will have gamers going back two or three years and playing older games just to see how they look in 3D," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia.

A packed theater of thousands of engineers, designers, developers, gamers and business professionals from around the world put on 3D glasses and watched a spectacular castle siege in Microsoft's 2005 PC strategy game, Age of Empires III.