There are a few different ways of producing the two images that are
necessary for stereo viewing. In rough order of price/performance (from
worst to best):
1) Anaglyph (Red/Blue) Glasses, in conjunction with a normal CRT or LCD screen.
This
uses paper glasses that filter different colors into your right and
left eye. Instead of displaying a color image, your graphics card
super-imposes two images - one in red and one in blue - and each one
can be seen through a different eye to produce the final stereo image.
This is extremely cheap (a couple of bucks), but produces poor quality images in grey-scale only.
2) Shutter Glasses in conjunction with fast CRT screen or projector.
Shutter
Glasses use small LCD lenses that act like computerised sunglasses. The
computer can send a signal to either the right eye or left eye lens
telling it to switch on or off. By quickly flicking between two
different images on the screen and switching between the right and left
eye on the shutter glasses at the same time, the left and right images
can be displayed giving a good 3D stereo image.
This
is the standard hardware that most enthusiasts use, and is moderately
priced ($25-$100). Can produce good images on any screen with a refresh
rate above 120Hz, such a CRT screen. However using shutter glasses with
LCD flat panel screens doesnt work well because they typically have
lower refresh rates (80Hz) and ghosting and other artifacts can occur
on CRTs.
DepthQ produce a digital projector with a refresh rate of 120Hz that should also be fast enough to work well.
3) Dual display with a mirror
This
option uses two displays and a mirror that reflects one display into
each eye. There is a special option in the Nvidia drivers (77.77 or
higher) for using dual displays that automatically mirrors one of the
monitors for you.
Cost
is the same as buying another monitor ($300) plus a mirror (not much).
The advantages of this setup are that you dont get any ghosting, and
that the resolution can be as high as your monitor can go. The
disadvantage is that you have to keep your head in position against the
mirror, which can be tiring.
4) Head Mounted Displays (HMDs)
HMDs
are small wearable displays that typically have two small LCD flat
screens inside (each one around 1 inch square or less) that display two
separate pictures directly into the wearers left and right eyes.
These
are expensive ($600+), and while they dont suffer from ghosting or
flicker like shutter glasses, the maximum resolution is currently
800x600 which is rather low compared to CRT screens.
5) 3D LCD Displays
There
are a small number of highly expensive LCD flat screens coming onto the
market that use some nifty optical tricks to display 3D pictures
directly from a flat screen without needing any glasses.
When I say expensive, I mean $1500+ which puts it out of the reach of most casual gamers.
All of this is from
Nvidia Stereovision Forums.
--ArenAK--