Sharp LL-151D

The Sharp LL-151D is a 15? budget autostereoscopic monitor based on parallax technology. The advantage of this implementation is that is allows the monitor to be switch between 2D and 3D modes at the touch of a button. This monitor can be bought for around $500 and there is also a screen of similar specification built into a range of Sharp Actius 3D laptops.

There is no head tracking and the resolution is 1024x768, however it provides a good test bed for autostereoscopic gaming. The screen on this monitor is extremely glossy, which can be demonstrated by in this image of the monitor taken with a flash:


You may be surprised to learn that almost any game you already own will most likely work in real 3D on this monitor ? at least if you own an NVidia graphics card. NVidia have had stereoscopic drivers for many years now, which cleverly render DirectX and OpenGL software applications from 2 viewpoints and output them to a variety of displays. Sharp autostereoscopic displays are one of the compatible output devices.

This means you can play games such as Crysis, Bioshock and Half Life 2 in what appears to be real 3D with just a 3D monitor and a powerful NVidia graphics card. Check out the NVidia Stereo website for the latest drivers and a rating of game compatibility.

During testing it was apparent that although almost every game would work in 3D, items such as crosshairs would be rendered at a depth that caused some discomfort after a short period of time. Luckily the driver control panel does allow a degree of ?per game? configuration, allowing many viewing problems to be adjusted.