For many of us misinterpretation is a part of our natural lives, often confusing the meanings of phrases and words then turning them into something they aren't. For example last New Year I was asked to make a 'new years resolution', being in tech mode I quickly wisped into the office and bumped up my display to 1024*768 without even a second thought. The point being? Never trust what something say's on the box because it's likely it won't even come close to that in practice, I am of course referring to Stereovision glasses. Stereovision is a technology that's older than a lot of people reading this very review yet until 3D Gaming arrived in force there was nowhere for it to be applied with any substance. Now with 3D Games constantly on the rise there is a growing market to make the experience a little better and more involving for the player, in steps Stereovision.

For those that don't know, this is a medium for which we can simulate the depth of three Dimensional objects by fooling the eyes into seeing things from slightly different angles. So far there are still only two methods used and the most renound is that of VR Helmets or Headsets that use mini LCD monitors to project the screen right onto your eyes with each eye showing a slightly different angle to the other. Sadly such a method is extremely expensive for the home user (£400 - £4000) and since most gamers are of ages unable to afford this then it is considered impractical. That was until somebody realised you could produce the stereo effect with a much simpler process, all be it greatly less effective than the proper way (above). Without going into detail, you have a small pair of glasses that flicker in a special way with your monitor doing the same so only one eye sees one part of the picture at one time. Do this fast enough and each eye sees a different part of the image and thus depth is created.

The Hardware

I-Art3D's Eye3D glasses are one of the more recent attempts of many to try and come up with the ultimate solution for stereovision in the home. The problem with most glasses is that they either use specific drivers or are so old that they no longer work with most games. Like a Rabbit on a spring morning sighting all the lovely grass, I-Art saw the opportunity to do something better than the rest with the technology. They created a universally compatible pair of glasses that will work with just about any of their competitor's drivers and that is what makes them future proof. Early reviews from Stereovision enthusiast sites (www.stereovision.net / www.stereo3d.com) showed the glasses in a pleasing light, one so pleasing that I just had to get a hold of a pair for myself to see what makes them tick so well.

A week or so after asking we received our pair in an impressive and eye catching box somewhat reminiscent to many of Microsoft's products. As we hastily unpacked the kit the first thing that hit me was how god-awful ugly the glasses were. Gone are the techy looks of Wicked3Ds 'eyeSCREAMS' or Elsa's trendy 'Revelators' and in comes the ugliest piece of kit since sporty spice. In trying them on my face we notice they were in general inch and a half to big for my head and since I'm quite a well built guy that was certainly quite strange. I passed the glasses onto a couple of friends and the same problem occurred; we are all about average, not fat or thin. Just right. Within a few moments it also became apparent that they would slip off your face due to lack (barely any at all) of nose gripping pads. The only way you could wear them would be to constantly tilt your neck back and thus cause pain, hardly a good formula for playing games isn't it. In addition you also get a small IR emitter box that plugs in between your video cable and video card so as to communicate with the monitor and then to the glasses.

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