Today it seems like gaming in 3-D (that’s three-dimensional, coming out of your TV graphics) will soon be all the rage as both the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 are prepping with games for the next revolution in home entertainment, true 3D-TVs.
Strangely this recently hot pop technology is far from new, it’s all based on a the same process used for in 1988 for SegaScope 3D, a peripheral for SEGA’s first game console, the SEGA Master System.
Origins:
In 1985, Sega entered the home console fray with the Mater System, competing head-to-head with the market dominating Nintendo Entertainment System. To compete Sega did everything they could to make their system more desirable, starting with a lower price tag and designing some one-of-a-kind (at the time) peripherals. One such item, the SegaScope 3D system, transformed compatible games into three-dimensional experience, leaping out of players home television sets.
While SegaScope 3D wasn’t the first 3-D home console system (that honor goes to the failed 1982 tabletop Vectrex and its 3-D Imager), it was the first to use the exact same 3-D technology that’s used in the new crop of HD TV’s today.
While Vectrex technique was similar to that used for the Nintendo Virtual Boy, both SegaScope and modern consoles utilize a technique called Field Sequential 3D (aka Shutter Glasses).
What is Field-Sequential 3-D?:
Basing its tech on the same principals as the first 3D process of stereoscopy, plus techniques Hollywood uses for making 3-D movies called alternate-frame sequencing, field sequential 3D has two alternate images flashing one after the other, merging them together though the use of Shutter Glasses and an synching adaptor.
Shutter Glasses contain liquid crystal display (LCD) within the lenses which alternately flash between the left and right eye. When a compatably made video is wired though a synch box, it is timed with the flashing of the LCD glasses.
Now when you now at the video image on the TV through glasses it creates a 3-D effect. The reason you don’t see the flicker of the glasses is that the eye is still absorbing the light reflected off the image when the next image comes up. This is the reason why when watching old movies projected on actual film you see a series of moving images instead of a sequence of several still pictures; your eye is still getting information from the last image when the very next image comes up. It then fills in the blank so the image looks like it’s moving, and in the case of SegaVision 3-D it creates depth and dimension.
Field Sequential 3-D was first made available in Japan through Victor, a component of JVC, as a feature on their VHD players (Video High Density). In the mid-‘80s, close to the end of VHD’s run, Victor introduced a model that included 3-D video via a build in field sequential sync with an input jack for shutter glasses.
While there was a bit of a interest withother manufactures including the tech in their VHD players, and studios signing on to release movies for it such asJaws 3-D, Friday the 13th 3-D, and Starchasers the Legend of Orin, the VHD market crashed, with the VHD 3D systems never releasing outside of Japan.
After the fall of VHD players, SEGA picked up the field sequential process in 1988, implementing it as a Master System add-on called SegaScope 3D.
The Add-On:
Each SegaScope 3D kit came with a pair of Shutter Glasses that connected to a synch adaptor, which in turn plugged into an add-on port on the Master system.
The same year SEGA released the SegaScope 3D system, they also introduced their next generation of gaming consoles, the16 Bit SEGA Mega Drive (released the following year in North America as the SEGA Genesis).
From Master System to Genesis:
While SEGA still supported both the Mega Drive and Genesis, the Genesis was a far more popular system, giving Nintendo’s NES some real competition. While the Genesis alone wasn’t backwards compatible, with the SEGA Power Base add-on the Genesis was converted to a Master System with all the same cartridge and add-on ports, making SegaScope compatible with both the Master System and the Genesis.
In a twist of irony, Sega chose to redesign a less expensive version of the Master System to try extending the life of the system as a budget console. In the redesign the add-on port that SegaScope jacked into was removed. While the SegaScope 3-D system was originally created for the SEGA Master System, the only console it was now compatible with was the SEGA Genesis, thanks to the Power Base.
All mentions of the Master System were removed from the packaging, with it now reading as “The Sega 3-D Glasses” subtitled “For use with the Sega Power Base”.
Then when the DVD boom came, home video distributor Slingshot Entertainment teamed up with IMAX to release a handful of 3D films for DVD home video, with real 3-D effects courtesy of field sequential technology. Soon Slingshot released the Ultimate 3-D Collection containing three IMAX 3-D movies, two pairs of shutter glasses and a sync box. These sets sold at commercial retails across the country and it were followed by the Ultimate 3-D Horror Collection, which included three original shot-on-video horror movies instead of the IMAX offering.
The growth in popularity for the field sequential technology was slow, but with these new kits it was growing faster than before. Soon fans who owned the shutter glasses were starting underground networks of trading DVD and VHS copies of the old VHD movies. Some even crafted software to convert 2-D movies into simulated 3-D via the field sequential process, a few of which were released commercially.
In the last 10 years 3-D has started resurging in popularity once again to the point where Hollywood is now regularly releasing new 3D movies theatrically in an attempt to draw audiences away from their home theaters and back into movie theaters. When many of these hit DVD they had available a version that uses the old-school red and green glasses, as well as a field sequential version that typically only available online.
Thanks to James Cameron’s Avatar and a few other 3-D Hollywood hits, movies with dimension are back in vogue and to try and leverage it, numerous HD-TV manufactures are building field sequential technology into their TV systems.
As both Microsoft and Sony’s systems are specifically designed for the new batch of HD-TV, they can easily adapt to 3-D games with a pair of shutter glasses. Since most next gen games are use graphics already modeled in 3D, the games already have the set up to make the transition to the 3D process relatively simple.
Field Sequential is Finally Here…Again!
It may have taken it over 25 years to catch on, but the 3-D tech that started it’s gaming roots with the Sega Master System is now slated to be the next big thing for Next-Gen consoles.
Unfortunately the SegaScope 3-D system is not compatible with new HD TVs, as it is only compatible with old-school CRT televisions that we all used before HD came along.
