Speaking of which, Allen Varney weighs in

I've plugged the ESCAPIST on this blog many times, and Allen Varney (as my favorite correspondent) at least a few times. In the most recent issue, Allen weighs in on a topic of interest to me, rendering 3D imagery so we appear to be viewing a 3D world on a 2D screen:

Every "three-dimensional" game you play is a pussy. On your flatscreen TV or monitor, your so-called 3-D game presents nothing but an illusion of depth, a sleight, a fake. When will we get computer gaming in three real, no-kidding spatial dimensions?

Allen Varney, "Will Computer Games Ever Truly Breach the Third Dimension?", Escapist Issue 79

As I hinted at earlier, I don't consider what we are looking when we gaze into a VRML style world to be "three dee" with a capital 3. At best, it's a visual art form that cunningly represents the image of depth for 2D or flatscreen viewers. It would take a revolution in computing to have the true three dimensional technology suggested by "cyberpunk" genre fiction. Allen discusses what steps have been made in this direction, which are still somewhat rudimentary, and arrives at a similar conclusion to what I did; stick with 2D until the new tech is easily affordable, and that may be never.

This is an interesting column, which I'm used to from Allen, and a nice survey of TRUE 3D tech.