Hands on with Zalman's 3D Trimon monitor

We've spent a week staring into the next dimension with Zalman's incredible 3D TFT screen - read on for our impressions

Along with the words ‘starring Robin Williams’ and ‘a heartfelt comedy’, ‘in 3D!’ used to be the line on a film poster that would strike fear into one’s heart. Technical limitations 3D visuals became little more than a fad, fit only for the back of a box of Frosties. The kind of novelty 3D illustration – technically termed anaglyptic images – seen on breakfast cereals usually requires glasses with red and blue lenses and lots of patience. It’s a somewhat sad state of affairs considering a usable 3D PC screen seems a rather distant prospect.

You can imagine our surprise then when Zalman announced it would be making a range of 3D TFT screens. Even given consumer grade 3D imaging’s ropey reputation, the fact Zalman is best known for its coolers and cases meant the news came out of the blue. Our scepticism grew when we were offered the chance to check out hand-built early samples screen in the summer at the Computex show in Taiwan and they proved to be extremely temperamental and incapable of generating a decent sense of 3D space.

However, that has all changed – we’ve had a production sample of Zalman’s Trimon ZM-M220W, the company’s 22in widescreen 3D screen, in our labs for the past week and it’s a remarkable piece of kit. It’s certainly not perfect, but the sense of 3D space and depth it creates is genuinely impressive, particularly in games such as World of Warcraft. Everyone who dropped by the CPC lab and saw it in action was surprised and, it’s not hyperbole to say, amazed by its abilities.

There are, of course, some downsides, limitations and quirks. While the Trimon doesn’t rely on anaglyptic images to produce 3D images, you do still need to wear special glasses in order for its 3D powers to affect you, as it works using a technique known as stereoscopy. This involves showing the viewer two offset images, which the viewer’s brain then interprets as being single scene with depth. The Trimon achieves its stereoscopic effect with polarized glasses that work in tandem with two polarizing filters on the surface of the monitor itself. The two polarizing filters are orientated at right angles, as is the filter in each lens in the pair of glasses; the lenses’ filters then only allow light of similar orientation to pass through, which is how the system presents each eye with a slightly different picture. Your brain then does the rest of the work and you see a 3D image.

Unlike with anaglyptic glasses, the combination of polarizing filters and glasses preserve the colour integrity of the image on screen, so as well as creating the impression that you’re seeing 3D, the shapes you see retain their original tones, which certainly helps make the image more convincing.

Aside from needing special polarizing glasses, Zalman’s technology has other limitations. While games don’t have to be written to support 3D, creating the 3D image isn’t totally up to the hardware – you also require a stereoscopic version of the graphics card driver. Only Nvidia provides one, and at the moment, the most advanced version is based on ForceWare 91.31. This means you’re limited to GeForce 7900 series cards and earlier, and Windows XP only. Stereoscopic support is supposedly being added by Nvidia to a new driver, which will support GeForce 8-series cards, but this is currently being planned to be Vista only. 3D in games only works when the game is running at the screen’s native resolution. For the ZM-M220W this can be a problem, as this is 1,680 x 1,050, and widescreen support isn’t implemented in every new game released. Furthermore, 91.31 dates from June 2006, and being eighteen months old means it lacks support for new titles – a problem when each game requires a custom profile to tune the stereoscopic effect to work best.

This means that while older games such as Painkiller and World of Warcraft respond brilliantly and enable the Trimon to create a freakishly realistic approximation of true depth, in more modern titles such as Call of Duty 4 and Colin McRae: DiRT, the driver and monitor couldn’t create a 3D feel.

In addition to games, the Trimon also supports 3D movies, but unlike with games, these need to have been shot with dual cameras to support stereoscopic 3D. Zalman provided us with a demo AVI file which showed off the potential admirably, with a floating fish that seemed to swim out of the screen.



As the Trimon uses two polarizing filters placed in front of a standard LCD panel, you can turn the stereoscopy effect on and off using hotkeys. When it’s disabled and you’ve dispensed with the glasses, the screen looks very similar to any other high-end LCD with a glossy black coating. When it’s on, to the viewer without glasses, the screen looks incredibly blurry – because it’s essentially showing two different images, overlaid with each other. Multiple viewers can see the image as it’s very tolerant in terms of horizontal viewing angles, although all viewers must be at the right eye height. Sit too high or too low and the polarizing glasses won’t be able to filter the light correctly.

As you’d expect, the Trimon doesn’t come cheap, but it’s not ludicrously expensive. Two models are being sold in the UK, the 22in ZM-M220W which we tested, at £429.98 inc VAT, and a 19in ZM-M190 for ££349.99 inc VAT. Both are available from Quiet PC and YoYoTech. It’s certainly a product we’re going to be keeping our eyes on – if Nvidia can sort out a new driver, then the future for three-dimensional graphics will be bright.

For more info, see Zalman's product page