YouTube Pushes Further Into 3D Video

Lacking some 3D in your online life? You’re in luck, as Mozilla Firefox, YouTube and Nvidia have teamed up to bring HTML5-based stereoscopic 3D video to owners of Nvidia’s 3D Vision-enabled hardware.

Although 3D videos aren’t new to YouTube, the service will now transcode these videos into the open WebM format, meaning that Firefox 4 users with Nvidia’s 3D Vision hardware and glasses will be able to watch them in 3D.

For the new format to work, you need to select HTML5 Stereo View in YouTube’s 3D section. You’ll also need Nvidia’s 3D Vision kit, which includes active shutter glasses and a receiver. The kit costs $149.

The new feature obviously won’t benefit users of non-Nvidia hardware and browsers other than Firefox. But as the company continues to try and expand the reach of its 3D Vision technology, having YouTube support it is quite a big win for Nvidia.

Check out an example of a 3D Vision-enabled video below, and see other 3D videos and photos at3DVisionLive.com.