The New Samsung Odyssey Could Fix the Most Annoying Thing About 3D Gaming

If you’re a Samsung Odyssey monitor fan, you already have plenty of expensive options for 4K gaming with OLEDs like the G6 and G8. Samsung now says that 2D screens is old hat. The company is soon going to offer consumers a chance to have their favorite games projected onto their eyeballs in pseudo 3D. The Korean tech giant promises a new Odyssey 3D monitor–one we’ve only seen in prototype form—is coming sometime later this year.

The Odyssey 3D monitor uses a lenticular lens to direct a different image to each eye. The view mapping should adjust if you lean toward or away from the monitor. The effect is less akin to what you get in a 3D movie, where objects on the screen are engineered to jump out toward the screen. Instead, the monitor offers a more subtle sense of depth to characters and objects closer to the screen. The impact on gameplay isn’t exactly mind-blowing, but it’s unique compared to any other monitor you can buy now. 

We saw the Odyssey 3D monitor pop up at CES earlier this year, but Samsung has a long history of pushing pseudo-3D displays. This can work on TV-sized screens, though users need to stay directly in front of the screen, or the visuals become completely distorted. What’s special about the new Odyssey monitor is how it uses eye-tracking stereo cameras built into the monitor’s frame. The display should maintain that sense of depth even when you move your head.

Samsung is showing off its consumer-end monitor at Gamescom in Germany. The brand doesn’t have a price yet for its monitor, and we don’t have a release date, save for a promise it will come later this year. The monitor is available in 27-inch and 37-inch sizes. 

Users can switch between the 2D and 3D effects with a switch, akin to the Nintendo 3DS. At this point, if you’re actively switching off the monitor’s headline feature, you’d have to wonder why you spent more money on a 3D-effect monitor in the first place. Otherwise, it still offers 4K resolutions, routine 1ms response times, and a 165 Hz refresh rate. It will support AMD FreeSync.

The Odyssey 3D’s base looks less thin than the Odyssey G6 or G8 and more like the flat Apple Studio Display’s stand, like the Samsung M80D smart monitor. That’s fine if it can swivel and tilt as far as the other Odysseys. I’m more concerned with the port selection on offer. It comes with a single DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI slots. 

We don’t know the price, but considering Odysseys are already expensive monitors, we expect this one to be even more pricey. Regarding gimmicks, you would probably get a more immersive experience from a quality curved monitor. Even ultra-expensive curved screens like Alienware’s 27-inch QD-OLED or Samsung’s $1,300 49-inch G9 could be better long-term purchases than a flat monitor with a 3D effect.

However, considering how much I enjoyed using a $3,500 Vision Pro to play 30-year-old games from the Nintendo Virtual Boy, perhaps if I spent some more time in front of it, I’d change my tune.