Samsung’s Odyssey 3D monitor delivers great visuals, limited game support

While the stereoscopic effect was overall comfortable for long periods in my tests, my eyes did have  a bit of trouble focusing during occasional scenes where objects in the foreground end up obstructing the main game action in the background, such as errant blades of grass flitting in front of the camera in Stray. When this happens, the extreme difference in vergence between the foreground objects and the background characters right next to them on the screen can create a blurry, eye-crossing distraction. While this effect is rare and short in most games I tested, it can be very uncomfortable when it does occur.

Limited compatibility

As impressive as the stereoscopic gaming experience is on the Odyssey 3D, it’s also an experience that’s disappointingly limited to a handful of games at the moment. The Samsung Reality Hub app—which you have to use to launch any stereoscopic content—currently only supports 14 titles, ranging from some recent hits (Lies of P, Palworld) to retro classics (three remastered Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition games) to a few you’ve like never heard of (Wigmund, The First Berserker: Khazan).

Even if you somehow own all 14 of these titles, that still means your fancy new monitor’s best feature can only be used on a minuscule subset of your PC gaming library. That’s more than a bit galling in a monitor that costs two to four times as much as flat 2D displays with similar specs.

A rear speaker grill, for those who don’t have external speakers.

Credit:
Kyle Orland

Using the required Samsung Reality app to even launch those few games is also an unnecessarily annoying experience, thanks to a bloated, overly busy stereoscopic front-end that caused my graphics card to spin up like a jet engine even before launching a game (Samsung recommends a GTX 3080 or higher to power the app and any stereoscopic games, but it didn’t complain about my GTX 2080). Even after awkwardly registering my monitor-compatible games through the app, I often found they simply wouldn’t launch in 3D through the app unless I reset my entire system, for some reason.