Every video game promises more realism and greater immersion than the last, but a new development is making games more involving for players than ever before.

The first practical 3-D gaming system has recently gone on sale in the UK. The new kit is affordable, easy to set up and will work with dozens of existing PC titles and play on an off-the-shelf computer monitor.

Priced from £99, the system has been developed by Nvidia, the computer graphics specialist. Its 3D Vision kit comprises a pair of glasses, an infrared transmitter and a software CD. You’ll also need a compatible graphics card in your computer — but the new system works with many of Nvidia’s existing cards.

The only other requirement is a 120Hz monitor to simulate stereoscopic 3-D. Currently, there are two up to the task, and doubtless more to follow. You can buy one of them, a 22in Samsung model, with the 3D Vision kit for £399 all in.

The system works by taking the 2-D visual information being generated by the game software, reinterpreting it into three dimensions, then instructing the graphics card to split the image into two. One image is intended to be seen by the left eye, one by the right; the positional difference between the two produces the 3-D effect.

Both images are displayed on a single monitor, which flashes them alternately 120 times a second. The infrared transmitter co-ordinates those flashes with the opening and closing of shutters in the left and right lenses of the supplied glasses, meaning that each eye is fed its own visual stream.

The technology promises to usher in a new age of gaming because, unlike earlier prototypes, it adds so much more than the shock effect of seeing objects springing out of the screen. The system is more akin to the new generation of

3-D computer-animated films — such as Up, which opened the Cannes film festival — where 3-D is integral to the storytelling. Similarly, the application of the effect on the clean lines of digital graphics rather than old-fashioned film makes it far more effective than early 3-D movies, not to mention easier on the eyes.

Because the Nvidia hardware constructs a 3-D scene from existing information built into PC games, hundreds of titles will immediately benefit. The company lists more than 200 it claims play with “excellent” quality, including classic games such as Tomb Raider.

Play one of today’s top titles, such as Far Cry 2, and its vision of a war-torn African nation bursts into even more vivid life, the long grass of the savannah pressing up against the screen, while your enemies hide behind ramshackle barricades in the distance.

Last year’s innovative, first-person platform game Mirror’s Edge is even more of a heart-stopping affair than it was before. With everything viewed from the perspective of the game’s free-running heroine, each daredevil leap and last-minute grab is uncomfortably close to the bone.

Racing games benefit, too. Play Race Driver: Grid and you’ll be surprised at how much easier it is to steer a hot-rodded VW Golf when you can accurately judge the distance between your car and the BMW in front.

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