The problem with 3D really isn't so much in the hardware but in the data storage. If one wants a truly life-like immersive experience in a virtual world, the amount of data required is astronomical since the user is free to move about in any direction. The software can't restrict the person to a particular little world like in a 3D game. I've gotten to experience that limitation with my work in the flight simulation world.

When you want to model a 3 dimensional object, you find out quickly just how complicated even the most simple thing is such as a regular downtown building. Seldom anymore are they just a flat box you can create with limited vertexes and a basic graphic texture overlay. They have inset windows, rounded corners, surfaces that exhibit different reflection and refraction. Go to something like a tree and you can just imagine trying to make that object without spending 3 months and slowing down the rendering to a crawl.

My scenery software included photorealistic texturing of the Phoenix valley at roughly 5 meters/pixel, great for when you were up hundreds or thousands of feet in altitude but absolutely inadequate for up close viewing. However, to go to even double that resolution, the physical size on the disk of the graphic files would've taken up would've been massive and the access speed to retrieve the right ones for rendering would've overwhelmed the hard drive if one were panning quickly or flying too fast.

It wouldn't matter how fast your processor or graphics card is, the bottleneck is always in the data access.

I'm afraid that 3D experience will always be best enjoyed off line.

Art