The technology behind the match

The X3D Fritz Garry Kasparov is facing is the strongest computer chess machine ever created. The legendary program is faster than ever and the hardware is cutting edge. Using X3D technology, for the first time the man will meet the machine on its own turf, the virtual world.

X3D teamed up with ChessBase to bring ultra-realistic 3D to the world's top chess software. During the match Kasparov will be wearing X3D eyewear which make the special stereoscopic board and pieces float in the air with true depth and perspective.

The live audience will be supplied with X3D eyewear and also watch the match in X3D on large screens.

Instead of using a mouse or making his moves on a wooden board, Kasparov will simply announce his moves! X3D Fritz will receive them using voice recognition software and play the moves on the X3D screen.

Garry Kasparov testing the X3D Fritz interface.

X3D Fritz. The chess program Fritz has been at or near the top of the computer chess world since its creator Frans Morsch of the Netherlands produced it for ChessBase in 1991. Fritz has become synonymous with computer chess and the commercial version is used by almost every top player in the world for analysis and training. Morsch continues to work with the ChessBase team in Hamburg, Germany, to improve the program's play and interface.

The X3D Fritz program that will battle Kasparov in New York is an improved and specially tuned version. It can calculate millions of moves per second and has access to gigabytes of databases for openings and endgames. More on how computers play chess here.

Team Fritz, l to r.: Creator and programmer Frans Morsch,
co-programmer Mathias Feist, opening book trainer Alex Kure.

How X3D works. The computer monitor alternately displays complete left-eye and right-eye images in time (temporally), each time the monitor refreshes. X3D glasses have high-speed electronic shutters (made with Liquid Crystal material), which open and close at the same refresh rate as the monitor, in sync with the page flipped images.

When the left image is on the screen, the left shutter is open and the right shutter is closed, so that the image is viewed only by your left eye. When the right image is on the screen, the right shutter is open and the left shutter is closed, so that the image is viewed only by your right eye. This happens so quickly that the brain perceives 3D depth.