Samsung's new Odyssey gaming monitor brings back a blast from the past

It's Gamescom right now over in Germany, and that means that a whole heap of companies are showing off their latest and greatest gaming wares – some of which are imminent, while others might not arrive for quite some time.

Samsung is right in the thick of it this year, and it's played something of a blast from the past by unveiling a new high-end gaming monitor that packs one massive and surprising feature – 3D display tech. 

The Samsung Odyssey 3D has a simple name that clearly shouts out what it's doing differently, and Samsung says that it'll be available in late 2024 (although it hasn't shared pricing yet, which will be very interesting). The monitor uses a so-called light field display (LFD) to create a 3D image for your eyes without the need for glasses. 

It does this with the help of a built-in stereo camera embedded specifically for eye-tracking purposes, to help the monitor perfectly align its picture with your gaze at all times.

If you're thinking it sounds a bit "Nintendo 3DS", you're not wrong – although the image quality on offer here is lightyears ahead of that fun handheld. Beyond those 3D tricks, though, the Odyssey 3D is also a very impressive monitor in more typical ways.

It's a 4K display, for one thing, with 1ms response times and refresh rates that can top out at 165Hz for high frame-rate gaming (albeit this doesn't match the best competitive gaming monitors out there). With one DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.1 ports you should have enough connections to play with, too. 

Samsung also has a few other ultrawide Odyssey monitors that people can try out at Gamescom, and it's announced some new OLED equivalants that could well be of interest.

These are the Odyssey OLED G95SD, G93SD and G85SD, and each offers a new niche offering, including widescreen OLED options that could show what the future looks like for ultrawide gaming. 

OLED monitors have been slow to proliferate in PC gaming but they're booming in popularity now, so it's no surprise to see Samsung moving into position to be a big player.