The W3C&39's new HTML5 logo

You can watch 3D videos via HTML5 on YouTube, starting today. The catch This new feature is limited to Firefox 4, and to people who have a specific kind of Nvidia graphics card.

YouTube currently hosts "several thousand" 3D videos that it will encode and play back in WebM format, according to a blog post by Mozilla Director of Platform Product Management Chris Blizzard. Only people who have Nvidia 3D Vision graphics cards will be able to see those videos in 3D, and only if they are played in Firefox.

If you have the 3D Vision hardware, search YouTube for "yt3d," which will bring up videos encoded in 3D. You will also have to set your 3D hardware mode.

As the requirements listed above indicate, 3D HTML5 video on YouTube can only be watched by a small segment of the Web browsing public. However, the mere fact that HTML5 video standards are still growing and introducing new abilities, such as today's 3D announcement, indicates that HTML5 video's potential is far from fully tapped. Given the continuing and developing support for HTML5 in the top 5 browsers, it probably won't take long for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera to follow Firefox's lead here.

If you've been able to watch 3D HTML5 video on YouTube, let us know what you think in the comments below.