Official nVidia 3d, IZ3D or other solution Stereo Thread

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SIrPauly

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This is the very beginning of the nVidia Stereo 3d thread as we dive in to find out more data and resources about this new Stereo 3d technology from nVidia. This info will be updated from time-to-time and hopefully others may join in to share views – positive or negative—or share info they may find while surfing the web or from first hand views.

This mission or investigation started here from this little nugget of information on something different from nVidia when it comes to Stereo 3d:

http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/accessories/0,239029388,339288550,00.htm

Some of the aspects that was important to me was these three areas:

1) Quality

2) Compatible gaming

3) Sli

What’s the use of the new technology if the 3d effect didn’t offer more immersion and still suffered from the lack of quality?

What’s the use of the new technology if you couldn’t enjoy the technology in all kinds of titles – old and new – including DirectX 10 content moving forward?

What’s the use of the new technology if one can’t take advantage of Sli considering at times added immersion comes at a price of some performance in certain titles?

So what this thread may hopefully do is to build a data-point or resource about these three aspects moving forward. Other aspects may include the technology of the glasses and new monitor technology as well – probably many others like pricing, too.
 
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a good thread to ask about the 3D Stereo thang?
So you must have BOTH the special glasses and a monitor capable of displaying 3D stuff?? (including a capable GPU as well of course). The glasses are no problem but there's so far only 2 displays that can do this ?

As far as that goes it sounds good. After more displays come out and stuff becomes cheaper we'll all be using it. Is it basically like watching an IMAX 3D movie?
 
Leprechaun said:
a good thread to ask about the 3D Stereo thang?
So you must have BOTH the special glasses and a monitor capable of displaying 3D stuff?? (including a capable GPU as well of course). The glasses are no problem but there's so far only 2 displays that can do this ?
Click to expand...

You really only need a recent Nvidia graphics card and a pair of red cyan glasses. I tried this myself with an old pair of paper 3d glasses from Rad Racer on COD 4 and it works far better then you might expect. The image your brain sees is full color and the 3d effect is totaly convincing. You can get nicer anaglyph glasses made with real lenses and plastic frame for about $10 and they work even better.

On the downside you do have to be willing to make a trade off in graphical detail to keep frame rates up but for me it is worth it. It also is not well suited to competitive gameplay where I feel the 3d effect might actualy make the game a little harder as it is kind of destracting in some situations.

For $10 even if you only play around with it a little it is totaly worth it. Compared to the price of a new system this is practicly a freebee and there is a huge number of games it works with.:)

Oh and sticky +1
 
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Leprechaun said:
a good thread to ask about the 3D Stereo thang?
So you must have BOTH the special glasses and a monitor capable of displaying 3D stuff?? (including a capable GPU as well of course). The glasses are no problem but there's so far only 2 displays that can do this ?

As far as that goes it sounds good. After more displays come out and stuff becomes cheaper we'll all be using it. Is it basically like watching an IMAX 3D movie?
Click to expand...


I'm trying to learn as I go as well but for the newer 3d stereo tech the nVidia glasses and the 120hz 3d monitors are hyped a bit but don't know for sure if the glasses work with other monitors. Will add more data to this thread like some quotes from people that witnessed it at nVision and some interviews with the important players.

It's new, and a bit costly for some and will take some time but great to see this tech backed by a powerful IHV. Tend to look at this monitor tech as an evolution of monitors. Many gamed at CRT's -- slowly made the move to LCD's, to wide-screen LCD's -- now to 3d wide-screen LCD's slowly? -- if priced at a modest premium doesn't sound too bad if they deliver quality to me at the start.

Hopefully others can add on some of their experiences with 3d stereo, past, current versions as well............all learn together.

It's killing me for the desire to see the effect with incredible quality and clarity. To have fire-balls from mages or frost bolts coming out of the screen sounds pretty frigg'n neat to me.
 
Will be interesting to see the reports from Nvidia end-users about the 3d glasses.

I remember having 3D glasses with GeForce 3 Ti200, was cool, but image lacked a bit of 'solidness' and was hard on the eyes after an hour.

If Nvidia can make nice improvements here then it WILL be quite awesome actually. :)
 
hmm so we have one that says that it works on most monitors and sirpauly confirming it works on only a few (2 so far I think). Also where's a good place to get said glasses for $10?
I too wonder if this hurts the eyes. I'll refer to IMAX theatres and some of their 3D movies. They can hurt your eyes a tad after you watch a 2hr movie, but damn it is sweet!

Also, I think the 3D monitor thing is coming out now because....... laser TVs!!!! For 3yrs they've been hyping them up, next xmas, next xmas next xmas. Again this year was "this xmas"... but one of the main coolio features of the laser TVs is they were supposed to support some 3D tech (although they only mentioned 3D movies you'd watch with glasses).. I assume it'll be the same type of deal.

hooray for gamers
 
The discussion for me, is about the newer technology that nVidia was offering at nVision -- which consists of the glasses and the 120hz monitor from Viewsonic. Other Stereo discussion is very much welcomed, too. There are other ways of garnering a stereo 3d effect and has been ways for many years but usually had some compatible or image quality sacrifices. The above interviews are very insightful for learning a bit more - personally learned some nice things -- nice nuggets of info in there.
 
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This is nice question posed and some nice info:

MTBS+Andrew Fear said:
2. Will you be charging S-3D display manufacturers for the ability to be compatible with your glasses? What about alternative displays? Zalman, Head Mounted Displays, Projectors, etc. Are they treated the same way? What about old school LCD Shutter Glasses & CRT monitors? Will the glasses have to be NVIDIA branded to work?

Our goal for display support is to enable as many displays as we can that support the new NVIDIA 3D glasses. As new displays come on the market that support high quality stereoscopic 3D, we will test them to make sure that they work with our 3D glasses and we’ll enable support in our software. We want to enable a large ecosystem with a large installed base of users, so this is not a licensing program for monitor makers to work with NVIDIA 3D glasses.

Right now our glasses support the new ViewSonic® pure 120 Hz LCDs, Mitsubishi® 3D DLP® HDTVs, generic Texas Instruments checkerboard pattern 3D, and analog CRTs that support at least 100 Hz refresh rate.
Click to expand...
 
Mark Rein of Epic said:
The Age of Empires S-3D (stereoscopic 3D) demo they showed in the Nvision keynote looked absolutely AMAZING! I was also blown away with the Viewsonic monitor in the LAN gaming area as well.

I've been put off by S-3D setups on LCD monitors in the past which had some ghosting issues but the setup they had at Nvision didn't have any ghosting issues and was crystal clear
Click to expand...

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41224/Mark-Rein-On-Nvidias-3D-Gaming-System

Just want to add this type of feature isn't about numbers and to go bonkers about performance numbers but more-so about the effect and what it may do to improve immersion. What I am looking at is to have enough performance to enjoy the feature and if I need more performance that is where sli comes in. As time passes hardware gets more powerful as well and only improves this.
 
Leprechaun said:
Also where's a good place to get said glasses for $10?
Click to expand...

You can get the red cyan glasses here. The technical term is anaglyph glasses (look it up on wikipedia).
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=anaglyph+glasses&x=16&y=16

These are not shutter glasses. They work by rendering the seen for one eye in blue + green (blocked by red filter) and half the image in red (blocked by cyan filter). Both these images are displayed simmultaniosly on your standard red green blue monitor. Then each eye sees a different immage becuase of the filters. Becuase your brain is so cool it takes the info in from each eye and makes the 3d image and you see the intended colors.

Your frame rate will still drop some or alot because your graphics card still has to render the seen twice before combining the image and sending it to the monitor.

It is not as good as shutter glasses (I can say this because I have used shutter glasses in the UC Davis Keck Caves and it was better then sliced bread). It is however quite remarkable and works suprisingly well and does not require a special montitor of any sort. All you need is the glasses a recent Nvidia card and the stereo 3D drivers.

As a side note: I believe that if 120hz monitors go main stream the sacrifice in rendering detail to get 3d will be totally worth it. Especially if you are using a projector or very large screen where I feel the 3d effect is the most immersive. In the CAVE running Quake III with your whole FOV filled by the screen it is just like being transported to another planet. Much cooler then Crysis on the highest settings on a standard monitor.

To answer your other question: It did not gurt my eyes but one of the people I was with in the CAVE did get a hedache from it. I think it will just depend on the person.
 
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Hi all,

Well after playing around with anaglyph for a little while I wanted to make a few remarks.

On some things it works pretty well and on somethings there is alot of ghosting (where the some of the image for one eye is not completely filtered out of the other).

It seems the best results are obtained by trying to maximize the brightness of the intended image relative to that of the ghost. This might seem obviouse to many but it was not to me. This might meen if only the image for one eye was on the screen you would still be able to see alot of it with the other. In practice the maximum contrast ratio will allow the proper image to drown out the ghost.

I am guessing that the ideal solution would be a collor calibrated monitor but a calibrator costs at least $100. Also alot of lower quality LCDs or even CRTs may not calibrate well.

Even if you never get it working well for games which would not suprise me at all. It is still pretty cool to play around with and there are alot of cool anaglyphs on the web. Like 3d photos of the mars path finder ( http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/ceps/etp/mars/pathfinder/mpf3d.html ).

So I guess that is just my two cents.
 
Older technologies are neat and all but one of the things that was important was the quality out-put this time around. Past methods simply didn't offer enough quality and believe this is one of the reasons why it never did take off and over-all drivers and compatible gaming.

When I read amazing, awesome, impressive and words like this from first-hand views from nVision with Mark Rein offering the words I was waiting for CRYSTAL CLEAR.

Can't ignore it and must learn more.
 
aviphysics said:
Hi all,

Well after playing around with anaglyph for a little while I wanted to make a few remarks. ...
Click to expand...

The upcoming (or re-awakening, some might say) S-3D feature from NV is using shutter glasses, hence the need for rechargeable battery and IR synchronizer device. So most of the problems that you had experienced with anaglyph technique is likely not going to happen with it.

Of course, there is a price for it. As comparison: the wireless 3D glasses from eDimensional costs about 100 bucks. I don't think NV glasses is going to cost less than that. :)
 
madyasiwi said:
The upcoming (or re-awakening, some might say) S-3D feature from NV is using shutter glasses, hence the need for rechargeable battery and IR synchronizer device. So most of the problems that you had experienced with anaglyph technique is likely not going to happen with it.
Click to expand...

I know that NV is releasing shutter glasses and they will work better. In a previouse post I mentioned I had used a shutter glass set before and it was beyond amazing.

I was posting about anaglyph becuase it is super cheap to get the glasses. It is supported by the NV stereo 3D drivers on all monitors. It is definetly alot of fun to toy around with even though the quality is not great the effect is still pretty amazing.

madyasiwi said:
Of course, there is a price for it. As comparison: the wireless 3D glasses from eDimensional costs about 100 bucks. I don't think NV glasses is going to cost less than that. :)
Click to expand...

I remember back in the day seing shutter glass kits for $60. I think that will probably be my magic price point. I guess nvidia can do anything they want but I hope they have found ways to make the decade old technology for less then $100 for a kit and less then $30 for additional pairs. The hardware really does not seam that complicated.
 
No doubt -- just to try some level of stereo would be hoot.

Warning blast from the past rant:


When I had my Wicked 3d glasses from Metabyte long ago -- the effect was very cool when I did try it -- first title I tried was Unreal -- remember like it was yesterday. The only problem was ghosting and just would hurt the over-all experience after one gets used to the effect -- and after my very large friend sat on the glasses, hehe, just waited patiently for someone to say, "Crystal Clear!"

Metabyte and Wicked 3d was a cool company - offered the 3d glasses and unusual Sli products -- allowed mixed AIB Voodoo's -- and odd resolutions like 1024 x 1024 if you have Voodoo 2 12 meg cards in Sli. Unreal at 1024 x 1024 was the bomb back then, hehe!:)

End of silly blast from the past rant!
 
Old glasses work with crt only ... since no support by developers.
Had 1 back in the days (still got it somewhere)
There is 2 way of making stereo effect with glasses on pc interlaced and page flipped.
Interlaced has bad quality, page flipping mode need over 60Hz or it will flicker as hell.
On lcd theoretically should be better since different way of refreshing the screen.
There was nothing new done with this glasses since they were made first.
There are big forums dedicated just for the topic but only old posts since most
ppl give up on it.
 
I did as well..........based on drivers, compatible gaming and quality. The effect was nice but just after some time the limitations just did stand out more and more and screw it.

Willing to fool with it again but has to deliver outstanding quality - has to work in titles to enjoy -- needs driver support to improve moving forward -- needs to work well with Sli.

If nVidia can deliver this with help from monitor company's -- it may slowly gain momentum as gamers try it out. Time will tell........at least they're trying to improve this and bring quality to this arena. No one has to buy it -- try it -- but appreciate the choice and that's the key.........the choice is there to consider it at least.
 
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