3D Vision Blog

Nvidia has made available for download the first WHQL-certified unified driver from the R300 family of drivers, namely the version 301.42. The new WHQL driver builds on top of the already introduced new features in the previous 301.24 Beta release, bringing fixed bugs, improved functionality, 4-way GTX 670 SLI support etc as well as new 3DTV Play display support.

New 3DTV Play support for the following displays:

- Mitsubishi HC7800D Projector
- Samsung UE40ES6530 3DTV
- Samsung UE40ES6710 3DTV
- Samsung UE46ES8000 3DTV
- Samsung UN40ES6500F 3DTV
- Sharp LC-70C7450U 3DTV

New and Updated 3D Vision Profiles:

- Adam’s Venture Episode 1 – Rated Poor
- All Zombies Must Die! – Rated Fair
- Blacklight: Retribution – Rated Poor
- Depth Hunter – Updated profile
- Dirt: Showdown – Rated Good
- Ghosts ‘n Goblins Online – Rated Good
- Krater – Rated Poor
- Oil Rush – Rated 3D Vision Ready
- Passion Leads Army Benchmark – Rated 3D Vision Ready
- Postal III – Rated Good
- Rayman Origins – Rated Good
- Resident Evil: Operating Raccoon City – Rated Fair
- rFactor 2 – Changed rating to 3D Vision Ready
- SevenCore – Rated Fair
- Stacking – Rated Good
- The Darkness II – Updated in-game recommended settings
- Trackmania 2: Canyon – Rated Fair
- Unigine 3.0 Heaven Benchmark – Updated profile
- Unigine Heaven Benchmark v3.0 – Rated 3D Vision Ready
- Wargame: European Escalation – Rated Good
- Warp – Rated Good
- Wings of Prey – Rated Fair
- World of Tanks – Changed rating to Excellent

Have in mind that some of these profiles have already been introduced in the previous beta version of the drivers. If you are an avid World of Tanks games now you might want to check out the game with 3D Vision as it should be quite good. The game rFactor 2 (still in development) should be 3D Vision ready when it is released.

- More on what is new and improved in the Nvidia GeForce 301.42 WHQL Drivers…

DDD has just released a new beta version of their TriDef 3D Ignition software for playing games in stereoscopic 3D mode (it is just the Ignition software, not the whole TriDef 3D package) and it is something that you might want to try out, especially if you play Battlefield 3 in stereo 3D. TriDef 3D Ignition 3.5.18 Beta 4 provides a better stereoscopic 3D profile for Battlefield 3, it also adds profile for the recently released Diablo 3 and fixes some other things.

TriDef 3D Ignition 3.5.18 Beta 4 changelog:

- Added new game profiles for Diablo 3 and other games.
- Improved performance of Power 3D in DX10/11.
- Fixed a few visual bugs in Battlefield 3 and Batman Arkham CIty.
- Fixed a game launch issue in Windows 8.
- Added a search box in the Add Game dialog.

According to a just published stereoscopic 3D review of Battlefield 3 over at MTBS3D, the profile for Battlefield 3 in the latest beta of Ignition makes the stereoscopic 3D experience while playing the game with DDD TeiDef 3D Ignition better looking than using the game’s native stereo 3D rendering on AMD HD3D and Nvidia 3D Vision. With the best part being the lack of “flatness” when you are in a vehicle or in the cutscenes, something that is happening when using the native stereo 3D rendering from the game. And although this might’ve been something made intentionally by the game developers, most stereoscopic 3D gamers usually prefer to have more depth than to have things appearing “flat”. Another thing that apparently works quite well with the game is the Shift One Eye, Dominant Eye feature also recently introduced by DDD. If you try the new beta software with Battlefield 3 feel free to share your feedback below and the same goes if you are already playing Diablo 3 and want to test it with the new profile added in TriDef 3D Ignition 3.5.18 Beta 4. And just a reminder, this is a beta software, so there could be some issues.

- To Download and try the new TriDef 3D Ignition 3.5.18 Beta 4 software…

Following up on the story about the Roxio Cineplayer BD With 3D not being available anymore and the fact that there remain only three software Blu-ray 3D-capable players I’ve decided to check the current situation with them as well. I often get questions if somebody would be able to watch 3D movies on his old PC or laptop on a new 3D HDTV, something that seems easy at first, but things may get problematic depending on what is the video card in the system. The problem is that not all software Blu-ray 3D players support every popular 3D output mode and not output modes are available for all output formats.

Below you can find the requirements for playback of 3D videos on HDMI 1.4 3D HDTVs with the different solutions for playing back Blu-ray 3D movies, these are as per the website of the software developers requirements and specifications published on their websites… and they are not that clear.

Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5
- NVIDIA GeForce 200/100 Series (Mobile/Desktop) or newer
- AMD (ATI) HD 5000 series or newer
- Intel G45(?) or newer

Corel WinDVD 11 Pro
- NVIDIA GeForce 500/400/300/200/100/9 series/8 series or newer
- AMD Radeon HD 6000 series or newer
- Intel H5x series or newer

Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 Pro/Ultra
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or newer
- AMD Radeon HD 6800 series or newer
- 2nd generation Intel Core processors with Integrated Graphics

So if you have a system with these specifications as a minimum (the specific GPU depending on the manufacturer), in theory you should not have trouble playing Blu-ray 3D movies on a 3D-capable HDTV using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging. These software solutions of course also support Nvidia 3D Vision, 3D DLP Checkerboard and Row Interleaved (passive 3D), Anaglyph and maybe a few extra ones and with them things are generally easier to setup and they simply work. The real problem is making things work using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging and it might turn to be more problematic, in my experience, to make an integrated Intel GPU work, so as a good advice I’d recommend to download the trial version of the three software Blu-ray 3D players mentioned above and try them all on your PC before deciding which one you should buy. This can save you a lot of trouble in actually making thing work as you want them to and not having to rely only on some requirements listed by the software developer as practice tends to show that these not always turn out to be true or things simply don’t work as you expect them to. Also, another good advice is to always use the latest official video drivers and to have all the updates for the player software as these do help in resolving some issues, although in some rare occasions they also might break compatibility.