3D Vision Blog

Unigine has released a new version of their popular DirectX 11 benchmarking software called Heaven, a piece of software that can put significant load on your hardware, no matter how powerful it is. The Heaven benchmark is one of the best looking benchmarks that can also take advantage of the latest graphics technologies such as tessellation and stereoscopic 3D support. The newest version of the benchmark builds on top of that and ads some new features among which is an enhanced 3D Vision support (already introduced a while ago) as well as an improved support for multi-monitor configurations including the introduction of support for the Nvidia 3D Vision Surround setups (multi-monitor stereoscopic 3D). Of course the Heaven benchmark also supports multiple other stereo 3D modes besides 3D Vision, it can already work in anaglyph 3D mode or Side by Side, even iZ3D monitors are supported. There is a free basic edition of Unigine’s Heaven benchmark that you can download and use and the commercial pro version of the software only adds some extras that might be of interest to professionals using Heaven for serious benchmarking. It is interesting to note that the Heaven DX11 Benchmark software is based on the company’s Unigine graphical engine, meaning that all that you see in the benchmark can be realized in an actual game with the game engine, including stereoscopic 3D support. And quite recently Unigine have also released a game of their own based on that engine that also supports stereo 3D, the game is called Oil Rush. If you haven’t seen it already you are welcome to try it out, it comes with a very good stereoscopic 3D support and although there are some minor things needed to be fixed the game still looks very nice.

- To download the new version of the Unigine Heaven Benchmark software…

Normally when you activate your 3D laser sight in game you play in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision each time you get an annoying green message at the bottom of your screen on a grey overlay telling you what you have just done. What this Auto Laser Crosshair user modification does is allow you when you click your right mouse button and hold it (zooming with the gun) the 3D crosshair will appear automatically without the message showing up. This is quite useful extra that will allow you to aim better trough the scope of your gun when playing in stereo 3D mode without being distracted by the information message popping up every time. Of course releasing the right mouse button can disable the 3D laser crosshair, additionally you can specify a key to be pressed while aiming that can turn off the games HUD, then as soon as you’re done aiming the games HUD turns back on (this only works if the game allows its HUD to be turned on/off via hotkey).

Of course this modification will be useful for people playing FPS games in stereo 3D mode and in single player, but thanks to Jenson who made this modification you can now have this and maybe Nvidia could think about introducing this as an official feature in the future. That is if enough people find this to be an useful feature, so feel free to share your feedback about the mod…

Here is what you need and how to install the modification:
- Download the 3dcrosshairfix.zip archive containing the installation files.
- Start by backing up the files nvstres.dll from C:/program files/nvidia corporation/3d vision/.
- Extract the modified nvstres.dll file from the archive in the folder where you have backed up the original file above.
- Then you need to restart the 3D Vision service.
- Go into Nvidia Control Panel, reassign the Show or hide 3D laser sight to . (period).
- Open the file from the archive called alc.exe and click hide.
- Now start your favorite FPS game and enjoy the extra features that mod provides.

The only side effect from using this mod is that it will remove not only the information message for the 3D laser sight, but will also remove all other overlay messages that you get from 3D Vision such as the depth adjustment slider for example.

If you have installed the latest WHQL GeForce video drivers version 295.73 you might have noticed that they no longer have support for Generic CRT mode that allows you to use an old CRT monitor in stereoscopic 3D mode. We actually got a hint that this is going to happen from the few beta video drivers made available prior to the release of 295.73, so if you still haven’t upgraded your old CRT monitor to a new 120Hz LCD display than maybe you should start thinking about it. Of course you can still use the old 285.62 driver that has support for CRT displays for a while, instead of upgrading to the latest drivers, however in a few months time you will start loosing some extra performance optimizations and new features as they get introduced to newer drivers. Up until the 285.62 driver Nvidia has been providing support for CRTs for legacy users, but they probably consider that it is about time to move on focusing more on 3D Vision certified products than on legacy CRT support. So the question is how many users are actually still using their CRT displays together with 3D Vision, anyone here doing that and not happy with the removal of the CRT support in the latest drivers?