3D Vision Blog

ATI Has Announced Its Open Stereo 3D Initiative at GDC 2010

Bloody — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:17:45 +0000

More interesting news coming from GDC 2010 in San Francisco, this time from ATI announcing their Open Stereo 3D Initiative in trying to work with more partners to ensure support for multiple different stereoscopic 3D solutions. The idea of the open initiative is to offer consumers additional choices when selecting an S3D solution, more innovations and of course help in lowering the costs for the hardware and software making it easier for wider adoption. ATI (AMD) and its partners will supposedly soon announce a lineup of 3D products, including a 3D-enabled ATI Eyefinity technology (to counter Nvidia’s 3D Vision Surround), 120Hz 3D-ready displays and notebooks, active shutter glasses and passive polarized ones (have you heard of passive shutter glasses!?), S3D support for DirectX 9, 10 and 11, Quad Buffered OpenGL, Blu-ray 3D support. As you can see from the presentation slide above the 3D-gaming middleware partners are DDD and iZ3D, and for Blu-ray 3D support ArcSoft and CyberLink. ATI is also going to try to work on establishing standards that will help in having compatibility and much wider choices when building your computer and stereo 3D setup if they are adopted by others. The only thing that still remains to be seen is how soon we are going to see actual products on the market as ATI has been talking about S3D support for quite some time, but still no dates when to expect it are available… although we have multiple hints about summer availability.

The Latest Unreal Engine 3 Will Have Official 3D Vision Support

Bloody — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:05:25 +0000

Nvidia and Epic Games just announced the addition of official support for the stereoscopic 3D technology called 3D Vision in the latest Unreal Engine 3. This announcement means that licensees of the Unreal Engine 3 will be able to take full advantage of integrated 3D Vision support by offering games that not only look great, but also handle very well when played in stereoscopic 3D mode. The best news is that even the popular Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free version of Unreal Engine 3, will also offer support for 3D Vision. The updated version of Unreal Engine 3 and UDK (the march beta does not include it!) will be available in the near future, allowing games developed with that revision (or later one) to deliver “out of the box” support for 3D Vision. Meanwhile the latest version of nreal Engine 3 with 3D Vision support is being demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference currently held in San Francisco, so if you are interested you can visit and see a demo of the engine in stereoscopic 3D mode. And while the announcement is only about 3D Vision support for the latest Unreal Engine 3 it will most likely work without any significant issues with other stereoscopic 3D solutions currently available.

- To visit the official website of the free UDK (the free Unreal Engine 3 development kit)…

Stereoscopic 3D Nature Video from Hungary in HD Dualstream Format

Bloody — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:21:29 +0000

Here is another stereoscopic 3D video in HD quality showing the forests, waterfalls, caves and beautiful views from mountain Bükk in Hungary. It is not completely new, but it is quite nice and I’ve kind of missed to post it here, so if you still haven’t seen it then you should download and include in your collection of 3D videos. The video is in HD quality and encoded in dualstream WMV format so you need to view it with a player that supports this like the 3D Vision player or the Stereoscopic player. And don’t forget to leave your thoughts about the video in the comments below…

- To download the S3D nature video from Hungary – mirror 1 – mirror 2 – mirror 3

The Belgian Sport Newspaper La Derniere Heure / Les Sports in 3D

Bloody — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:44:00 +0000

Today marked an interesting new first (in Europe at least?) in stereo 3D as the Belgian Sport Newspaper called La Derniere Heure / Les Sports, that translates in English to something like Last Hour Sports, has released its first completely 3D issue. Of course they’ve used paper anaglyph glasses that are provided free of charge with the newspaper as this is the cheapest and easiest way to provide stereoscopic 3D images on plain paper. By the newspaper going in 3D I mean that all the pictures inside it were shot in stereo 3D and printed in anaglyph format, thus needing the free anaglyph glasses provided with the paper to be viewed by the reader. The idea took about two months of experimenting to find the best solution and provide the best results to the readers, and the publishers report that their advertisers liked the idea too. It is interesting to note that during the preparation for example the paper that today’s issue has been printed was not the normal paper used for printing and this was needed in order to provide better results for the anaglyph 3D photos. It is still unclear if the newspaper will continue to be published with 3D photos in anaglyph format, it probably depends a lot on the reaction of the readers. You can see some anaglyph stereo 3D photos published on their website and available for free viewing, but have in mind that it is in French language only!

- To visit the website of the newspaper La Derniere Heure / Les Sports (in French)…

Animation Magazine is the Newest Member of The S-3D Gaming Alliance

Bloody — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:26:43 +0000

Animation Magazine has a twenty-plus year history with animation professionals in gaming, cinema, and TV and by joining the S-3D Gaming Alliance (S3DGA) the magazine is giving very positive signals that it is finally the right time for stereo 3D to go mainstream. And another good news for the S3DGA and MTBS3D members is that they will qualify for a free digital subscription for the Animation magazine for an year. This offer is only available through links on s3dga.com and mtbs3d.com. The submission form is accessed after registering and logging in to mtbs3D.com with all registrations being free and instantaneous.

An Animation Magazine representative will also be speaking at the upcoming 3D Gaming Summit taking place on April 21st and 22nd in Universal City, Los Angeles. The summit is the first conference that is nearly 100% focused on stereoscopic 3D gaming, and features top names like NVIDIA, Real D, Panasonic, Mitsubishi Electric, Jon Peddie Research, The S-3D Gaming Alliance, and more. The S-3D Gaming Alliance’s next meeting will be held at the conference as well. In addition to feature speakers, S3DGA will outline its current goals and strategies as they relate to making S-3D gaming successful in the home. While this will be a private member-only meeting, all game developers are welcome to participate too if interested.

- For more information about the upcoming 3D Gaming Summit…

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D is All Over the Boxoffice Charts

Bloody — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:47:17 +0000

The new Alice in Wonderland movie, featuring Johnny Depp, that officially premiered in 2D and 3D on 5th has managed to generate around $116 million in the North American weekend boxoffice for just 3 days. Just as a reminder James Cameron’s Avatar has opened with a $77 million weekend last December, so Alice in Wonderland clearly topped that, but will it manage to reach Avatar’s $2.6 billion gross worldwide… I seriously doubt that. The movie Alice in Wonderland has managed to take another $94 million internationally in its opening weekend, generating about $210 million in total which is a very good start, but it will most likely remain with a good start only and the interest will quickly diminish…

Avatar is still in the top 5 (number five actually) in the North American weekend boxoffice charts for the last weekend and this was its 12th week already, but still managing to make a little over $8 million. As for Alice in Wonderland I suppose that the interest will be big only in the first 3-4 weeks maximum, but then again the interest here might not be coming from the movie being converted to 3D (it was shot in 2D) and also screened in 3D cinemas as most people suspect. Without a doubt one for the reasons for the big interest is Johnny Depp and him making another great role as the Mad Hatter. But I don’t see a lot of people going to watch the movie more than once in 3D or because of Johnny Depp, unlike what happened with Avatar – people going two, three or even more times to watch it. And Avatar has opened the doors for everything 3D (not only movies) as now everyone is talking about 3D becoming available to the masses, so you can say that Alice in Wonderland had the right timing, but that might simply not be enough. The Monday boxoffice results (day 4) kind of show this negative trend as Alice in Wonderland managed to make just about $9 million in North America compared to over $16 million for Avatar in its day 4 (first Monday). The drop from Sunday’s results is over 3 times for Alice in Wonderland compared to less than 50% for the same time frame with Avatar…

Anyway, enough with the speculations, lets see how things work out for Alice in Wonderland and meanwhile if you’ve watched the movie in 3D please share your thoughts in the comments below. Did you find the 3D effects impressive enough and comfortable to watch or got your eyes quickly tired or maybe got a headache? How would you compare Alice in Wonderland in 3D to Avatar in 3D? And just about any other comment you find interesting to share with other people interested in stereo 3D.

- If you are interested in the 2D to 3D process used for Alice in Wonderland…

Playing the Game Silent Hunter 5 in Stereo 3D with 3D Vision

Bloody — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:32:57 +0000

The game Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic is a sequel to the popular submarine simulation series. In this game you’ll be behind the periscope of a German Type VII U-boat with the goal to attack the Allied Forces in different famous battles across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. in the fifth game you can finally relive the life of a submarine captain from a first-person view completely controlling the crew and the U-boat. You can say that this game is a must for every submarine simulator fan and the good news is that you can take the level of realism even further by playing the game in stereoscopic 3D mode with the help of 3D Vision…

However as of the moment there is still no official profile for the game available in the 3D Vision driver and you need to tweak the convergence by hand in order for the game to be playable in stereo 3D mode. Of course I’ve prepared custom convergence settings that can help you skip the part where you have to find the right settings by yourself, you can download the file from the link below. You should also disable the Environmental Effects from the game Options menu for best results as when they are active you may notice some weird visual defects in stereo 3D, for example in the water waves around the submarine. If shadows look weird and annoy you inside the submarine you may also want to lower them from the Options until they seem comfortable or completely disable them. Also have in mind that during the cutscenes the stereoscopic 3D effect seems to be gone, although they do not seem to be pre-rendered movies, but after they end it is back again. Increasing brightness a bit might help you in night missions when everything is already dark as the active shutter glasses make these scenes seem even darker. As usual please let me know how these settings work for you in the comments below.

- To download the custom convergence settings for Silent Hunter 5…

3D Vision Standalone Driver 196.75 With IR Transmitter USB Driver

Bloody — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:09:05 +0000

We’ve been waiting for Nvidia for over a month to release a new standalone 3D Vision driver with profiles for new top games, but there is still nothing available, even as a beta version. Nvidia however released a new driver for graphic cards version 196.75 that also included an updated 3D Vision driver with the same version, but this one only supported 3D Vision Discover mode… and soon after that this driver was recalled and removed from the website because some issues (not in the 3D Vision part, but in the GPU driver!). So I repacked the 3D Vision driver version 196.75 with the IR Transmitter USB driver that was originally not present and here you can download the full package and install on your PC while waiting for the official updated release (the 3D Vision driver provided is completely safe to use!). And as you can see above this driver has profile even for the recently announced 3D Vision Ready title Just Cause 2 that also works with the just released demo of the game. Besides the Just Cause 2 profile you can also see other 3D Vision-ready titles such as the quite expected Metro 2033 game. And if you are wondering what that Biohazard 5 game is, well nothing new actually as this is the name under which the Resident Evil 5 is actually known as in Japan, so no big news there. The 3D Vision driver 196.75 also includes official profiles for games like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and even correctly recongizes the new Aliens vs Predator game that had issues with older versions of the driver (loaded a profile for older AvP game that messes up things). Have in mind however that even though there is a profile for the new AvP it is being rated as Not Recommended for 3D Vision because of the 2D flashlight and other lights being rendered at wrong depth levels (need a path for the game to fix that).

But the interesting things in the new version 196.75 of the 3D Vision driver don’t end up with only new profiles for games, there are also seem to be other new additions. If you remember back in January I told you about some new expected features in 3D Vision and Nvidia seem to be adding some of these already. Like for example the 3D Vision plugin for Mozilla Firefox (npnv3dv.dll) you get installed or the one for Internet Explorer (Nv3DVisionIePlugin.dll and Nv3DVisionIePlugin64.dll) as these are supposed to allow you to view stereoscopic 3D photo pairs directly from within your browser. However I could not make them work, as I’m not even sure how they are supposed to be working anyway… there is still no any information officially available for them… yet. Anyway, if you are eager to get the repackaged 3D Vision standalone driver version 196.75 you can download it from one of the links below. Then you need to extract the Zip archive and run the setup.exe to complete the installation, if you get a prompt for the USB drivers for the IR transmitter you can select the folder where you extracted the driver (32-bit and 64-bit versions are included).

- To download the standalone 3D Vision Driver 196.75 – mirror 1 – mirror 2 – mirror 3

HDMI 1.4a Specifications with Updated Stereoscopic 3D Support

Bloody — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:12:35 +0000

HDMI Licensing has announced the release of HDMI Specification Version 1.4a featuring some enhancements for 3D applications including the addition of mandatory 3D formats for broadcast content as well as the addition of the 3D format referred to as Top-and-Bottom. An extraction of the 3D portion of Specification Version 1.4a is also freely available for public download on the HDMI Web site in order to provide public access to the 3D portion of the HDMI Specification for those companies and organizations that are not HDMI Adopters, but require access to this portion of the Specification.

Having set a complete set of Mandatory 3D Formats in HDMI Specification Version 1.4 (with the updates available in 1.4a), the association is trying to ensure interoperability for devices designed to deliver 3D content over the HDMI connection. Implementing the mandatory formats of the HDMI Specification facilitates interoperability among devices, allowing devices to speak a common 3D language when transmitting and receiving 3D content. Or in plain words that means that you’ll be able to plug in your PlayStation 3 console, when it is updated to support stereo 3D, into a 3D-ready Samsung HDTV for example and not only having to use it with a compatible Sony TV set. Here is a list of the mandatory 3D formats that should all be supported by all compatible displays to ensure full compatibility…

For movie content (like Blu-ray 3D)
- Frame Packing: 1080p @23.98/24Hz

For game content (like PS3)
- Frame Packing: 720p @50 or 59.94/60Hz

For broadcast content (like 3D TV)
- Side-by-Side Horizontal: 1080i @50 or 59.94/60Hz
- Top-and-Bottom: 720p @ 50 or 59.94/60Hz or 1080p @23.97/24Hz

For more information you can go and download the updated 3D portion of the HDMI Specification Version 1.4a form the official HDMI website as it is freely available to anyone interested, you just need to fill in a form with some information.

- To download the updated 3D portion of the HDMI Specification Version 1.4a…

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 With a Day 1 Patch that Fixes Stereo 3D

Bloody — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:25:13 +0000

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is now officially out and it got a patch released on the same day as the game became available and the good news is that the patch fixes the problems Bad Company 2 had with 3D Vision in stereo 3D mode, or at least most of them. A few days ago I’ve reported some of the issues the game had before the patch in 3D and the good news is that after installing the patch most of them are gone. If you’ve got the game over Steam or any other downloading service you should already have the patch, but if you got a retail copy on an optical media you should apply the patch to have things working (the game should download it automatically when run, but there might be some issues with that). As I said most things regarding 3D Vision support are fixed, for example there are no more problems with some shadows and lights, the sky is also rendered Ok now, you can even enable HBAO without issues in stereo 3D, there is also no need to disable blood either. Anti-aliasing (AA) however still needs to be turned off (set to 1x in the Options) in order to have 3D Vision working, otherwise you won’t see the stereo effect even after you turn it on. There is also a convergence profile for the game available in the new 196.75 drivers, with Nvidia rating the game as Good, stating about the problems with the sky, so obviously this was done before the patch was released. There also seem to be some performance improvements available and you can now even control the FOV trough the settings.ini configuration file of the game with default setting being 55 degrees. Anyway, now with the first patch for Bad Company 2 the game is actually like what was promised at first – a 3D Vision-ready title that looks really well in stereoscopic 3D mode, so if you were waiting just for that go and get your copy now.

- More info regarding the Day 1 patch for Bad Company 2 is available here…

3D Vision Blog

ATI Has Announced Its Open Stereo 3D Initiative at GDC 2010

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The Latest Unreal Engine 3 Will Have Official 3D Vision Support

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Stereoscopic 3D Nature Video from Hungary in HD Dualstream Format

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The Belgian Sport Newspaper La Derniere Heure / Les Sports in 3D

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Animation Magazine is the Newest Member of The S-3D Gaming Alliance

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Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D is All Over the Boxoffice Charts

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Playing the Game Silent Hunter 5 in Stereo 3D with 3D Vision

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3D Vision Standalone Driver 196.75 With IR Transmitter USB Driver

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HDMI 1.4a Specifications with Updated Stereoscopic 3D Support

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 With a Day 1 Patch that Fixes Stereo 3D

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