3D Vision Blog

I'm in the process of building a new PC, and decided that it was time to make sure it could do 3D well.

I was thinking of going with the AMD/ATI HD3D system and appropriate monitor. So looking for reccomendations.

I have worked with 3D long ago with the active LCD shutter systems that were keyed to the interlace of NTSC/PAL signal. One eye would get the even field, the other eye would get the odd field. This worked well with some old campy 3D movies on video tape.

The primary researchy use was using Amiga computers (remember those?). They supported NTSC/PAL and could do the same interlace scheme as TV's. This allowed for reasonably easy creation of 3D video loops and display sequences using DeluxePaint - it is easy to control the two eyes images.

SO, I'm looking for a similar ability.

what got me going on this again was the recent announcement of HP's new 2311gt monitor that uses "Film Patterned Retarder (FPR)" to control the image to each eye. http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/07/hp-embraces-this-3d-thing-outs-2311gt-monitor-second-gen-wirel/
However this monitor may not be a good general 3D solution.

While my primary interest is in my own binocular imagry (not necessarily 3D generated) I would like to be able to do some 3D gaming and 3D BluRay watching.

Great site!

Thanks

Pretty much all passive 3D monitors would work Ok with ATI/AMD hardware, but there aren't that many active 3D monitors that are compatible with them. You should check out the iZ3D Driver and DDD TriDef 3D software as one of these is going to be the solution you'd probably use for stereo 3D gaming with a 3D monitor and with ATI/AMD hardware. Aside from HP's 2311gt 3D FPR monitor, you can also check out LG's passive 3D solutions (such as D2342P) as well as ViewSonic V3D231 and AOC e2352Phz 3D monitor, there are probably quite a few others as well. And since passive 3D monitors use a row-interleaved method for displaying the 3D content you can easily create 3D images and display them without any special requirements.

Thanks for the info.

When I was looking at the NVIDIA cards as a solution - it seemed to be that it was really geared towards using its 3D rendering engine to decide what image each eye should get. Is this correct? This may be an issue for my primary use. However, it seems that this (NVIDIA) solution is currently the more popular path to take for 3D in general.

I may stick with the passive scheme if indeed there are solid BR 3D solutions and reasonable support for games. I'll look at the iZ3d and DDD TriDef software as you suggest.

Any recomondations regarding ATI (5000 vs 6000) series cards?

Nvidia's solution is mostly targeted at gamers and can be a bit more problematic for use for different things while wit passive 3D displays you don't even need special software to display the image in 3D on the screen, you just need to make the right row-interleaved image and put on the glasses, you can say it is more flexible. So it depends a lot on what you plan to use the 3D setup for mostly...