3D Vision Blog

Nvidia has just released a new beta 3D Vision Driver Full CD v1.15 that combines GeForce GPU driver version 195.39 and NVIDIA 3D Vision driver version 195.39 BETA drivers available for Windows Vista and Windows 7, 32-bit and 64-bit. One of the most interesting features in this driver release is the addition of three new 3D Vision officially compatible DLP projectors from Acer and these are: Acer X1130P, Acer X1261 and Acer H5360. The official compatibility and being listed as supported by the drivers means that yo should not have problems running the projectors for playing games, watching movies and looking through pictures in stereoscopic 3D mode. This is very important, because if the projectors are not officially compatible (like with the new BenQs that should be technologically compatible, but not issue free) you may have trouble setting them up to be used with GeForce 3D Vision!

Aside from the new DLP projectors support (the new ViewSonic models are still not officially supported too!), the new 3D Vision driver version 195.39 also updates some game profiles and of course some new profiles for games that that came out recently or are going to be released soon, so that the compatibility when playing them in S3D mode is ensured.

Updated 3D Vision game profiles
- Call of Juarez – DX10 smoke fixed
- Civilization 4 – convergence fixed
- Command and Conquer – Red Alert 3 – water rendering fix
- F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate – fixed fire rendering
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – rendering halo fix

New 3D Vision game profiles
- ArmA II
- Borderlands
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Fallen Earth
- FIFA Soccer 10
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Lego Indiana Jones 2
- Mini Ninjas
- Order of War
- Red Faction: Guerrilla
- Section 8
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes
- War Leaders: Clash of Nations
- Trine

- To download the new 3D Vision drivers Full CD v1.15 Beta…

Fly Me to the Moon is a kids story about three flies that went aboard the Apollo 11 flight to the moon along with the first human astronauts that was first released beginning in 2008, but did not get that much attention. It is still aired in some countries in 3D cinemas, including the one I live in and although quite a bit hard to find, thanks to a guy in Nvidia’s forums we now have a stereoscopic 3D version of the trailer fro the movie. The movie comes in animated 3D and in stereoscopic 3D and although it is rated for kids of 3+ years it is still fun to watch even by adults, especially the ones that are interested in S3D and now with “the right” trailer you can get a nice feel on what to expect from the movie right on your PC equipped with GeForce 3D Vision or some other Stereo 3D viewing setup…

The trailer is in 720p (1280×720 resolution) with the two frames not in the typical Side by Side format, but in Over/Under format. So when viewing with NVIDIA’s Stereoscopic 3D Video Player you need to select the Left image on top and the right at the bottom for optimum results. And please share your experience if you watch the trailer and on what S3D system are you doing it…

- For the official website of Fly Me to the Moon Movie
- Download Fly Me to the Moon Trailer in S3D – mirror 1 – mirror 2

ViewSonic’s PJD6211 DLP Projector is the most affordable new model coming form the company that can work at 120Hz refresh rate and thus is officially 3D Vision compatible, which is a great news to all the current and future owners of Nvidia’s shutter glasses. This projector has a native resolution of 1024×768 and can provide you with a much bigger screen (especially compare to the 22-inch 120Hz LCD displays) to play games on, watch movies or view pictures in stereoscopic 3D and it does it quite well. Today I’ve finally got the projector, installed it and did some quick tests with it to see how good is the implementation and support for 3D vision and of course the projector in overall…

The installation and usage of the projector is pretty simple, but of course there are some issues that need some attention and getting used to, but once you do that you should be Ok with the product. I started with trying to use a long cheap VGA cable and I had trouble with setting up 120Hz which kind of surprised me, but I believe that the problem was something with the cable, because after switching to the shorter one that comes with the device there were no problems. Of course I’ve used a DVI to DSUB converter, because the videocard had only DVI outputs (Nvidia GeForce GTX 275), but there were no problems using the analog lines of the DVI interface for that.

So after quickly setting up the projector I went to the 3D Vision wizard to activate it with the projector, and here you need to select a generic CRT display in order to have things started. One thing that surprised me quite a bit was the fact that on the step, where you have to select which one of the two objects you see in each eye – triangle or hexagon figure, they were displayed just the opposite from what you should see. So I had to select hexagon where I actually saw a triangle for that eye and the opposite for the other to continue after this step, otherwise I just got the answers “wrong”, but after that there were nor problems with the 3D mode. Here I’ve tried the “3D invert” function, which supposedly had to invert the left and right frame contents, but it did not help… then again even activating or deactivating the “3D sync” option in the projector menu there was no visible difference and I could use without problems 120Hz with S3D in both modes. The documentation of the projector is not very detailed on these two options, but we’ll probably have to wait for a firmware update with some fixes and improvements, but as I said that is not a problem if you know about the issue and the workaround… ;)

I started with some well known games that work good and look very nice on the 120Hz LCD displays to have something to compare them and the results you get on the projector. Tomb Raider Anniversary and Underworld do look very nice as expected and much more fun to play when you don’t have to look like “through a small windows” which is actually your 22″ monitor. Counter Strike Source for instance did look better than on LCD display, but not that much… the game just is not great on 3D Vision, but still… Batman – Arkham Asylum Demo also looked very good on the projector, but with Prototype I had some issues with the character starting to be visible double even with the glasses if I increased the depth level a bit more than the lowest setting, and with the lowest setting it was Ok.

In other games like X-Blades that works very good on 120Hz LCD I had some strange issues, like the yellow and red coloring of some objects that you see on the picture, something that should not be present there. But then again that seemed to be some sort of weird bug, because later on I tried the game on another PC and there it was looking normal, without the strange colors problem, so who knows. Actually on that picture more interesting is the strange colored line of the bottom of the projected screen, as you probably guess it should not be there and it is not a part of the game’s visuals. I did notice this strange colored line appearing form time to time in different applications, so it is probably some sort of bug again, but it is definitely something that should not be there at all…

While setting up the projector I did notice that changing between the refresh rates does also bring some change in the brightness levels of the projected images. This is why I’ve decided to actually measure the brightness levels at 60Hz and 120Hz and got quite interesting results:
- sRGB mode: 60Hz – 457 lux, 120 Hz – 328 lux (~ 39% drop in brightness)
- PC mode: 60 Hz – 956 lux, 120 Hz – 461 lux (~ 107% drop in brightness)

So the higher the brightness level is in 60Hz mode, the more it drops when switching to 120Hz. Of course these results are measured in the center of a completely white projected image at 3 meter distance from the projector, and your results may differ in different conditions, but the change in brightness level in percents will probably remain pretty much the same in relation between 60 and 120 hertz modes. Visually the difference in sRGB mode (I prefer this one) is not that noticeable, but in PC mode it is much more apparent to the naked eye (when switching between the modes). However I did not find this to be an actual problem when playing in a dark room, probably it might be an issue if you try to play in S3D in s too lit up room, resulting in objects in darker areas not that clearly visible. Stay tuned for more things I find while testing the PJD6211 DLP Projector… ;)

- For more information about ViewSonic PJD6211 DLP Projector…