3D Vision Blog » iz3d driver

Finally an Update for iZ3D Users, New Game Profiles are Available

Bloody — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:22:51 +0000

While iZ3D still hasn’t released the new beta driver version 1.13 that we are waiting for, they have made available a 1.13 beta baseprofile for downloading that you can use with your 1.12 driver installation. This means that you should be able to replace your current baseprofile with no problems with this new one and get access to the new stereo presets for over 300 supported games according to iZ3D.

The new baseprofile has fixes for:

- Battlefield Bad Company 2 Interface in DX 11
- Civilization V Interface
- Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 Interface in DX9
- Crysis 2 Intefrace
- Monday Night Combat Interface
- King Arthur Interface
- Darkspore Beta Interface
- LEGO Star Wars 3: Clone Wars Interface
- Back to the Future Ep1 & Ep2 Interface
- Need for Speed Shift 2 Interface

In the new baseprofile there are also some minor changes, like the significantly improved exceptions system and the fact that user profile presets will now always have a higher priority.

To replace your current Baseprofile with this new one one, go to “C:\ProgramData\iZ3D Driver\” (On Vista or Windows 7) or to “C:\Users\All Users\Aplication Data\Roaming\iZ3D Driver” (on XP) and replace Baseprofile.xml with one that you can download from the link below. It is still not a new driver, but at least it is something before we can actually see the new 1.13 beta release, hopefully soon…

- To download the new 1.13 beta baseprofile for the iZ3D driver…

Driver Updates for Nvidia 3D Vision, DDD TriDef 3D and iZ3D Driver

Bloody — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:17:21 +0000

When talking about gaming in stereo 3D mode there are pretty much three driver solutions that are available at the moment, allowing the conversion of 3D games into stereoscopic 3D ones and these are Nvidia’s 3D Vision, DDD’s TriDef 3D and the iZ3D Driver. All of these solutions rely on predefined profiles on per application basis in order to provide good default settings, so that when the user runs a game he can start enjoying it immediately in stereo 3D mode, without having to do some tweaking and adjustment. Making it user friendly is required in order to have normal gamers playing in stereo 3D mode and not just enthusiasts, and the solution with the profiles seems as a great idea to ensure that. There is however a drawback to this approach that is common to all three solutions, you actually need the developer to release frequent updates with new profiles for game titles before or at the exact time new games are released. And we well know that this is not an easy task, because you have to have professionals playing games and creating these profiles, but how is each of these companies doing with that task? One approach to kind of ease the task is to also allow the users to create their own profiles for games, but that is not working that well and is not always possible or easy, especially for novice users… sharing these user-generated profiles among users can also be problem.

Nvidia is the most frequent with updates for their stereoscopic 3D drivers, but then again it is the biggest company among the three and has a lot of resources devoted to improving their 3D Vision technology. Although being limited only to Nvidia GPUs this technology works very well, because the company also develops their own video cards and drivers that are optimized to all work together. But even Nvidia is late at times with the release of profiles for new games and this is something that gamers playing in stereo 3D mode are not happy about. The latest WHQL driver Nvidia has released was from January 18th, but the latest beta driver is from March 2nd and usually there are more releases in between. The user options for generating profiles are very limited at the moment and even the sharing between users is harder as the settings are saved in the registry, and in different places for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems, so Nvidia needs to improve things here a bit as well to engage the big 3D Vision user community to actually help. Still Nvidia’s solution is probably the most user friendly and easy to use by people totally new to stereo 3D gaming or stereoscopic 3D multimedia on a PC, unless of course you try to do something that is not officially supported.

DDD is on the second place in terms of frequent updates, although their latest TriDef 3D release is from last year and more specifically December 23rd which is already about two months and a half ago. The TriDef 3D software currently has less game profiles available and there are even some user generated game profiles included in the official release. The profiles here are a bit more advanced with more user controllable options, so a good profile created by the users and shared in a dedicated official forum can be included in the next release. The TriDef 3D also has some extra features such as auto focus support, the virtual 3D mode etc. The problem here however is that the driver does not support that many 3D output options, although it is a universal driver, meaning that it is not tied to a specific brand of GPUs, like in the case with 3D Vision for example, but instead works on all graphic processors… with higher performance hit at times. So the thing that is probably holding back DDD from getting more popular is their smaller community and the fact that being more advanced and with more options it is more confusing for the novice users.

iZ3D is the least active in terms of driver updates and that is starting to be a problem, especially after the company stopped producing their own 3D monitor hardware with the idea of focusing more on the software, but that apparently is not yet happening, or we are not seeing it materialized at least. The latest driver released by iZ3D was made available on October 23rd and that is four and a half months ago with not even a newer beta version getting released. Before releasing their last driver, the time between the previous official releases was also quite long, but at least there were a few beta releases meanwhile. At the same time the also universal in terms of GPU support driver from iZ3D is also quite advanced with more control for user generated profiles and probably a bigger and more enthusiastic community of users, although not as big as with 3D Vision. The iZ3D driver is also the most flexible one in terms of supported different stereoscopic 3D output methods of all three, so it is the preferred solution for enthusiasts going the 3D DIY way and these are usually the most advanced users. However they probably support the least number of games with available profiles and the lack of more frequent updates does not help at all to keep users happy, but this is also probably why the community is more active around this solution.

Up until now the focus above with the updates was set on game profiles, however more frequent updates also mean new features, fixed bugs, added support for new compatible 3D products and so on. For example when talking about DirectX 9 games all three solutions are pretty much on the same good level, but if we move to games using the more recent DirectX 10 or 11, then Nvidia gets way ahead as the other two solutions still have some problems with these. Nvidia’s solution is only limited to the company’s shutter glasses and compatible 3D monitors, projectors and HDTVs, but the number of these is already quite big, so you still have a lot of options, although they all use the same technology. The two other solutions support multiple 3D display technologies, so they don’t only work with shutter glasses, but also with autostereoscopic displays, passive polarized solutions etc., their support on the most popular recently shutter-based solutions however is still lacking a bit, so they need to do some catching up. What is common to all three solutions is that they are not too user friendly for novice users, neither they give too much options for the more advanced users to be able to take full control. Nvidia’s 3D Vision solution is probably the easiest for use by novice users, but it is also the most constrained for more advanced users, that want to get out of the boundaries set by Nvidia… and the thing here is that in order to make it more user friendly the company had to be more restrictive. The most advanced in terms of user controllable features and options and profile creation is probably DDD’s TriDef, although the iZ3D is very close as well, but they both seem too hard and confusing when a total novice to stereo 3D gaming tries to use them at first. There are a lot of things that still need to be done and all three companies should still further develop their products a lot, taking into account what users want and need, but also actively using the feedback from their user communities and actually helping them help further develop the specific stereo 3D solution… something that is not happening that much at the moment. And more frequent driver updates including even just new profiles for games won’t hurt anyway, would they, they will just make more gamers happy being able to play in stereo 3D mode without having to become S3D gurus themselves… ;)

AMD HD3D Technology + Panasonic 3D HDTV (TX-P50VT20E) and iZ3D

Bloody — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:19:18 +0000

After trying the Panasonic 3D HDTV (TX-P50VT20E) with the latest DDD TriDef software with no success in making the TV work with stereo 3D content from the PC, I’ve decided to switch to iZ3D. And I was not even sure if the iZ3D Driver actually does have support for working with 3D HDTVs using HDMI 1.4(a)’s frame packing through AMD’s video driver.The reason for that is due to the fact that they don’t clearly state that and the naming convention of their stereo 3D outputs in the driver is not helping for that at all. But after some discussion about it here and going through the iZ3D forums I saw people confirming that the driver has the support and should work, so back again to the testing…

Unfortunately after a few hours spent in making sure everything is right – reinstalling video drivers with the latest Catalyst 10.10c, the latest iZ3D Driver 1.12 build 4016, trying with different cables and cable adapters there was still not luck in making things work the way the should. The closest thing was kind of making them act as they should, but not exactly as you can see in the video above. I’ve managed to get the same results as with the TriDef Ignition software – the picture is there, you can see some depth of the objects on screen when wearing the glasses, but there is annoying flicker and artifacts all over the screen making it totally unusable in this state.

As you can see from the video the driver shows “ATI Presenter”, which means that it is using the Quad buffer support which in turn should mean that the sync should be perfect and everything should be working just fine, however it is not. Note in the video that even before activating the stereo 3D mode the on-screen image is having the same strange behavior, just no 3D, and after activating the 3D mode the FPS counter still shows 120 fps in the game which is kind of strange… shouldn’t it be 24 or maybe 48, after all this is in the 1080p/24Hz? After switching to 720p resolution from the game to ensure support for 60/120 fps the strange behavior of what is being displayed on the screen is still not gone – the artifacts and flashing are still there. So still no luck with the AMD HD3D technology in terms of support for my Panasonic 3D HDTV, and the problem is that I’ve only seen a lot of complaints from other people trying to make their 3D HDTVs work too. But since both iZ3D and DDD have the same issue I’m starting to think that they are not at fault here (although they can improve in a few areas too), but the actual problem lies withing AMD’s Catalyst driver that probably needs an urgent update or yet another hotfix to resolve the issue.

MSI is Now Shipping Multi-touch and Stereo 3D-capable All-in-One PC

Bloody — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:55:48 +0000

The new MSI Wind Top 2420 3D is apparently the first All-in-One PC that offers stereo 3D support and that also has a Multi-touch capable touchscreen integrated. The PC is equipped with 24-inch Full HD 1080p 3D-capable 120Hz LED backlit LCD panel, and has an integrated Intel Core i7 CPU and whatis interesting the ATI-based Radeon HD 5730 DirectX 11-capable discrete graphics card. We got a hint about that model a while ago thanks to iZ3D who listed some information about it on their website, so this means the AIO PC will be actually the first to offer stereoscopic 3D capabilities with shutter glasses and using ATI-based GPU thanks to the iZ3D driver. There are still some details unknown, but since the AE2420 3D-046US 3D-capable PC is already available for same from today in North America, we are probably not going to have to wait too much before someone gets it for a review or buys it and shares more information on the stereoscopic 3D implementation and capabilities it offers.

MSI AE2420 3D-046US PC Specifications

Display – 23.6″ Multi-Touch Widescreen (16:9), 120Hz LED back-light panel, 1920×1080
Graphics Card – ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 Discrete Graphic, 1GB VRAM
3D Glasses – One pair of Active Shutter Glasses
Processor – Intel Core i7-860 (2.8GHz)
Chipset – Intel H55 Express Chipset
Memory – 4GB DDR3 800MHz on board
HDD – 1TB SATA Hard Disk Drive
Optical Drive – Blu-Ray / DVD Burner Combo
Network – 802.11b/g/n Wireless, 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN
Operating System – Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Speakers – Built-in 2×5W, Hi-Fi 7.1 channel with THX TRUSTUDIO PRO
Multimedia – 1.3MP Webcam with Microphone, 6-in-1 Card Reader (support SD/MMC/MS/XD), 2x USB 3.0 ports, 4x USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Wireless multimedia keyboard and mouse
Power Supply – 180W Power Supply
Dimensions – 21.81″ x 15.89″ x 2.42″

Amazon already has the MSI AE2420 3D-046US AIO PC listed with a price of $1,799.99 USD. The configuration seems quite Ok for multimedia use like movies and photos in 3D and a little gaming in stereo 3D mode, but the Radeon HD 5730 graphics card is not the best choice for primary gaming solution even when not in stereo 3D mode, let alone for playing comfortably games in S3D mode with high-details and with Full HD resolution.

- More about the MSI AE2420 3D-046US 23.6-Inch All-In-One Multi Touch Screen PC…

iZ3D Will Stop Producing 3D Hardware and Focus on the 3D Software

Bloody — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:28:23 +0000

It seems that iZ3D has decided to phase out of their 3D hardware business and this means that they are going to cease selling iZ3D monitors and instead from now on will focus on the development of their 3D driver that will work with hardware from other vendors. Of course all owners of iZ3D displays do not need to worry as the support for the monitors will still continue to be available in the drivers in the future too. More details about that are available on iZ3D’s official blog post published today that is available here.

Meanwhile the company has made available a second release candidate (RC2) of their 3D driver version 1.11 with some fixes and improvements like for example the new ColorCode anaglyph output support and improved performance on Nvidia-based GPUs. The new iZ3D version 1.11 RC2 driver is available for download here.

As we know iZ3D is one of the software partners for the upcoming stereoscopic 3D support with shutter glasses produced by BitCauldron and compatible with ATI GPUs and working with 120Hz LCD monitors currently a territory reserved only for Nvidia’s 3D Vision. And while there is still no official word on when the complete solution will be available from ATI or actually AMD and their partners, we are already seeing some hints coming from iZ3D. Like for example the dedicated page with details about MSI All-in-One 3D PC that uses ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 video card and the apparently new and still kind of mysterious 120Hz Viewsonic 3D LCD Display that should work with both AMD (ATI) and Nvidia-based GPUs.

Zalman is Refreshing its 3D-capable Monitors with New Full HD Models

Bloody — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:14:46 +0000

Zalman is now offering two new Full HD 3D passive polarized monitors in its like of Trimon products. The older 19-inch model ZM-M190 is now discontinued and the bigger one ZM-M220W will probably follow soon. These first two models were using a special version of Nvidia’s stereoscopic drivers, but for its two new models Zalman is not going to use the Nvidia drivers anymore. Instead the new Zalman ZM-M215W and ZM-M240W will come bundled with the iZ3D Driver, but they can also work with DDD’s TriDef software and probably with just about any other software that can output in row-interleaved 3D format. Below you can find the specifications for the two new passive polarized displays from Zalman, and they are passive polarized ones and not using 120Hz LCD panels, as I’ve already seen some people mistakenly claiming they are 120Hz ones.

Zalman ZM-M215W Specifications

Display Size: 21.5 inch (55 cm)
Screen Ratio: 16:9 wide
Max Resolution: 1920×1080, Full HD
Response Time: 5ms
View Angle (2D): 170°(Horizontal) / 160°(Vertical)
View Angle (3D): 90°(Horizontal) / 10 ~ 12°(Vertical)
Video Ports: D-Sub, DVI
Power Consumption: ≤ 40W in Use, ≤ 1W in Standby
Dimensions: 531x382x200mm (W x H x D)
Weight: 4Kg

Zalman ZM-M240W Specifications

Display Size: 24 inch (60 cm)
Screen Ratio: 16:9 wide
Max Resolution: 1920×1080, Full HD
Response Time: 5ms
View Angle (2D): 170°(Horizontal) / 160°(Vertical)
View Angle (3D): 90°(Horizontal) / 10 ~ 12°(Vertical)
Video Ports: D-Sub, DVI
Power Consumption: ≤ 50W in Use, ≤ 1W in Standby
Dimensions: 572x415x190mm (W x H x D)
Weight: 8Kg

- For more information about all of Zalman Trimon 3D-capable monitors…

How to Use Your New 3D-capable HDTV for PC Gaming over HDMI

Bloody — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:06:51 +0000

We already have some of the new generation of 3D-capable TV sets using the new HDMI 1.4(a) stereo 3D specifications to get their content with Samsung kind of leading the way with worldwide availability with Panasonic closely following and then again other brands like Sony for example that are soon to follow. But even if we already have the 3D hardware to display the content, we still have quite some issues with the unavailability of 3D content to play on them. Not enough 3D videos, almost no high quality 3D movies, 3D TV still in early stages and then we are left with just games, but since it is still a bit early even for the game consoles we are going back to the PC. Nvidia’s 3D Vision active shutter glasses in combination with a 120Hz 3D-capable monitors are one of the most popular solutions for viewing 3D content just because there is more content available on the PC and especially the games. As for gaming on a PC in stereo 3D you just need the software that will render almost all regular 3D games in stereo 3D mode and such software is Nvidia’s 3D Vision Driver, iZ3D’s Driver and DDD’s TriDef Ignition. But what if you want to get your new 3D-capable TV connected to your PC and play in stereo 3D on much bigger screen than you would on a PC monitor? Unfortunately you are kind of out of luck at this moment as there is still no easy and problem free way to do that, but the good news is that we already got some positive feedback on some possible solutions to do that. So if you are one of the early adopters of the new wave of 3D-capable TVs from Samsung you may be interested in trying some of these solutions in order to get the 3D capabilities of the TV actually used for something. Of course the suggestions below might also work on Panasonic and probably other brands of HDMI 1.4(a) stereo 3D specifications based 3D television sets, so if you have one of these you are more than welcome to try and report your findings…

It has turned out that if you own a 3D-capable Samsung C7000 HDTVs you can just connect it to your PC over HDMI interface (DVI to HDMI converters from the PC to the TV also work) and output image content in a Side by Side format that can be displayed in 3D on the TV. Of course you’ll need to manually switch on the 3D mode on the TV as it will not automatically recognize that it is getting 3D content, but that is not such a big issue. You can start by trying to play Avatar the Game as it is one of the still few games that have a built-in native Side by Side 3D output that you can select from the game options, and if this works you can consider yourself lucky and continue with the experiments. Next comes the iZ3D driver that in its latest beta version 1.11 also has support for Side by Side output that works with the Samsung the same way as Avatar, but with the iZ3D driver you can get stereo 3D output in quite a lot of games. Have in mind that this has only worked with iZ3D Driver 1.11b1-1 and there is currently a newer beta 1.11b1-2 available, but with it it has turned out that the Side by Side output does not work with the Samsung. Have in mind that iZ3D has not officially announced support for 3D-capable TVs, so you should be prepared for some issues as this is also a beta driver that you’ll be using, but until a better solution comes out this is worth trying. The good thing is that this works with the active shutter glasses that come with the TV, so no need to by specific glasses or have to use any additional hardware, you just need a PC and a 3D TV…

I’m also eagerly waiting for Nvidia’s 3DTV Play software expected this summer, that should allow the owners of a newer Nvidia GPUs (both mobile and desktop) to connect their PC to a 3D-capable HDTV over the HDMI and output 3D content. But according to the already available official information this software might only work with the mandatory requirements defined in the 3D specifications part of the HDMI 1.4(a) and that means that for gaming it might be limited to 720p for 50/60 frames per eye in stereo 3D mode. However with using the Avatar and iZ3D for outputting in Side by Side format, the Samsung 3D TV was able to report 60 frames per eye at 1080p resolution which gives us good hopes for the 3DTV Play too, but we’ll have to wait a bit more to see. Meanwhile you can try with Avatar and iZ3D if you have a new-gen 3D-capable TV like Samsung, Panasonic or any other and report your results in the comments below, just have in mind that this is not intended and will not work for 3D DLP TVs.

The 3D TV Channels are Coming, When and What to Expect From Them

Bloody — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:40:18 +0000

This summer should be big for all the major TV brands that are going to release the new wave of 3D-capable HDTVs, or at least everyone hopes it to be like that and expects this to happen, but will it turn out as expected or not is another thing. It very much depends on how many early adopters will go for the 3D technology on a TV for more general use and not just for specifics like gaming in stereoscopic 3D which is something that you can even do at the moment with a 120Hz monitor. A 3D-capable HDTV will bring you a bigger screen which is best suitable for movies, but you’ll be getting the whole thing – 3D photos, movies and games.

If you’ve been watching closely nobody besides Sony is talking about stereo 3D gaming, but Sony is doing this related to their PlayStation 3 console only, but what about the PC users? I mean at the moment playing games in stereoscopic 3D is the best thing you can do on a 3D-capable display and this is just because there is enough content. Basically almost all 3D games can easily be played in stereo 3D with the help of special software such as Nvidia’s 3D Vision, DDD’s Tridef Ingnition or iZ3D’s Driver and you don’t need games that are specially made for S3D, although that does help. Unfortunately there is no information regarding how and if we are going to be able to use these new 3D-capable HDTVs along with out computers to play games in stereo 3D or watch 3D movies! And considering that at the moment S3D gaming is the major driving force for the adoption of 3D-capable monitors why it seems that the TV manufacturers tend to completely ignore the most important factor?

Regarding videos things are not looking so bright, there is practically very little quality movies and other video content available in a stereoscopic 3D format and that is a serious issue. Hell, there are not even stereoscopic 3D trailers being officially released for movies that are being shown in 3D cinemas, something which is considered promotional material as should get you interested to go see the full movie in a cinema. There are mostly amateur stereo 3D videos that are being freely distributed or very few short demonstrations and that is all, the free content I mean, but even if you are ready to pay you are still out of luck. You’ll have a very hard time finding anything good in the form of stereo 3D movie that you can enjoy on your 3D-capable TV, unless if you want to go for crappy anaglyph videos, but for these you actually don’t need a special TV. Blu-ray 3D is soon going to be available, but at first there aren’t going to be a lot of movies for it. Starting at the summer we’ll probably have just a few titles by the end of the year, so in 2010 it might not be worth the investment for a 3D-ready HDTV, along with a Blu-ray 3D player just for watching 3D movies and there are not much of these. You might consider going way cheaper and just go watch them in a 3D cinema and wait some more, but that is if we are talking about getting a 3D-ready setup just for Blu-ray 3D this year…

And then comes the 3D TV where I suppose everyone is putting their trust into bringing the interest in 3D-capable HDTVs to a mass level, starting with the FIFA World Cup Football Championship 2010 in South Africa that is coincidentally going to start this summer. And there is a lot of trust put in the sports programs being aired in 3D that are supposed to bring crowds of fans of different sports in front of the TV, instead of them going to the stadium. But hey, don’t forget that not everyone likes to watch football or any other sport so that is leaving a big hole and leads to some common mistakes being done when there are global sports events happening – relying too much on the sports fans for pushing products, services and technologies. I’ll talk about the first 3D channels that we are expecting to start being aired very soon in a bit, but when I do that you’ll notice that all of them do plan to have sports events in 3D and that might just not be enough. After all you know the saying – the content is the king, and without the appropriate content 3D might not turn out so big at the start. And yes, I know there are already quite a lot of 3D-capable TVs available, but most of them are actually not been used even once for displaying 3D content and if you ask why, the answer will be very simple – no attractive 3D content being available. Anyway, let me get to the 3D TV channels that are coming later this year and in 2011 that are already announced and expected to be the first and enough with my pessimism…

Sky Channel 3D appears to be the first of the 3D TV channels that we are expecting to see, but this one goes on air in United Kingdom only, sometime in April. And they already did some interesting tests by broadcasting a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United in a few different pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh. And this test received quite good feedback from the people that were lucky to be actually watching the game in 3D. Have in mind that the April launch seems to be only related to having the 3D sports content being pushed to a wider number of pubs and not to the general public. And later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer, that will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment programs.

DIRECTV (names unknown), backed up by Panasonic should be starting up 3 dedicated 3D channels in the USA. They should be available beginning in June 2010, with customers of the DIRECT TV HD service getting a free software upgrade enabling them to have access to the new 3D channels through their 3D-ready television sets. DIRECTV’s new 3D channels will deliver movies, sports and entertainment content. Also DIRECTV is currently working with AEG/AEG Digital Media, CBS, Fox Sports/FSN, Golden Boy Promotions, HDNet, MTV, NBC Universal and Turner Broadcasting System to develop additional 3D programming that will debut in 2010-2011. At launch, the new DIRECTV HD 3D programming platform will offer a 24/7 3D pay per view channel focused on movies, documentaries and other programming, a 24/7 3D DIRECTV on Demand channel and a free 3D sampler demo channel featuring event programming such as sports, music and other content.

ESPN 3D is another channel that will be offering sports programs starting this summer (in USA), beginning June 11 with the first 2010 FIFA World Cup match South Africa vs. Mexico. The network plans to feature at least 85 live sporting events during its first year, but they’ll probably have other non-live sports content to fill in the holes, but the channel will most likely not be airing content 24/7 at first. Among the planned sports events to be aired live in 3D are up to 25 World Cup matches, the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, college basketball and football and the Summer X Games.

Canal+ 3D will be the first 3D TV channel in France with a launch date planned before Christmas 2010. The new 3D channel will broadcast movies, live events, sports and animation. With the current set-top boxes available to satellite subscribers of Canal+ said to be already compatible with the upcoming 3D broadcast, the only thing that remains is for the viewers to get a hold of a 3D-ready TV set.

3D Pictures is set to launch its own 3D TV channel by the end of this year in Spain. The new channel should be made available to the users via IPTV, satellite, cable, different mobile devices and so on. The channel is currently negotiating with suppliers of content such as sports, movies, concerts, entertainment, documentaries, animation, plays, circus, current affairs and high profile live events.

Discovery 3D (most likely name) by Discovery Communications, partnering with Sony and IMAX is another 3D TV channel competitor expected to launch in 2011 (in USA), but with plans to have content 24/7, unlike some early competitors. The program of the channel will feature high-quality premium content from genres that are most appealing in 3D, including natural history, space, exploration, adventure, engineering, science and technology, motion pictures and children’s programming from Discovery, Sony Pictures Entertainment, IMAX and other third-party providers.

But what happens if you don’t happen to live in USA, UK, Spain, France or Korea for that matter as they seem to be always ahead in terms of new technology – no 3D TV for you at least for now. Of course the major TV networks will soon have their 3D channels available in other countries too with localized subtitles, but that might bring other issues as 2D subtitles will not always look good over all 3D video content. And even then, there is the matter with you having to wear glasses every time you want to watch TV and that is also something that will take some time to getting used to for most of the people that are new to 3D. So in the end there are a lot of unknown factors yet ahead of the wider stereoscopic 3D adoption that everyone is betting on for starting the summer of this year.

ATI’s Stereoscopic 3D Plans Will Start With Catalyst 10.3

Bloody — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:51:44 +0000

The above slide is from recent AMD/ATI presentation regarding their upcoming Stereoscopic 3D support for 120Hz displays and the new Catalyst 10.3 drivers due to be released in March. The slide mentions only iZ3D as a middleware partner by name, but suggests that others will also be supported (DDD for example), but don’t get your hopes too high yet. The Bit Cauldron shutter glasses, the ones that are supposed to go along with this solution, should be available around the summer and iZ3D haven’t released a new beta of the driver for quite some time. So things are slowly moving for ATI and the reason for that is that they decided to go for more open solution, but they have more external factors to take into account partnering with other companies to provide the complete solution. iZ3D’s driver currently can work on both Nvidia and ATI hardware, but their shutter glasses support is still in beta and is not problem free – looses sync when the framerate drops below the refresh rate. So with a new version of the driver and all other pieces in place, with Catalys 10.3 or newer being part of all that, we can hope to have an alternative solution that will support ATI’s GPUs for stereoscopic 3D gaming, photos and videos on a 120Hz LCD display in a few months. And as for 120Hz displays there are already quite a few with more expected to be available by the summer and we all expect to have 120Hz capable HDTVs from most major consumer electronics players by that time too. So things will definitely be very HOT this summer regarding S3D and not only…

Trying Anaglyph Stereoscopic 3D Gaming on your Laptop

Bloody — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:13:30 +0000

The usage of Anaglyph method for viewing stereoscopic 3D is still by far the easiest way to get a glimpse of what is possible in the world of S3D and what you can expect from a better solution. Of course there are some issues associated with the anaglyph method like problems with color reproduction or you getting tired even after a little use of the red-cyan or other color filters. But still having in mind that you can try it without the need for special display, glasses or even software that you have to pay is just enough for a lot of people to want to try that first and then go with solutions like 3D Vision, iZ3D Monitors, Zalman Trimon and others that require a serious investment in hardware and not only for the 3D setup itself, but also for the PC that will be able to handle the 3D content good enough. So lets get to the point how you can test anaglyph stereo 3D gaming on your mobile computer in particular, but the same solutions will also work on a desktop PC…

If your laptop has an Nvidia-based GPU inside (GeForce 8xxx or later mobile graphics) you can go for the 3D Vision drivers and use their free anaglyph mode called 3D Vision Discover with any pair of plain red-cyan anaglyph glasses paper or plastic. Or it was working without problems for the 3D Vision Drivers up to version 190.38, as with the later 191.xx (if I remember correctly) up to the latest ones you will get the error above when trying to enable the Stereoscopic 3D mode from the control panel. It seems that when you run any newer 3D Vision drivers they try to find a compatible 120Hz LCD panel in your laptop and if they don’t you are out of luck and cannot even enable the 3D Vision Discover mode to try out the anaglyph mode. It is still weird why Nvidia did not do anything about his issue since it has been around for some time already, or maybe they are simply ignoring all the owners of gaming laptops since there is still no official 3D Vision support for mobile systems with external monitor (with shutter glasses and 120Hz LCD). If you are a lucky owner of Asus G51J 3D laptop – the only one so far with a 120Hz panel you are Ok and you probably should not have any problems running the 3D Vision Discover anaglyph mode too, but why would you do it on this laptop anyway? Still with a modified drivers and and external 120Hz LCD monitor you can run both anaglyph and shutter glasses mode with the 3D vision driver. At least running the anaglyph mode on your desktop PC does not bring any issues, but still if you don’t yet have the shutter glasses you cannot even try the anaglyph mode on your laptop, why?

Anyway, the good news is that there are alternatives for laptop owners that still want to try the free anaglyph mode and that is to use the iZ3D Driver that does support Anaglyph and a few other stereo 3d viewing methods apart for the specific mode used for their own stereoscopic 3D displays. Another good thing about the use of this driver is that it will work not only on Nvidia-based hardware (including pre-stream processors architecture GPUs), but also on ATI-based video cards. The only drawback here is that the iZ3D Driver still does not support DirectX 10 games, unlike the Nvidia solution, although the company seems to be working on adding it for some time now. So if you have a laptop and you want to try out stereoscopic 3D gaming on it with anaglyph mode you should definitely download and try the iZ3D Driver.

- To download the iZ3D Driver with free Stereoscopic 3D anaglyph mode…

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