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The Game Deus Ex: Human Revolution And It’s Stereo 3D Support

Bloody — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:49:01 +0000

The game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is an exclusive AMD HD3D technology title, meaning that the developers from Eidos-Montreal have partnered with AMD in order to make native stereoscopic 3D output mode compatible with the HD3D technology along with some other extra features. The game also supports AMD’s Eyefinity multi-monitor technology and is also a DirectX 11 title, although DX11 support is not exclusive for AMD-based hardware, but also works with Nvidia-based video cards. Now, what native stereoscopic 3D support means is that the game engine itself renders the slightly different left and right views that are used to create the illusion of depth in the virtual game world. Or with other words in order to have stereo 3D support in Deus Ex: Human Revolution on compatible AMD hardware you don’t need to use middle-ware such as the iZ3D Driver or the TriDef 3D software as you’d normally do in order to get a game work in stereo 3D mode with an ATI/AMD-based video card. The native stereoscopic 3D support sends the two views directly to the video driver using the quad-buffer support offered by the AMD HD3D technology, an example of what you can do by using the recently released AMD Quad-Buffer SDK.

So far, so good, however what about everyone that is using the more popular and more available alternative called 3D Vision by Nvidia? Well, they are pretty much screwed since there is no official support for stereoscopic 3D output for 3D Vision and the game does not render that well if you manage to make it work using the 3D Vision software to “convert” it in stereo 3D mode. But since the 3D Vision driver can also work in a similar way like the AMD’s HD3D quad-buffer works, it would’ve been very hard to also implement official stereo 3D output for 3D Vision. After all the game engine apparently already renders everything in proper stereo 3D mode, so it only needs to send the images to the 3D Vision for displaying on the screen. And since Nvidia apparently did not partner with the developers we get no such support, so the stereo 3D support in game becomes not so appealing feature as a lot of people already having 3D Vision are not able to take advantage of it. Or even worse, they get the game expecting it to work with 3D Vision as it is being advertised and they get disappointed, of course not reading carefully enough before pre-ordering or purchasing the game is their own fault, but still. And if you take a look at the official game forum you can notice a lot of people asking about 3D Vision support… So was the move to make the game limited to supporting only AMD’s HD3D technology while at the same time developing a native stereoscopic 3D rendering game engine? Financially probably yes during the development process, however considering the fact that the game supports stereo 3D only for PC it is a strange decision, or maybe the stereoscopic 3D support was never intended to be one of the main features of the game. However the constantly increasing number of 3D-ready PC gamers have made the stereoscopic 3D support a big topic of discussion, and that goes not only for the unhappy 3D Vision users…

A lot of gamers using ATI/AMD-based video cards and relying on middle-ware solutions such as the iZ3D Driver or the TriDef 3D software also are complaining of trouble making the game work in stereo 3D mode. And a lot of people using these solutions have ATI/AMD-based hardware, but use it with different kinds of 3D display solutions that are not supported by the use of AMD HD3D technology getting the direct S3D output from the game engine. So the situation with these users is pretty much the same as with people with 3D Vision, they don’t get that great stereoscopic 3D output as instead of getting the perfect S3D output from the game engine, they need the middle-ware solution to create the stereoscopic 3D output for them. So as a result even more people with stereo 3D solutions are left out, just because they are not AMD HD3D ready, although they may have the perfectly capable ATI/AMD-based video cards. Makes you wonder if the game developer ever think about the gamers that will be using this stereo 3D features or they think they can just say they’ve made something fancy to boost their sales. Stereoscopic 3D support for gaming on the PC is still far from perfect, there are multiple solutions available and no industry wide support present, so that you can easily make a game supporting stereoscopic 3D output for all of the available 3D displays. But most developers that are making games promoted as stereo 3D capable do try to add support for at least most of the available solutions and to ensure that this stereoscopic 3D support looks good and works well with all of them, like in the game Avatar for example.

So what can you do if you are one of the gamers with a stereoscopic 3D capable computer, but are left out by the game’s native AMD HD3D only support? Well, you need to either play the game in 2D mode or do some things in order to make it somewhat playable in stereo 3D mode. You need to start by running the game in DirectX 9 and not DirectX 11 mode, so that you would be able to use your middle-ware stereo 3D solution (3D Vision, iZ3D or TriDef 3D) with better, but far from perfect results. Another thing that you should be aware of is the fact that by default the game has its convergence preset at a specific level and you are able to only adjust the depth level. This is something that a lot of the game developers making a stereoscopic 3D title tend to do in order to provide decent level of depth and minimal to no pop-out of the image. And while this has some advantages, especially for people new to stereo 3D gaming, the more advanced users and people that have already played for a while in stereoscopic 3D mode literally hate when this happens. The reason is that they want to be able to make the adjustment of the convergence as they wish as they can easily handle more pop-out and usually want to be able to make the game pop-out, so completely locking out convergence adjustment is indeed another not recommended thing. You can warn the users not to play with it if they don’t know what they are doing and provide an easy option to reset it to the default value for example, but not completely lock it out to a preset value that you may think is the best. Now, there may be some good news for owners of 3D Vision systems as Andrew Fear has reported in the Nvidia forums earlier this month that Nvidia is cooperating with Eidos to bring proper 3D Vision support, would’ve been nice to have that right from the start however. It won’t however hurt if you mention in the official Deus Ex: Human Revolution forums that you’d like to have proper stereoscopic 3D support added to the game, not only for 3D Vision, but also for iZ3D or TriDef 3D if you are using these. But remember, in order for your post to have effect you should not use rude tone or demanding something, just say you’d like to see that support in a future update, so that the game developer can see there is actually a big demand in proper stereo 3D support from the gaming community that plays in stereo 3D mode.

- To visit the official Deus Ex: Human Revolution game forums…

iZ3D Finally Made Available Two New Beta 1.13 Driver Releases

Bloody — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:20:43 +0000

It seems that iZ3D was very active behind the scenes working on their new beta drivers and that is the reason why they did not have any publicly released driver updates for quite a while. The company has released two different beta 1.13 drivers, one is a normal beta with new features such as a new user interface and improvements, intended for most users, and the other one is an experimental beta for more advanced users willing to try the new universal shutter mode.

iZ3D Driver version 1.13 beta 1.12.5123:

Added features:
1. A completely new User Interface in Control Center
2. Added a compatibility key in Config file that increases compatibility with some anticheat software (GameGuard for instance)
3. Added stereoscopic presets for all supported games
4. New Output: AMD HD3D (An output for 3D TV’s that enhances 3D identification process and has special settings for 3D TV’s)
5. Added 2 new output modes for Stereo Mirror output
6. Scaling is now automatically activated for outputs that may require it
7. Added driver activation button
8. Added UM presenter for DirectX 10 (120 Hz Devices output)
9. Added Norton AniVirus to driver’s exceptions
10. All default exceptions are now visible in Control Center Exceptions Sections
11. iZ3D Screenshots that were taken in Mono are now saved in .jpg format
12. Added new lasersight
13. Updated User Guide
As can be seen in point 2, we have created a special mode for iZ3D driver that may help overcome anticheat software problems. This key was developed based on cooperation with protection software developers, but is still experimental, so the only way to activate this mode is to go to Config.xml and change Code: to Code:

Fixes:
1. Re-written interaction with DX10 games on Nvidia GPU (fixes various DX10 compatibility issues
2. Fixed problems for DX10/11 with Dual Monitor outputs (iZ3D, Stereo Mirror, Side-by-Side and such)
3. Fixed bug when AMD users sometimes couldn’t get free 3D DLP output
4. Systems with dual GPU detection of videodriver for DX10/11 is now work properly
5. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit – fixed problem where shadow from objects were covering huge areas
6. Fixed Aion Crash bug on Vista and Vista x64 OS
7. Fixed DX10/11 interface for Battlefield Bad Company 2
8. Fixed DX9 interfaces for: Civilization V, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2, Crysis 2, Monday Night Combat, King Arthur, Darkspore, LEGO Star Wars 3: Clone Wars, Back to the Future Ep1 & Ep2, Need for Speed Shift 2, Assassins Creed Brotherhood, Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime, Sanctum.

iZ3D Driver version 1.13 Experimental beta 1.12.5145:
This is the 1.13 beta with experimental universal support of shutter / page flipping 3D for Nvidia / AMD + Vista / Win 7 + 32 / 64 bit. It is intended to offer universal support for 3D on different combination of 3D displays using shutter glasses and no matter what video card you are using. iZ3D plans to release bundle of this version and 3D shutter glasses (Bit Cauldron?) which will be compatible with any or most 120Hz desktop monitors, 120Hz projectors, 120Hz TVs. Technically speaking this driver can support any VSync frequency, but for this particular beta release is has been limited to support only 100, 110 and 120Hz. Have in mind that this experimental beta is for advanced users willing to test the new functionality and report bugs, so that it can be further improved. The normal 1.13 beta is a better choice for people willing just to use the driver for playing games.

Testing instructions:
1. You need shutter glasses – Xpand, Blick, nVidia ….
2. You need to run them to make them flipping. This is most complicated part… Actually I’m afraid you need two PCs for test. For example, you may run 3d projector on one PC and use 3D DLP signal from it to activate Xpand glasses or you can run nVidia 3D Vision glasses on one PC. You can also use 3D TV similar way as projector.
3. Run this version on another PC connected to 120Hz monitor and use glasses from p.2 to observe 3d.
Of course simplest way to test is 3d 120Hz projector, but not every person here has it. Also you may try 3D laptop, all-in-one or monitor with embedded emitter.
And finally you need to select “iZ3D shutter” output for all these tests – trial as usual 30 days
This output will only work if game is in fullscreen mode, and only if resolution is set to it’s maximum.

Known issues:
1. Performance on Nvidia GPU is slightly worse than on ATI
2. Scaling feature causes crashes (disabled)
3. iZ3D Wizard and FPS meter are displayed only in one eye on several DX10/11 games
4. Eye Swap causes freeze of right image.

- To download the standard iZ3D Driver version 1.13 beta 1.12.5123
- To download the experimental iZ3D Driver version 1.13 beta 1.12.5145

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…

New sView Stereoscopic 3D Multimedia Player Version 11.03 MT

Bloody — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:04:15 +0000

sView, the a free stereoscopic 3D video and photo player that supports most of the popular stereoscopic 3D formats developed by Kirill Gavrilov just got a small, but important update. The latest version of the player uses a more recent build of FFmpeg libraries with multi-threading decoding enabled, improving 3D video playback on systems with multi-core processors. The sView 2009 stereoscopic 3 media player is available for both Windows and Linux and it also supports 3D Vision among other more popular stereo 3D output methods.

- To download and try the updated sView Stereoscopic 3D Multimedia Player…

sView Stereoscopic 3D Multimedia Player Version 11.03

Bloody — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:29:33 +0000

sView is a free stereoscopic 3D video and photo player that supports most of the popular stereoscopic 3D formats. The software is being developed by Kirill Gavrilov and is available for free for non-commercial use. It uses OpenGL for the 3D visualization, but it also has support for 3D Vision as well as a lot of other stereoscopic 3D hardware such as: different anaglyph glasses, dual or mirror displays, row or column interlaced monitors, DLP checkerboard pattern, the iZ3D monitor, generic shutter glasses, and even the Vuzix VR920 HMD. Something that you may also like is the presence of the player menu even in full screen mode, especially useful when using with 3D Vision as this mode requires you to be in full screen. For example even the latest Stereoscopic Player and the 3D Vision Player still don’t have control menu available when you are in full screen mode. And having the ability to skip forward or return back is something that is often needed as a feature. But in the sView player you also get other options available in full screen mode, they of course hide automatically when not needed, but as soon as you move the mouse they reappear. For viewing stereoscopic 3D photos you need to run a separate executable, but the functionality it offers is pretty similar, it is just limited to viewing photos, and the photo player also supports viewing with 3D Vision.

- To download and try the sView Stereoscopic 3D Multimedia Player…

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… ;)

Share Your Experience with the Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED 3D Monitor

Bloody — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:08:00 +0000

Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED is the first and still the only 3D-capable monitor designed to work with AMD’s HD3D Technology supporting ATI/AMD Radeon 5000 and 6000 series GPUs, although the monitor should also be capable of working with older ATI-based GPUs and even Nvidia-based GPUs according to iZ3D, but maybe not so well (some synchronization issues may be present). Aside from that, the Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED monitor also uses wired shutter glasses that connect to the display itself and not the PC. This monitor however is still hard to find on the market and not available in every region of the world, including where I live, so I’m still having trouble obtaining one for testing…

With this said, if you were already able to get a hold of one of these new 3D-capable monitors from Viewsonic (they are not 3D Vision compatible!) you are welcome to share some actual photos of the monitor and the glasses, as well as share your experience with the product – setting things up, using together with the iZ3D driver that it comes with, information on what performance you are getting with your video card and so on. If you are more experienced with stereo 3D-capable monitors, then you are welcome to share your thoughts about the performance of the display in 3D mode compared to other solutions you’ve seen so far like 3D Vision-capable monitors, or 3D HDTV and even 3D DLP projectors for example. Of course you are more then welcome to run some tests and share the results in the comments below as well, for example the stereo 3D crosstalk test photos I’ve shared here in the blog or photos showing the level of ghosting in Tomb Raider Underworld – the game I use for testing monitors here on the blog etc. You can also compare and post your findings about color reproduction and input lag as well if you are able to measure these, and everything else that you think other readers here might find useful.

Make Your Own Autostereoscopic 3D Display With the Help of a Printer

Bloody — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:43:26 +0000

How about printing yourself an autostereoscopic 3D display or actually turning your existing 2D monitor into a 3D capable one that does not require you to wear any glasses to have a perception of depth. The user Cybereality has managed to create his own DIY autostereoscopic LCD monitor mod using parallax barrier printed on a normal printer and he explains how this can be made in the video above. He is using a transparency film with printed parallax barrier for his monitor and then aligns it to his LCD screen and by adding the iZ3D driver with the Vertical Interleaved setting. Of course this method is far from being perfect and the quality you will get won’t be the same as a commercial autostereoscopic 3D display (it is hard to print the absolutely right size of the barrier as well as to perfectly match in on the display), but it can still be fun to try out and build your own autostereoscopic 3D solution on the cheap… very cheap, provided that you have all the required tools and materials handy. Then there is of course the number of vertical lines being halved (similar effect to the passive polarized display with halved horizontal lines in the resolution), the fact that you need to stay still while watching the monitor and be at a fixed position for optimum results and some other drawbacks. But still, if you are interested you can read on the full guide with more explanations from Cybereality by following the link below. I personally do plan to play a bit with this method in the next few days, maybe trying to cover some laptop screen of up to 12″ (enough for a single A4/Letter transparency film sheet as I don’t have access to A3 or larger size printer) to see how it goes.

- To read the full DIY autostereoscopic 3D guide by Cybereality over at the MTBS3D forum…

More About the HP Envy 17 3D Laptop using AMD’s HD3D Technology

Bloody — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:04:16 +0000

I just got my hands on the HP Envy 17 3D laptop, the first notebook that uses AMD HD3D technology. The laptop has a Full HD screen capable of working with a 120Hz refresh rate and an AMD Radeon HD 5850 video card, along with a pair of wireless active shutter glasses that are needed for the 3D effect. And just today I’ve found out that the wireless shutter glasses that HP uses are made by Xpand as you can also see from the photo I’ve taken. The good news is that I was able to make the laptop work with both the iZ3D Driver and DDD’s TriDef 3D software. The TriDef media player also worked fine for playing 3D videos, however I had trouble making the Stereoscopic Player work with stereo 3D videos as it should normally, but hopefully it will work at a later time after some updates. The most pleasant surprise that I’ve had was from the shutter glasses as this was my first time trying a pair of shutter glasses made by Xpand. The pair that comes with the HP Envy 17 3D laptop blocks much less light as compared to the 3D Vision glasses for example, at least visually the Xpand’s lenses seem to go a tiny bit more darker when they are activated as compared to when they are not active. Of course the glasses use infrared signal for synchronization with the transmitter built into the frame of the laptop’s screen, just right from the webcam. The not so good thing about the glasses was that they seem to show a bit more crosstalk (ghosting), but the reason for that might not lie in the glasses themselves, but be also related to other things like the drivers or the LCD panel, so this needs a bit more investigation. Another thing that I should mention is that the glasses do not have a rechargeable battery, so you will have to replace the button cell battery from time to time and always having a spare would be a good idea. Also, another thing worth noting is that the glasses do not have an On/Off button, so they don’t need manual activation, but instead start working as soon as they sense an IR signal, although I’m not sure if that contributes to the faster discharge of the battery or not.

And just out of curiosity I’ve tried to have two stereo 3D systems active, one with 3D Vision and Samsung 2233RZ 3D monitor and the other was the HP Envy 17 with the Xpand glasses, and then I swapped the glasses. This means I tried to view the stereo 3D image on the Samsung with the Xpand glasses and with the 3D Vision on the HP laptop, with the glasses getting their sync signal from their original source as the infrared coming from the other solutions’ IR transmitter interferes. The Xpand glasses continued to offer very bright and clear image when active and viewing the 3D image on the Samsung monitor, and they’ve worked just fine with the only side effect of having significantly more ghosting than when using the 3D Vision, but offering much brighter image. The more ghosting is probably due to some synchronization timing difference, but if that gets tweaked it also means that it is possible to have much more clear shutter glasses and Nvidia should start thinking on updating the lenses on the 3D Vision with a newer and better ones that do not block that much light. On the other hand, the 3D Vision glasses also worked on the HP and I could see the depth of the objects displayed in 3D on the screen, but the image was significantly more darker than with the Xpand glasses making games unplayable when in darker areas.

You are welcome to ask questions about the HP Envy 17 3D laptop and you can expect more details and a review of the laptop and especially the stereo 3D capabilities an performance it offers quite soon, I hope… ;)

More About the Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED 3D-capable LCD Monitor

Bloody — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:19:09 +0000

We’ve head about the Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED 3D-capable LCD monitor back at the beginning of this year when there was information that Viewsonic is working on a 120Hz gaming LCD with a LED backlight that was supposed to come as a 3D Vision certified product. However that monitor has been delayed quite a lot and just recently there was the official announcement as a solution supporting AMD’s HD3D Technology. So far that is pretty much the only 120Hz 3D-capable LCD monitor that was announced as compatible with it and it is hardly available on any markets. What is interesting is the fact that the monitor comes bundled with a pair of wired, yes I’ve said wired, shutter glasses that you need to use to get the 3D effect and apparently it uses the iZ3D Driver. According to iZ3D’s website you will be able to use that monitor not only with the latest Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series of GPUs, but also with 4000 series of ATI/AMD-based graphic cards as well as with Nvidia GPUs, although with the Radeon 4000 series and Nvidia 4xx/2xx series you might have some sync issues.

iZ3D has a specific version of their driver available for that monitor (version 1.12 build 3907) that also has the required support for the wired shutter glasses, although they seem to connect to the monitor itself and not directly to the PC.

Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED Specifications:

Display size: 23.6″ (60 cm) Wide, 16:9 Full HD
Panel Technology: TN (Twisted Nematic)
Resolution: 1920?1080 @ 120Hz
Response time: 5ms (typical) / 2ms (G to G)
Colours: 16.7M (6 bit + HiFRC)
Contrast ratio: 1000:1 (20,000,000:1 Dynamic)
Brightness: 300 cd/m2
Viewing angle: 170°/160°
Pixel pitch: 0.2715 mm
PPI (pixels per inch): 92
Integrated Speakers: 2x 2w (SRS Premium Sounds)
Wall-mount: 100 mm x 100 mm
Connections: Analog (D-sub), Digital (DVI-D), HDMI, Internal Power Supply, 3.5mm audio jack in/out, USB type-B for 3D glasses
Power consumption: 35 W (typical) w/o Audio / 38 W (maximum) with Audio
Dimensions: 563.6?417.8?260.8 mm
Weight: 5.1 Kg

Looking at the picture of the monitor with the shutter glasses I can’t stop wondering how were they able to make them so ugly looking, like a product from 10 years ago, because nowadays people do want to have not only good working products, but also nice looking. Anyway, that is not the point here, there is one question that immediately pops into my mind regarding the glasses and that is what has happened with BitCauldron, who were supposed to offer better performing wireless RF and not IR shutter glasses with lenses that do not block so much light and with all that be more affordable for the end customer? There was a lot of talk that BitCauldron will be the company that will partner with AMD to provide one of the important parts in their open stereo 3D initiative, namely the shutter glasses. And after more than just a few months what we’ve seen so far from them is just a paper launch of a pair of universal active shutter glasses designed for 3D HDTVs and not for PC. Glasses under the brand of Monster Cable with the name MONSTER VISION “MAX 3D” that were initially announced for September launch, but are still not yet available (there is talk about launching them this month, but who knows). Meanwhile the competition in the form of the universal 3D shutter glasses for 3D-capable HDTVs – Xpand X103 is already shipping at a much more affordable price, although the product is based on IR technology. But what about the PC, where are the shutter glasses that you can use with your ATI/AMD-based computer?

HP is now starting to ship their HP Envy 17 3D-capable laptop that is based on a AMD’s solution for stereo 3D, but unlike Viewsonic who use the iZ3D Driver and wired shutter glasses, HP has opted out for using the alternative DDD’s TriDef 3D solution with a pair of different wireless IR shutter glasses that do look better than what Viewsonic is apparently bundling with their monitor. Currently the only other solution based on AMD’s 3D technology is the MSI Wind Top AE2420 3D AIO PC that besides S3D also offers multi-touch capabilities, bundled with iZ3D and a different set of own shutter glasses that supposedly are wireless. What seems to bug me here is that it seems with all the openness nobody has decided to go for a standard pair of wireless shutter glasses that will offer interoperability if you lets say decide to go for two different AMD-based S3D products. What will happen if you want t have two or three pairs of 3D glasses for your 3D computer, monitor or laptop… or if you want to get a 120Hz LCD monitor now and later on just buy a pair of shutter glasses and get stereo 3D support? And what about if you already own a 120Hz LCD (made to support 3D Vision from Nvidia), but you’ve got it to play games at 120Hz and not in 3D and never got the 3D Vision glasses, but now you just want to add a pair of glasses and go for 3D? That would of course be easy of you have a compatible Nvidia-based GPU and get 3D Vision, but what about if you’ve got ATI/AMD-based video card and you want to get S3D support for it? Questions, questions, question… and no answers.

I’m quite happy that I was finally able to make my new 3D HDTV somewhat work as it should with AMD’s HD3D technology, but that took quite a lot of efforts and frankly the whole process is not easy even for a 3D enthusiast like me, let alone for a normal person. I hope that the same situation will not be repeating for the other 3D-capable products, but unfortunately I seriously doubt that. AMD has a lot of catching up to do regarding stereo 3D support and if you ask me they either do not have the resources or more likely the will to properly push their own solution and technology as a competitive solution to 3D Vision. It seems that they kind of rely too much on their third party partners for everything and these companies are much smaller and with much more limited resources as compared to AMD. I’m seriously thinking that AMD does not have very serious interest in stereo 3D or at least they are not showing such, it is more like they just wanted to say we also have the same technology as our competitors in their business presentations. Need I have to mention that competition is not only a healthy thing to have, but also helps drive the further improvement of technology and of course is making things more affordable for the end customers, aside from the fact that they have a choice.

Getting back to iZ3D and DDD, their software solutions were available much longer before AMD started being more active on the stereo 3D front, and these solutions were always GPU independent, meaning that they’ve work on different video cards. However they did not have support for 120Hz displays and active shutter glasses up until now (iZ3D had some not so useful beta support for a while), but were focused more on solutions using passive polarization. So the big push that AMD did was to make available the support for 120Hz technology and active shutter glasses, but there seems to be a lot of work ahead of the company in that area. And while I’m eager to test some of the other 3D products being able to take advantage of AMD’s HD3D technology I’m not too optimistic for the next too months, especially of AMD continues to follow the same policy regarding stereo 3D support that they’ve had up until now. Maybe some time next year things will look much brighter for them, and I do hope this happens sooner than later… ;)

3D Vision Blog » iz3d

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