3D Vision Blog

I’ve made some photos of the old 3D Vision active shutter glasses next to the new 3D Vision 2 active shutter glasses that just got announced by Nvidia, so that it would be easy to compare the differences and see what similarities they have. The new 3D Vision 2 glasses come with a new design and new features, but basically they are not that much different from the original as you might think, and the new 3D glasses without a new 3D monitor with support for Nvidia’s Lightboost technology might be a little disappointing, so if you think about upgrading or purchasing a new 3D monitor make sure you get a combination of these two.

The basic form and format of the glasses is pretty much the same, following the same basic curve, but the new glasses come with a matted black plastic and not a glossy one. The type of plastic that feels almost like rubber, you probably have seen it used on some high-end gaming mice. The new glasses’ frame is slightly bigger and feels more solid, partly due to the increase of the size of the lenses, but this also makes the glasses seem bigger and bulkier. I personally like the new design and find it more functional and comfortable, but there is more left to be desired….

The on/off button has been moved on the side of the glasses, there is a kind of light shield at the top of the new glasses intended to help in blocking external light (to reduce or eliminate flickering with the presence of artificial light in the room for example), the side frames are thinner and wider, making them more comfortable for people wearing the glasses together with headphones.

The mini-USB connector for charging used in the old glasses is now replaced with micro-USB connector, the battery of the new glasses is with capacity of 70 mAh which should roughly be the same as the revised first version of 3D Vision with the increased battery life. The rubber nose-piece part feels more comfortable now and should be better kept in its place, not falling off all the time after some time of use like with the original design.

What I would’ve liked better is a slightly bigger curve of the front where the lenses are, this would’ve allowed the glasses to better fit on the face of most people, however there is a reason for leaving it like that. The reason is that people wearing prescription glasses should have no trouble wearing the new slightly larger 3D Vision 2 glasses on top of their prescription glasses, so they would be able to fully enjoy using the stereo 3D mode. The top light shield could’ve been a bit larger, especially on the sides to better block external light…

The interesting thing about the top light shield is that it is very easily removable, so it could be easily replaced if somebody makes a better one for example. But because of that it can more easily come off from the glasses when they are folded, not sure if this was intentionally designed like that for a reason or not. I did not like the fact that the glasses were glued together at some places, I don’t consider that this will help make them endure more abuse from the users. Also I’m a bit disappointed of the performance of the lenses, it seems that the same lenses as with the old 3D Vision glasses are being used in the new 3D Vision 2 product, just slightly larger. The problem with this is that when you look through the lens with the shutter closed you may notice that different parts of the lens block light to a different extent – they are not completely even. So to conclude this short comparison, I like the new design and glasses better than the old ones, there is certainly a good improvement over the previous model, however there is yet more to be desired. It is good that Nvidia has listened to some of the complaints that the users had about the first 3D Vision glasses and tried to fix most of these in the new version, however there is more to be desired is some aspects. These glasses should’ve been introduced at least an year earlier and not about three years after the original version was launched, hopefully the next version addressing some of the things still needing improvement and bringing more features and better performance will not come in three more years… ;)

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… ;)

It seems that the San Diego-based 3D film studio PassmoreLab has licensed a number of its latest 3D films to Nvidia for use on the 3DVisionLive.com online 3D community website, making accessible some of the movie studio’s extensive library of 3D video content available online. Of course you will be required to have 3D Vision-equipped desktop or mobile computer in order to be able to watch these movies online. The first seven titles are expected to be available online in April.

The licensing agreement consists of seven titles from PassmoreLab, with more to follow:

- The original 1968 George Romero zombie thriller “Night of the Living Dead, Now in 3D!”
- Ed Wood’s 1959 cult classic “Plan 9 from Outer Space, Now in 3D!”
- The Science documentary “The Extreme Nature of Bats”
- The Science documentary “Microworlds”
- Extreme downhill skateboard racing documentary “DROP 3D: My Life Downhill”
- Extreme snowmobile documentary “S:4 The Product”
- The PassmoreLab original animated short “Holy Moly”

The 3DVisionLive.com website is an online community where users of Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology can enjoy and share a broad range of 3D content on their PCs. It allows them to stream 3D films, trailers, music videos, sport clips, and video shorts, as well as upload, share and view full-resolution 3D photos. Analysts estimate about 75M 3D PCs will be sold per year within five years. (Source: Jon Peddie Research, 75 million PCs in 2014).