The fans of NASCAR have a reason to be happy as on July 3, 2010 at 7:30 pm EST from Daytona International Speedway the NASCAR Coke Zero 400 race will start and it will be broadcasted online for the owners of 3D Vision. But unlike with the 3D streaming of the Masters Gold Tournament that required you to use the 3D Vision Video Player or the Stereoscopic Player, this time the broadcast will be based on the 3D streaming technology developed with Microsoft’s Silverlight and announced earlier this month. The side effect of using the new technology for streaming is that the broadcast will be available only if you own a 3D Vision equipped PC as on other 3D setups it will most likely not work.
The requirements for watching the live 3D stream of the NASCAR race is that you have a 3D Vision PC, the latest NVIDIA Driver (257.21 GPU and 3D Vision driver), and the latest Silverlight plug-in installed (v4.0.50401 or newer) as you’ll be watching the event through your browser. Currently it seems that there is an issue if you have SLI running with two or more video cards, so if you have trouble watching the 3D video stream just disable SLI for the moment and then reenable it after you finish watching. It sounds very easy, and the good news is that there is even a demo of the 3D streaming with the Silverlight already available, so that you can try if everything works fine before the actual live streaming in 3D starts. And hopefully there will be some recorded footage after the event to watch if you happen to miss the actual race.
Today Nvidia has released a new and updated 3D Vision driver in the form of full CD including the GeForce GPU driver v257.21 and 3D Vision driver v257.21 WHQL versions, not betas as well as making available both drivers separately. The good thing about the full driver CD version 1.29 is that it includes both drivers for the 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems, so you can use it to install 3D Vision on multiple machines with a single download. The new driver adds support for 3D Vision Streaming which will support upcoming 3D Vision enabled streaming video, including actually taking advantage of 3D content streaming like it was demonstrated during Computex with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. There is also support for GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D playback when using compatible Blu-ray 3D player software from companies such as CyberLink and Arcsoft (already available in the last beta driver). Also there is support for GeForce GTX 480, GeForce GTX 470, and GeForce GTX 465 as well introduced in the last beta release as well as the support for the new 3D Vision-Ready LCDs: ASUS VG236H, LG W2363D 120 Hz, LG W2363DB 120 Hz (the LG is becoming available already in some countries and the Asus should start appearing probably next month).
The new release 257 driver also comes with new 3D Vision profiles for the following games: Alice in Wonderland, FIFA Online (2010), iRacing Demo, Heaven Benchmark, Mafia II, Lost Planet 2, Sam & Max – Beyond Time and Space, Settlers VII, Split Second, StarCraft II, Stone Giant and Toy Story 3 (most of which already introduced in the 257.15 beta already).
And here is the list of the updated 3D Vision game profiles:
- Battlefield Bad Company 2 – updated in-game compatibility message
- BioShock 2 – updated in-game compatibility message
- Metro 2033: The Last Refuge – updated in-game compatibility message
- Napoleon Total War – updated in-game compatibility message
- Order of War – the game is now rated Excellent
- Stone Giant – the game is now rated 3D Vision-Ready
I’m starting with Nvidia as they are are probably going to be very active about 3D during Computex 2010. The first announcement from them is the new GeForce GTX 465 GPU and the availability of cards based on it from ASUS, EVGA, Galaxy, MSI, Palit, PNY, Zotac and others with an estimated retail price of $279 USD. Amazon is already taking pre-orders for GTX 465 from Asus and Evga, but Newegg is a bit ahead with GeForce GTX 465 available from MSI, PNY, Gigabyte, EVGA, Palit, Zotac and Asus. The new GTX 465 GPUs come with 352 CUDA cores (stream processors), 1024 MB GDDR5 video memory with 256-bit memory bus and they can be a good more affordable alternative to GTX 480 and GTX 470 for stereo 3D gaming as they still pack quite a lot of processing power.
Until now, getting the NVIDIA 3D Vision experience was mostly for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) enthusiasts who could purchase a 120Hz, 3D Vision-Ready certified display, install a suitable GeForce graphics card, add the 3D Vision shutter glasses kit and install all of the drivers. But today at Computex during his keynote CEO of NVIDIA Jensen Huang announced the creation of the new 3D PC category, so that consumers can buy a completely configured 3D PC and get a 3D experience right out of the box. And this idea seems to be getting a broad industry support from companies like Asus, Acer, Dell, LG, Toshiba, ViewSonic and many system builders. The prices for the 3D PCs will begin at about $1,500 USD and that price will include everything that you need: 120Hz monitor, 3D shutter glasses and pre-installed drivers. This is about half the price of a new 3D HDTV, making it the least expensive way to enjoy 3D content at home, but if you do purchase a 3D TV later (or if you already have one) you’ll be able to connect your 3D PC to it via HDMI 1.4 to enjoy your stereoscopic 3D content on the big screen using the Nvidia 3DTV Play software.
Another very interesting announcement came from Microsoft who announced that their product Silverlight (an alternative to Adobe’s Flash), a web content development platform now supports streaming 3D content over the web to NVIDIA 3D Vision-equipped computers. NVIDIA and Microsoft also demonstrated a high definition stereo 3D music video (We Are The World 3D) streamed over the internet, but we are expecting to get more details about that very soon.
ASUS is demonstrating its new 15.6″ Asus ROG G53 3D gaming laptop (with 120Hz LCD panel) that has full support for 3D gaming and the new HDMI 1.4 output (does not come bundled with 3D Vision glasses), a new 17.3″ Asus ROG G73Jw 3D-ready laptop that may come with the recently announced GTX 480M GPU combined with a 1080p 120Hz LCD panel. As well as the Asus G51Jx-EE 3D-ready laptop that probably has the Nvidia IR transmitter integrated to support the 3D Vision active shutter glasses. The Asus Eee Top ET2400 All-in-One with 3D capabilities was also shown as wells the Asus CD5390 PC said to be the “world’s most powerful gaming solution,” equipped with two GeForce GTX 480 in SLI and ready for a 3D Vision Surround setup. And we’ll probably also see the 23″ Asus VG236H and 27″ Asus PG276H 3D-ready 120Hz monitors too.
MSI is introducing their 24″ Wind Top AE2420 All-in-one PC with 3D support, a built in 120Hz LCD Full HD panel and touchscreen support (with multi-touch functionality). The PC comes bundled with a pair of active shutter glasses for the 3D functionality, but the more interesting thing is that the GPU inside is ATI Mobility Radeon HD5730. And this raised the interesting question if this will be one of the first implementations with the anticipated shutter glasses from BitCauldron and ATI stereo 3D support? According to MSI their Wind Top AE2420 3D comes with MSI’s exclusive 3D Infinity shutter glasses (whatever they are) and there also seems to be a built-in function for converting 2D videos in to stereo 3D.
Cyberlink will be showcasing Blu-ray 3D Movie Playback that is expected to be available very soon (via a free update) in the PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D software player and the 2D-to-3D DVD Video conversion technology that is already available in the product. Corel WinDVD Pro 2010 with 3D Blu-ray will also be demonstrated at Computex, as the company just announced that its DVD playback software has received Blu-ray 3D certification from the Blu-ray Disc Association. The customers who already own Corel WinDVD Pro 2010 will receive the new 3D capabilities with a free update later this year, so we are still out of luck with no Blu-ray 3D software player actually available on the market yet…
, but Newegg is a bit ahead with
