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How Nvidia Wants To Bring 3D Glasses Back
notthatwillsmith writes "For the last ten years, we've heard the promise of 3D shutter glasses, which when combined with the proper video card drivers and a good display, can trick your brain into thinking that your 2D monitor is creating 3D images. Unfortunately the glasses never really took off, partly because there were rendering problems with many popular 3D games but mostly because monitors didn't support high enough refresh rates to display games without giving people crushing headaches. Nvidia thinks they've solved both problems--the software works much better, and there are a surprising number of supported 120Hz-capable TVs and monitors that ameliorate the headache factor. Maximum PC has a hands-on with Nvidia's new tech, plus details about Nvidia's planned hardware solution."
Q: What software and hardware is needed?
Windows Vista 32-bit (64-bit support coming soon)
Couldn't this have been at the top of the article?
I'm a big tall mofo.
OK, sure, refresh rates are an issue, but you don't think it was mostly that people don't want to wear special glasses for gaming? We haven't yet aged so much as a demographic that we can say "let me put on my gaming glasses" with a straight face.
The games will all still suck, because we spend a billion dollars putting lipstick on a turd.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
what this needs is an eye-distance adjustment for us types with "slightly low inter-ocular distance" (eyes too close together).
the old vr boxes and imax 3d doesn't work for me if the stuff is close to the screen, splits into 2 images.
i wrote some red-blue 3d stuff as a test back in ooo 94 (direct renering to a DOS ModeX display) and the 1st thing i found out is that the eye-distance needs configuring. bring an object to very "close" to you, increase distance till it breaks into 2 images (in your head), back it off a bit.. shazam works perfectly.
if hollywood is gonna start doing 3d films they better us unlucky people into account or i can see a lawsuit coming...
a refresh rate of 120Hz still means you have an effective refresh rate of 60Hz for each eye.
Personally, I'm a little sensitive to low refresh rates; anything below 75Hz will give me a headache, and I prefer 85Hz or more. Some monitors can show 170 frames per second, but those are very rare.
Also, this won't work with LCD displays, because they are just to slow.
My roommate baught a pair of Vusix VR920 3 months ago and, realy these are crap.
Screen quality is realy poor. Bad contrast, inaccurate color rendering, ridiculous small view angle 90Â; (need at least 120Â to provide immertion), poor nose handler design (can't stay on mine because it is too small and wrong angle).
Should I add the poor ridiculous 640x480 resolution and no support for wide angle or anything like 16:10 or 16:9 formats.
Realy, 3D glasses manufacturers fucked the market with crap products for years.
Who care to bring drivers for crap products?
Have a look at eBay for the load of used shutter glasses for sale.
Léa Gris
Someone is going to create a way to convert standard porn to 3D and then these things will really take off.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Why don't they just make the glasses so big that you put them over the monitor isntead? That way people don't need to wear them to get the 3D effect? My guess is because this way they can trap you into licensing a pair for every person in your house. 3D EULAs. Great!
tfa: Right now, we do not have OpenGL support but will be working to release it soon
I've been using Nuvison and Crystaleyes glasses for about 8 years with the Linux NVidia drivers; How did they manage to not have that in their new product?
Instead of hoping that your monitor is good enough, lets get LCD glasses that display something better then 800x600. Most eye glasses are around 2" in diameter, if you could cram enough pixels into that space to give a minimum of ~1024x768 resolution then you will have a market.
Portable gaming anyone? portable and PRIVATE browsing? Sign me up.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Or they will ONLY work with either LCD *xor* CRT monitors (either without, or with the polarization filters in front of the LCDs). :-(
Bet they're LCD only, too. And in that case, you have a 50/50 chance of the depth being reversed. Boooo!
Admittedly, I don't entirely understand how this technology is supposed to work, but if it's anything like the polarized or red/green 3D glasses of yesteryear, I hate it. Thanks to a genetic disorder, the males in my family are incapable of using them (I see two flat images instead of one 3D one). If games require these to play, I'll lose my favorite hobby.
A long time ago, there was a big market for perifrials in games: joysticks, etc. I think at that point a substantial portion of the gaming market were playing flight sims. Latching on to that were more arcade-style games that benefited from joysticks: Wing Commander, X-Wing, etc.
Since then, there's be a decrease in the number of peripherals. If the game doesn't play well with mouse and keyboard, it usually isn't played. Even on consoles, it's rough to convince people to play games with something other than the standard controller.
Now nvidia wants us to but special nerd glasses and special nerd monitors for a 3D effect (windows Vista only). I'm not sure it'll fly.
Also, reading that interview, Andrew FEAR sounds like a toolburger. Yeah, 3D could be fOMG amazing one eleventy exclamation point, but I'd rather have a better game.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
From the article...
Q: How does the current generation of stereoscopic 3D tech differ from what gamers saw 5 years ago?
AF: You no longer have to crank that little handle on the glasses. Just kidding.
Nice to see Nvidia being innovative and trying a simple, low tech solution for a change.
They state that you need some pretty robust hardware for this as it is essentially rendering two frames at once. Did they leave SLI doing the same thing (each card rendering a portion of a frame) or are they splitting each frame onto each card?
If I can't poke it in the eye or shove a sword through its guts, I don't consider it true 3D. Give me a holodeck with the safety features disabled, a BFG, and a flask of whiskey -- then we'll talk about licensing your technology.
I had 3d glasses several years ago, with a wire. No headaches for me.
But designers specifically create certain scenes with the 2D look in mind. So when you actually view the scene, it does not look as intended.
These are normally the important thematic bits, and so the overall effect can be ruined.
So 2D bullet spray effects, made to look 3d in Photoshop, look like planes of sand in true 3d.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
A quick search revealed that these glasses are already available for sale
Even on consoles, it's rough to convince people to play games with something other than the standard controller.
Like Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Singstar? Or Buzz? Or Wii Fit?
"But you'll appreciate how that BSOD really pops out of the screen in 3D. Or the progress bar while waiting for file copies."
Wasn't that one of the arguments against a 3D computing environment? The displays weren't 3D? The input devices weren't 3D?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Win+Tab will be even more fantastic!
Seriously though. What kind of desktop improvements can we see with this? Move windows forward and back, angle so they appear in a semi-circle in front of you? I'm getting tired of this rectangle on a 2D plane that we're forced to work with all day.
no matter what you religious stance is
I'm sorry, I don't think we've met. Yes, I don't like Vista. But it's not a religious stance against Microsoft. In fact, I hold 4 Microsoft certifications (MCSE, MCSD VB6, MCSD C#.Net, MCDBA) and work on Microsoft products all day every day. In fact, I did a 6 month contract programming job for Microsoft themselves as a side job.
I bought a new computer 3 months ago. Middle-of-the-road Dell system, dual core 2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB disk space. It came pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux, but I installed Vista Ultimate 64 bit on it. (Did I forget to mention I'm also an MSDN Subscriber which lets me install any software I want for testing purposes?). I installed Vista because I was sick of hearing how bad it was. Long story short, after the fresh install and setting up all my drivers so I had the latest of all devices in the Device Manager, I was having applications crash about every 5 minutes. So I figured it was a 64 bit problem. I installed Vista Ultima 32-bit and got all the drivers updated. Same problem. I updated the firmware. Same problem. I installed Windows XP SP3. 3 months later and if it's had a single application crash in that time, I'd be surprised.
So, I'm just one person but I have no religious stance against Microsoft, was looking forward to installing Vista, had issues with it that 12 hours of trying to fix it did not resolve. And I have 20 years experience in professional IT using almost exclusively Microsoft products going back to MS-DOS 3.3.
If that's a religious stance to you, that's beyond silly.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Can we get this combined with the Wiimote head tracking hack as well? It's just a small addition of an IR camera and IR lights.
...the pr0n industry!
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
I believe you meant, "polishing a turd".
The correct lipstick references are "lipstick on a pig" and/or "lipstick on a pitbull".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When I worked at the SAIC Virtual Reality Systems Group, I had the opportunity to buy and try several 3D video products and a couple of 3d audio (head related transfer function stuff).
3D video and audio helps "suspend disbelief", making it easier to draw people into virtual environments.
I just use a MacBook now, but if Nvidia sells 3D viewing glasses compatible with the Mac, they have a customer :-)
BTW, a little off topic, but inexpensive 3D glasses with drivers compatible with the Squeak Croquet system would be great!
Even on consoles, it's rough to convince people to play games with something other than the standard controller.
Like Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Singstar? Or Buzz? Or Wii Fit?
Or the Wii remote even.
.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
and there are a surprising number of supported 120Hz-capable TVs and monitors that ameliorate the headache factor
Now, I'm all for the use of good words, but you couldn't have used words like, ya know, improve or help or advance?
I know, I know. I'll probably be modded as a troll, but I'm just saying - why use words like this when more accessible words more than say what you're trying to say. Why use "big" words for the sake of using those words?
Even a 120 Hz refresh rate is going to have that flicker similar to what you get from a 60 Hz monitor. Some people can tolerate it but for most people it's headache city.
You need a refresh rate of probably 150 to 200 before it would look OK. Even then it's going to be more eye strain than a LCD.
If I a new company, would my first goal be to satisfy a "smaller" portion of the market, or go for the largest piece of the pie
I wholeheartedly agree. Isn't the Windows XP install base significantly larger than the Windows Vista install base?
I'm a big tall mofo.
What about people who need to use actual glasses?
If 3D glasses just dumped the monitors and went wireless, they'd catch on. They need to be transparent, so the display is projected into the real field of view, and maybe have a black LCD layer to actually shut out the outside light.
But if they worked like that, the first iPod to use them for video would push them over the edge into the mainstream once and for all.
Unfortunately, we'll need a breakthru in batteries to power high framerate hirez good color wireless glasses with fast radio bandwidth to the device putting out the frames. Maybe the breakthru glasses will be hollow for fuelcell juice.
--
make install -not war
If you haven't heard yet, Dreamworks and Pixar are both heading to 3D only movies. In another year, neither studio will be producing movies that don't require 3D. If this technology catches on and becomes popular (driven by movies), we might be able to avoid traditional, annoying 3D glasses. I would only hope that the studios could release DVD with either encoding. If not, you'll still be stuck at home watching 3D movies the old way.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Um, no. The glasses never took off because no one wanted to wear clunky, heavy glasses with a HUGE battery pack or cable attachment. (Or even better, two cables: sync and power.) Not to mention the hardware integrated into the frame for manipulating the shutter or polarization of each lens...
And then there's the fact that a fair amount of gaming is not done in the solitude of a dorm room or mom's basement, but in public. And how would you look wearing a pair of shuttering glasses in Starbucks? True 3D is cool, but even nerds have their - our - limits.
But, hey, this is Nvidia trying to find a raison d'etre after its sole niche becomes commoditized. I get that, but that doesn't make it not stupid. Next I suppose Nvidia will start touting other good-only-at-first-glance peripherals: the Nvidia gyroscopic mouse, the Nvidia true-3D-audio speaker set, and the Nvidia dvorak keyboard...
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
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UTF-8: There and Back Again
It's nice that the glasses were "designed from day one to be easily worn over most types of glasses frames" but it just sounds like an excuse not to include diopter adjustment. Should have option for diopter adjustment, just like in good binoculars. It just doesn't feel right to be wearing more layers of headgear than of clothing.
Crystal Eyes and Monochrome monitors. The monochrome monitors were capable of putting out 200+ fL of light (about 4x brighter than your typical out-of-the-box LCD) and the crystal eye shuttered glasses were capable of extinguishing 99+ of the light. The result was a realistic, if slowly refreshed, 3D image.
I've also looked at a number of displays- my favorite so far is the Stereo Planar- still requires polarized glasses but the display is sharp and fast and, when integrated with the 24" NEC IPS panels gives decent motion performance.
There is McNaughtten (Sp?) rear projection LCD displays- I only used the prototype- I wasn't a fan but others have liked it. I believe the fan noise bothered me quite a bit, not to mention some of the speckle. That's being fixed with some new diffuser materials.
Lastly Kodak actually had a 3D display- used two LCDs aligned in a box- you looked through a lense element (no glasses on the face) and saw the projected 3D image. Very high resolution, very bright- but it got canned.
There are good 3D solutions out there (or at least it's getting better). You're probably just not willing to pay the price to get it.
They do nothing!
But they're incredibly expensive, and don't handle fingerprints well. (at least, the ones using holographic projectors -- we were told not to even dare getting within 3 feet of the screen, or to go near the projectors that took days to align properly)
Here's a couple of manufacturers of displays, but I can't find the holographic projector one (not sure who made it, just that it exists):
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I used to play TFC in my shutter glasses, it's fking great.
Only problem is the HUD overlay because that's not in 3d
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It seems they are pushing this as new. Though Nvidia's own Quadro cards have had this for years even ones which were based on GeForce 4 chips (look at ones with 3pin stereo connector on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Quadro).
Nvidia have always made it so that only expensive Quadro cards can do Quad Buffered stereo which is what is needed to do the rendering properly (a double buffer for each eye). IR-glasses have been around for several years (http://reald-corporate.com/scientific/crystaleyes.asp) and operate by pluging a transmitter into the 3pin port onto a quadro card (or their are other methods such as blue-line stereo). Shutter glasses in the past have been too expensive ($500-1000) though mass-adoption should bring that down.
Stereo also works under OpenGL on Linux so I don't see the problem with that.
The only thing that seems new is that Nvidia are pushing it, it may end up on consumer cards and the stereo conversion of existing games.
I actually wound up with Vista because I needed an OS to do some development on. I tried to install Vista x64 on my machine but my SATA controller is not supported because there are no signed drivers for it. Mind you, Linux x64 has been running, oh, since SELinux 10, Ubuntu 7 and now Ubuntu 8, on that very same controller like a champ.
Still, once I did get Vista up and rolling in Virtual Box OSE session, I found myself rather liking it. So, I wound up adding a partition to my Linux box to dual boot Vista x32 with and Linux. I'm still -very- bitter about the x64 drivers, but I do like Vista.
This is my sig.
Speaking as a person who has vision in only one eye, I say NO!
Come up with a way to wire 3d images directly to my brain.
It'd be pretty cool to see what most of you folks see everyday.
load "linux",8,1
http://www.iz3d.com/ has these special monitors (2 screens instead of a regular monitor, hence the 400-700 price tag), and supposedly work with existing directX technology.
If they can make it 3d over existing 1 screen monitors, then I suppose that's an improvement. Seems possible already. So congrats to them.
I'm still waiting for a 360 degree (hell, give me a visor with semi-crappy resolution) opposed to special monitors. All the objects are already loaded into directX/openGL, only a few tweaks to tell it to render some extra pieces would be necessary (if at all, since the visor would just be an up close monitor). This assumes that their goal is more immersion in games, and not making the game more realistic, which are 2 different things.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
nVidia has supported stereoscopic 3D for years with their Quadro line - and only the Quadro line. Everything else was pretty much deliberately forced to go into "fullscreen" mode.
I use a Quadro with shutter glasses for stereoscopic 3D video recording and playback, and they work really well. But it sure would be nice to be able to use a less-costly video card. My application doesn't do a bit of "rendering" but it does require showing 3D stereo in a window.
Yes!!! This means 3d porn!
Wouldn't a 120 Hz LCD screen work with existing shutter glasses? Will nvidia intentionally gimp their drivers like they did before if it doesn't detect the exact hardware its looking for? I'm sure my e-dimensional glasses would work fantastic if I could find a 120 Hz LCD monitor. Right now I settle for less than perfect 3d, but at max resolution its not so bad. Its a matter of getting used to it.
It will really take off (in more ways than one) when there's force feedback gloves to go with it.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
My understanding of this is that its trivial for them to produce 3D movies because they are already working in 3D polygons. Ive noticed some kids' movies being released as 3D but only at a few screenings. Everyone else gets the regular 2D version. In other words they will never "require 3D" as you put it, but 3D will be an option for the theater if it so chooses.
The effect on some 3D games was incredible, but the shutter glasses were a pain to deal with, there were ghosting issues, and even at 120Hz, it wasn't comfortable to use them for long. I actually would have preferred the red-blue glasses you used to get at the movie theaters (which would only need special drivers, not special hardware). I'd rather have the colors be a little off than have my frame rate cut in half.
3D glasses are like video phones. They re-surface every few years, when "new technology" makes them cheaper than the last generation, and then they vanish silently because people hate using them.
In both cases the problem isn't technology. Video phones were feasible since the 50s or 60s. In the case of 3D glasses, the refresh rate was never the problem. After all, >80Hz displays were available for a long time now and 40FPS isn't exactly shoddy.
The problem is that stereoscopic vision is a surprisingly minor part of "seeing in 3D". It is limited in range to about as far as you can jump. In fact ~5% of people don't have stereoscopic vision and they function fine, including driving. Many of them don't even know they lack it. I used to work somewhere hiring operators for stereoplotters (devices displaying stereoscopic aerial photos for analysis). Good ones were hard to find.
Most of your "3D vision" actually comes from your brain analyzing a stream of 2D images. This is why you get a better 3D feel for movies than for static pictures. In real life, this effect is combined with the brain tracking how your head moves. It is this combination that gives most of the "true" 3D vision effect - *not* stereoscopy.
This trick is used, for example, by snakes - a spitting cobra will sway its head side to side to get a 3D image of the world, so it can spit poison in your eye from 3-5m away. Stereoscopic vision would be useless for it since the snake's eyes are so close together.
A 3D display system based on this idea is simpler to implement and easier to user than using 3D glasses. See the impressive demo in http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw for an example.
Notice how objects can appear to be *behind* you and how ducking and moving become a natural part of the experience. This could transform FPS...
Sure, this only works for a single user at a time, but that's hardly an issue for gamers. The demo above uses the Wii motion sensor but it is also possible to use a simple webcam to track your head, as well as many other methods.
Webcams are widely accessible, reasonably priced, and work with PCs and game consoles such as the Xbox 360. The user may need to wear a headband with two LEDs on it, but again that's not an issue for gamers. Besides it provides a marketing opportunity (like console panels). Smarter software could detect "heads" automatically without any additional hardware.
All you need is the right update to the Xbox software, or wrapper for DirectX on the PC, and we could have widely spread "true" 3D experience *right now*. No new hardware, full resolution and refresh rate, and better user experience for first-person games.
Like the guy in the video above said, "I want to see some games!"
That shouldn't be too big a problem. As long as they're using the polarized filters somebody will figure out how to take the left or right channel by itself. The real problem is if the movie is released in red/cyan 3D, because there's no way to separate a single channel and retain the colour of the original picture.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I did buy a set of glasses for the whole nvidia deal and they didnt suck terribly (edimensional 3d, and they were quite cheap) - in fact i was mostly quite impressed really. It did have its draw backs, (i remember playing eve online once with them, and the way eve draws it universe meant they didn't work, but for alot of games they were quite sufficient). They also worked as a pass-thru which i didnt really like (and really wasnt needed if the card had just had a little plug on it instead of having to use the passthru)
But, where I really did quite like them was for 3d modelling. very handy to be able to see 3d models in 3d even if only for flying around the model every now and then. It gives a kind of perspective that was hard to easily gain on a monitor.
The other feature I tried to get going (and failed terribly) was for security - sure its easily undone, but if you could have the eye shutters opening and closing (ok, their LCD so they dont actually move, but you know what i mean) together you could show the "real screen" when the shutters are open and garbage the other times. Assuming you had a fast enough monitor you could make it fairly random (open and close) for some added security. Ultimately the system is flawed for real security, but for a bit of privacy in the cubicle it would have been a nice idea.
The screen is too small to really give the immersive effect that you'd need, and it fails to take into account head movement, and really only works for fairly short distances. The brain uses other tricks to estimate distance after this amount. And it doesn't look real. It looks 3D, but it looks like folded cardboard. There's simply no gameplay improvement to be had.
You lose the colour of the original picture anyway, so you might as well just put a red or green filter on the projector. Red/green filters are a terrible technology that dates back to the 1920's anyway. Polarized are much better, and you can use the same technique; just apply a polarized filter.
Q: How does the current generation of stereoscopic 3D tech differ from what gamers saw 5 years ago?
AF: You no longer have to crank that little handle on the glasses. Just kidding. The new software technology we are working on has come a long way. Today our driver supports NVIDIA SLI, GeForce 8 series, Windows Vista, and DirectX 10. So it's a cutting edge, terrific gaming platform to start with.
Our driver now supports the latest Zalman Trimon 3D Ready displays and will add support for new 3D Ready displays (ViewSonic and Mitsubishi) working with our new 3D glasses laster this year. The underlying technology works the same, but the experience has improved with support for more games, more graphics cards, and new hardware.
Translation: "Our new 3D glasses have drivers for operating systems that aren't Windows 98. And we now enforce that you only use them with displays from certain companies. Everything's still the same, but now it's more expensive and that really improves the experience. Well, at least it does for Zalman, ViewSonic and Mitsubishi."
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
nVidia's driver has supported shutter glasses (and several other stereoscopic view modes) for a while. The older forceware driver had issues with SLI but I never had that setup in my machine anyway. I did end up picking up a refurb widescreen CRT that can do 96hz refresh at 1900x1200, and obviously higher at lower refresh rates.
Aside from the obvious issues of having half the effective refresh rate, there are issues with low gamma (which can be corrected in the driver) and ghosting from the other eye as the dark shutter isn't completely opaque. All in all, it's quite an enjoyable experience once you acclimate to these behaviors.
I never noticed a performance hit in my gaming, as they seem to be doing a fairly simple re-arrangement of z-buffer data for the effect. The quality of the effect is largely dependent on support in the games themselves. Stuff like Half-Life 2 didn't setup their HUD in a manner that allowed it to display in the same place from both perspectives - It seemed as though it was a 2d overlay at the very front of the view. Others like GTA3 got the HUD right but things like street lights and such were in the same plane and would split into doubles when you looked "deeper" into the picture where they were supposed to be displayed.
As it stands you have several options for driver based stereo:
1) Shutter glasses - Fairly cheap these days, I think I paid $15 for mine, but low refresh and gamma issues. If you tilt your head more than about 5 degrees from one side to the other, the effect will disappear
2) Colored Glasses - The nVidia driver can separate a stereoscopic view into 2 color fields to use with normal dual color glasses. This gives full refresh and is cheap but you end up with an effectively grayscale image, no issues with tilting your head I'm aware of.
3) LCD screen glasses - expensive, probably limited to 800x600@60hz unless you want to take out a loan. No restrictions on head position.
4) Dual monitors - This is one I've wanted to try as I have 2 monitors of the same make. You set up 2 monitors side by side with a mirror angled in such a way that one eye sees the reflection of one monitor when looking straight ahead while the other eye looks directly at other monitor. The driver then shows a mirrored stereo perspective on the second monitor. This has the advantages of being cheaper than LCD screen glasses, giving full resolution and refresh and no gamma issues. Of course your head has to remain in a fairly static spot for it to work - but at least you can tilt it without ruining the effect.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
I agree with some of your post, but don't feel it's entirely correct. The cobra moving from side to side gets depth cues from parallax. With normal shutter glasses moving your head has no effect, which breaks the realism and messes up your depth perception. I think everyone would agree that a solution with head-tracking would be far superior to a solution without (whether using a monitor or a VR headset).
The glasses do suck, but it's not because stereoscopic cues aren't important. When I've played 3D games that work well with shutter glasses, it has been awesome. But the glasses are too expensive and problematic, you need a special monitor, there's ghosting, you get double-vision on your cross-hairs if they're way up front and you're aiming at something far away, and so on. To be honest, some cheap cardboard red-blue glasses would work 10 times better than any shutter glasses I've seen. IMO, if you're not going all the way with a VR headset, you may as well stick to the cheap red-blue glasses.
I'm pretty sure I said that.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Smarter software could detect "heads" automatically without any additional hardware.
Excellent comment. Just want to mention on this point that face tracking technology is progressing, and there are already some decent demos of exactly that sort of system Here's an example. Current gen consoles certainly have the horsepower to do this.
How does the current generation of stereoscopic 3D tech differ from ... 5 years ago?
The underlying technology works the same, but the experience has improved with support for more games, more graphics cards, and new hardware.
Unfortunately, the movie industry went with a different technique for creating the 3D effect. They're using polarized glasses and polarized projection instead of the active shutter glasses nVidia is using. They had good reason: polarized glasses never run out of battery power and they can sell them for $2 each (which is how much more Journey to the Center of the Earth costs to go see at the theater compared to regular movies). NVidia's glasses require battery power, built-in mini-LCD panels, and infrared transmitters and receivers and control circuitry to synchronize the active glasses with the display. They will not cost $2.
NVidia can't go the polarized route because the fundamental operation of LCD panels depends on emitting light with only one polarization. Existing LCD panels can't change their direction of polarization on the fly, which means you won't be able to watch those Dreamworks or Pixar movies in 3D at home using the same glasses.
Movie theaters use either dual projectors or a single non-LCD projector with an active polarizing filter on the front of it that switches the direction of polarization on the fly, once per frame. You can get the same at home only by buying your own projector (pair) or a special monitor, and the specialness of the monitor is much higher than the specialness of the monitors NVidia is recommending for use with their glasses. To avoid headaches with NVidia's glasses, you just use a display with a higher refresh rate. To use passive polarized glasses with a direct-view display, you have to first use a non-LCD display technology (so either plasma or CRT (or FED, if FED Japan makes good on their promises)), and then figure out how to manufacture that active polarizing filter really large and integrate it into the display. By the time you've done that, you might as well manufacture an autostereo display that doesn't require any special glasses at all.
Since the display manufacturers are universally running away from autostereo manufacturing (Sharp discontinued their autostereo display), it looks like theaters and home viewing will be using different and incompatible techniques to render 3D for the foreseeable future. This will no doubt lead to endless complaints of, "Why can't I use my $2 glasses I got at the theater to watch this movie in 3D at home?! Why do I have to buy a new TV and I still have to buy these $### glasses to watch it! This sucks! It's an evil conspiracy!" Etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Incidentally, Hollywood absolutely adores 3D because there are essentially no true 3D camcorders in existence. A tiny handful were manufactured in the late 70s and early 80s, so few that they're museum pieces today.
Existing LCD panels can't change their direction of polarization on the fly, which means you won't be able to watch those Dreamworks or Pixar movies in 3D at home using the same glasses.
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/magazine/16-09/pl_screen
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I was always dreaming about internet surfing in 3D, like in this William Gibson Novels, headware, decks, Virtual reality. funny, as long as I wait for such gimmicks, than more it seems that this cyberpunk dream will never happen, dear lord, please, give me a brain killing BTL (better than life chip), I want to roast my brain.
Man, even the horses are richer than me now.
Actually, I can watch TV without getting a headache, but I do see the screen refresh on some models.
Some model still use the original 50Hz (60Hz for NTSC) other models double the refresh rate and use 100Hz (probably 120Hz on NTSC ?) either displaying each half-frame twice or doing more complex time-interpolation and/or comb removing.
I bet it's the former on which you see the refresh and not on the newer.
Incidentally it's the same distinction between TV that can work with the light guns of 32bits era consoles (like PS1's DreamCast's, etc.) vs. TV that require guns relying on infra-red emitters like current gen Wiimotes or 3rd party guns.
(Note: those TV also work with primitive 8bits-era "blink the whole screen and sprites" guns like on NES)
BTW:
I would really want to know where you can still manage find good quality CRT monitors these days ? Specially if using apperture grill ? If possible flat surface and not a too much deep gun ? No shop seem to sell them around (europe, switzerland) anymore. And the only few CRT I come across on the web use shadowmask, have small surface and average refresh rates.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And with Nvidia's new hardware solution, 350 new and existing games will work out of the box, with no game-specific drivers required. ...
You'll need a PC with the following:
* An NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT GPU or better
* Windows Vista 32-bit (64-bit support coming soon)
* Standard Microsoft DirectX game that NVIDIA has preconfigured in our driver (to date NVIDIA has preconfigured over 350+ games).
Don't know about you, but that sounds awfully like a "game-specific driver" to me.
Thanks again for the link.
Or the Wii anything? Seriously, Nintendo might have sold the console for cheaper, but they are harvesting quite a fright w/ peripherals. Wii Wheel, Wii Perfect Shot, Wii Classic Controller, Sports Pack, Zapper, etc. etc.
Hell, they'll probably come out with the Wii Inflatable doll... "And you stick your Wiimote in here..."
Space Spuds 3D!
(Need I say more? And an Amiga reference was overdue!)
Weâ(TM)ve done extensive testing with our new glasses and 3D Ready displays, and weâ(TM)ve found that experienced users can easily play a game for 4 hours or more without feeling eyestrain or disorientation.
So, that's a no to using it to play WoW?
Virginia Tech has something called the CAVE. It is a big room with all the floos, floors, and ceilings painted flat black. In the center of the room there is a cube made of 10x10 screens with the top and front screens missing. There are 2 rear projection projections feeding each of the walls and 2 front-projections that hit the floor.
You stand in the middle of the cube and wear a pair of shutter 3D glasses and have one of those "flying" 3d mice. Each surface has proper stereo images projected onto it and the glasses have motion tracking so you can look around, step to the left or right and the images update accordingly.
Use that for about 30 minutes and you have to sit in a normal room for about 5 minutes to come back to reality or you have a tendancy to try to "fly though walls". I never got a headache on that.
It all was (is?) powered by some SGI server and ran standard OpenGL apps. It had a custom OpenGL driver that did all the splitting, stereo work, and perspective corrections.
I want to get it and set it up for my Mac.....oh wait, nevermind.
Yes, as long as you don't mind building a rig that takes up more space than an old school front projection TV...
That technique has been around a very long time.
Note the 1994 date...
I wish they included a video showing how this technology will work..
I kid, I kid
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
this message is stereoscopic 3d || this message is stereoscopic 3d
Sound cards, NICs, and even monitors used to be optional peripherals too but now they're pretty much expected. Stereo 3d has marketing problem. You can't appreciate it unless you see it person.
The article I linked said you'd need a 16"x16" cube. That's not really what I'd call huge. Anyway, it's definitely cool (and the technique might have been around for a while, but the article you linked to isn't exactly something you'd expect to afford).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If nvidia wanted to promote 3D, they'd release the stereoscope tech of the quadro workstation cards onto the gaming cards. Stereo 3D projection is great and would be so much better with more users behind it and more vendors enhancing and growing the tech. As it stands now, they've been sitting on the workstation tech for years and it's been going nowhere, as far as mass deployment goes.
"Q: Is the effect nauseating after prolonged usage?
AF: Only if you're looking at a nauseating image :)."
Instant, unfortunately three-dimensional mental imagery: Goatse 3D!
I bet you saw it coming.
In both cases the problem isn't technology. Video phones were feasible since the 50s or 60s.
I'm sceptical of this claim; I've no doubt that given money and specialised equipment it would have been quite possible to build a usable videophone pair- it could have been based on existing television technology going in both directions. What I'm not buying is that the technology existed to build a *practical* videophone for general use *and* a network capable of supporting it- at least to anything approaching a usable resolution and at an affordable price.
:) )
If nothing else, video compression in the sophisticated modern sense didn't exist, and the bandwidth required by even a monochrome full-size 525/625 line image would have been massive. So unless the telephone network was able to be upgraded (and they'd never have got it to full-resolution TV picture bandwidth), they'd have to drastically reduce the resolution and frame-rate (somehow). And the technology would probably still have been prohibitively expensive- certainly too much for the mass market and hence to sell in the kind of numbers that would make it worthwhile.
It might just about have been theoretically possible to build a very poor videophone system during the 1950s/60s *if* the market had been there, but believe me- the technology of the time *would* have been very limiting.
(If anyone with more tech knowledge would like to elaborate on- or even disprove- what I said above, I'd be interested to hear it, but I'll take some convincing that I'm wrong
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Shutter glasses indeed give whatever is displayed inside the monitor a 3D effect; unfortunately instead of looking like a window to 3d world, it looks like a puppet show inside the monitor: the distance cues these glasses send to your brain just make everything look small. In a sense it's even worse than 2D. Anything that doesn't take up most or all of your field of vision won't do. But perhaps with today's large screens...
If my glasses weren't 3D, they'd be too flat to balance on my face.
In the case of 3D glasses, the refresh rate was never the problem. After all, >80Hz displays were available for a long time now and 40FPS isn't exactly shoddy.
Wrong, it has nothing to do with the FPS. 40FPS is actually very good, with these glasses, at 80Hz each eye would effectively be percieving the image at 40Hz, which *is* shoddy. Viewing a monitor at 40Hz would be unbearable.
Most games I've played have a frame cap of 30FPS, but the refresh rate is still 60Hz. About 60Hz is the lowest refresh rate before the flicker becomes unbearable, so for steroscopic viewing you do need a 120Hz monitor to present that for each eye.
Am I the only one here who wants this story tagged "countfloyd" ?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I was handling purchasing for one of major retail chains at the time the first wave of 3D glasses came out. The chief complaint wasnt resolution or refresh rate. People who never before in their life got motion sick, were getting violently ill and barfing up fifteen minutes into their games. Clearly, the 3D experience wasnt for everyone.
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That (linked video) is fascinating. I'd love to see even a simple fps based on it and tying head tracking to upper torso movement in HL2 or something would be amazing.
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Wow, countering why people wouldn't buy a seperate peripheral to play a handful of games with games that come with peripherals! Good show!
Maybe you want to include some light gun games that come with guns? Great idea!
Just one small question : How many other games use Guitar Hero's guitar? How many games use Buzz's buzzers? How many use the balance board? DDR Pad?
Thanks for making the crappiest point I've seen in a while. (no offense meant towards you, sir, but your point gets made often on thar internets, and I'm somewhat miffed as to how broken it is.)
The only "new" peripheral I've seen take off is the Wiimote, and that's because it's the *primary* means of control for the Wii. Nintendo took the risk it takes to prove this point:
You want to truly innovate control on a console? Make it the *default*.
Does anyone actually play Singstar?
chuk
here you go:
http://www.well.com/~jimg/stereo/stereo_list.html
This link should have a NSFW tag. It's not gross like goatse, but there are pictures of naked people.
In case you want to know what it actually is, from the site: "Experimenting here with a way to present stereo images on the screen by simply putting the right and left images in an animated .gif."
As a 3D enthusiast, I am glad they are coming out with LCDs that can do 120 Hz -- the NVidia drivers for LCD shutter glasses have been very buggy lately (probably as a consequence of the fact that nobody has CRT monitors that can do 120 Hz anymore).
An alternate technology to consider is the passive polarized LCD monitor such as the Arisawa P240W (and its cheaper, lower quality cousin, the Zalman Trimon). This type of monitor has amazing depth, DOES NOT require any sort of a refresh rate, and does not require fancy drivers to operate. The disadvantage is that there is a 7 degree "sweet spot" from which it must be viewed, even with glasses.
I am also hopeful for 3D Ready DLP TVs which, for around $2000, can deliver stunning 3D content at around 100 Hz.
The breakthrough will come when eye-tracking autostereoscopic monitors (i.e., ones that don't require glasses) become good and cheap enough.
Problems such as focus, convergence, and cheap practical head tracking remain, and need to be addressed by the next generation of displays.
The "make or break" factor will not be whether there's a device that can support good 3D (there has been for a while), but whether the user base will reach critical mass. I hope the trickling down of 3D stereo content to the 3D TVs will help.
I agree that console support would help greatly (there's something about getting a bunch of people playing together to see the 3D content)
That would be something!
Olympus plans release with the new shutter glasses which are usable with the LCD monitor by the end of this year.
A small sensor senses the screen of the LCD monitor and synchronizes shutter glasses.
It doen't need nDIVIA's VGA card but needs LCD monitor which of Response Rate is faster than 8ms.
Both stereo photo(JPEG) and stereo movie(WMV) by page flipping on Olympus original viewer software.
It works on Windows XP and Vista.
I watched the demonstration of such new shutter glasses at the meeting of "Stereo Club Tokyo" on September 13.
The staff of Olympus said that "The price aimed for 5,980 yen (about US$50)".
They look for partners to sell it with stereo contents.
Mitsubishi releases 65 inches "Laser Rear Projection TV" corresponding to the 3D shutter glasses, too.
Using the Wii remote (or Webcam) and headband with some IR leds seems the more natural way to do this.
You must have the head tracking for true 3d.
Using glasses with two separate images is just "Stereoscopic" vision - Not full 3d at all.
Im not sure why there is so much attention to Stereoscopic images. To me Headtracking is 80% of 3d vision, 10% is the stereoscopic part and 10% is other (Balance etc)
Descent3 was my favorite game to play with my Nvidia shutter glasses, and it looked FANTASTIC. Well worth the minor discomfort.
You definitely want the wireless glasses, though.
I used them for Battlefield 1942 as well, and it was ok. I'd still be using them for gaming if I hadn't bought my big flatscreen.
expandfairuse.org
> Yeah, 3D could be fOMG amazing one eleventy exclamation point, but I'd rather have a better game.
This could lead to a whole genre of "better game"s. Certainly many of the 1st few attempts will be eye-candy toys, more fun to look at then play. This happens with every new console. Remember how awkward the beginning of 3d platforming was? How painful the jump to analog was? This is less an upgrade to apply to a particular game, and more a toolkit to be developed (like using an existing FPS engine) to build later games on top of.
Even so, bring on the nerd glasses. They're needed for the REAL jump ahead. 2D is pretty much good enough, but being able to move your head to look around, with the view PERFECTLY tracking your head would do so much to add realism, even if the projected image was still 2D.
Your eyes say I'm focusing @ 2 feet
your eye muscles say I'm looking 20 foot away (its the relative angle of your eyes that gives the illusion of depth)
given these two contradictory inputs your brain gets confused and you'll end up with a very "used" feeling in your head a best - more likely a headache
try looking here http://www.magiceye.com/ for an hour or so...
there are thousands of windows applications that don't work on Linux - thankfully
Captain Job always did admirable work, so I'm glad this was noticed.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Shutter glasses are cool, I loved them I had them, I enjoyed them and went to bed dizzy and half blinded by 50hz ...
But really, why not head mounted LCDs? The technology is there, small led backlit LCDs are light and now they sport a decent resolution. A reasonably sized device could sport 1280x800 per eye. Even 1024 would be just great. Then WII-like gyros and other sensors. Slap a price of $500 on it per unit and if it works with my PS3 and at least 1 good FPS and one good driving game, I get it on day 1.
So back to shutter glasses ..... cool ... better than nothing, still this time I am not getting one, because I refuse to play on a pc lately.
I like stereoscopic 3D glasses, they work really well at high refresh rates. You get lower resolutions, but the 3D effect is very convincing. I used to jump off of cliffs in Unreal because it looked cool.
The Vusix are not shutter glasses, they are a VR headset/head mounted display, that is, they have two tiny lcd displays infront of your eyes which provide the imaging. They also do head tracking.
Shutter glasses which is what is being discussed here use your normal monitor to provide the display, and thier "screens" are either black, or transparent. Your monitor rapidly switches between displaying the left and right image, at the same time as your glasses switch between blacking your right or left eye.
Shutter glasses are pretty simple devices, while systems like the Vusix are vastly more complicated and expensive simply for the fact that they have to pack in two fully functinal LCD monitors of suitable resolution in front of your eyes.
Head Mounted Displays like the Vusix have come quite a long way over the years, compare the pretty lightweight Vusix with the monstrosities of old. They do have a ways to go though
* They need higher resolution, at the moment I think the Vusix at 640x480 is as good as you can get.
* They need a wider field of view, as you noted.
* They meed to be cheaper. $400US is a pretty pricey bit of kit.
* Preferably, they need to be wireless.
If those issues could be resolved the Vusix would be a kick ass system.
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> "Most of your "3D vision" actually comes from your brain analyzing a stream of 2D images. This is why you get a better 3D feel for movies than for static pictures. In real life, this effect is combined with the brain tracking how your head moves. It is this combination that gives most of the "true" 3D vision effect - *not* stereoscopy."
This is a very hand-waving explanation, and I'm surprised that in your long post you did not use the precise terminology used for this effect: motion parallax. You are correct, though, that it is the primary depth cue; indeed, when an artificial example presents a conflict, it overrides stereoscopy in the brain.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Ok, so I was refuting the point that its hard to get console players to use non standard controllers, rather than your strange interpretation of what was said, but to counter your arguement a quick look on wikipedia would have told you a list of 18 games that already or shortly will be supporting the balance board - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Balance_Board#Compatible_games or if you wanted to see a list of games that use the eye toy (theres dozens more on the Play Station Network) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_Toy#Designed_for_EyeToy Ok, so not many games use the guitar - but the games it is used for can be bought seperately and be played with a standard controller - yet most people will still buy the game with a guitar - showing that indeed people will buy a seperate peripheral (It might be bundled - but you can buy it without it being bundled too) to play with just a few games from several publishers.
Awesome video. Of course, you could make it work for more than one person by combining that idea with (motion sensing) LCD glasses.
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
Why are they wasting their time with this? What we really want is ubiquitous Head Tracking for games on the PC and Consoles. An HMD that links where your character looks to your own head movements. Many manufacturers have tried this, but either the games need to be specially patched to support the devices (http://www.3dvisor.com/), or the resolutions are too low. If Nvidia pushes something like that, it could become a standard for gaming.They can add their 3D technology to those display units as well. I can't understand why this hasn't become a goal for Consoles and PC game platforms for gaming, it seems so obvious.
-Gel214th