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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."
Yea... like the games that will support it will work in Linux...
Lets be reasonable. You are making a new device trying to get new customers, why would you make XP or Linux drivers first... XP is on its way out. Yea Vista sucks but with more and more companies no longer shipping XP means more people will get Vista Preinstalled. Linux is not a gaming platform, it is barely a desktop platform, it only has like 1% market share, most of these people are running on Linux that is not powerful enough to run the drivers. so .25% market share? Yea lets spend millions of dollars in a new product design and spend half the funds for a tiny knitch market.
Most hardware purchases are sold when they get new hardware, thus getting Vista Preinstalled. So if I were to get my Ultimate Game computer with all the hardware I would have vista anyways.
Now if the product kicks off and becomes popular then you will get more drivers Linux drivers Mac Drivers, if there is still demmand they may have XP drivers. But if you are going to release a new product you might as well develop for the latest version, no matter what you religious stance is.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I'm not sure I have nerve to play Angband with this anyway -- those capital Z's will be terrifying in 3D!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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?
Have you ever tried it? We had a set in our lab and a nice haptic system. Very few people could use it for more than half an hour without feeling sea sick. The human brain uses about half a dozen queues to determine depth and the glasses only simulated the stereo separation, not (for example) the different focal lengths. This means your brain gets conflicting depth cues and processes the input discrepancies by making you feel sick.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Beyond silly? That's not beyond silly. A football helmet full of cottage cheese, now that's beyond silly.
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!"
Gah, cues goddamnit!!! Not queues. Cues!!! You'd think Slashdot of all places would get that right ...
~ roscivs