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NVIDIA Offers 3D Glasses For the Masses
Vigile writes "A new stereoscopic 3D gaming technology has hit the street today from NVIDIA, though demoed earlier in the year, that promises to bring high quality 3D gaming to the PC. The GeForce 3D Vision technology utilizes active shutter glasses and a 120 Hz display (either 120 Hz LCD or 3D-Ready DLP TVs) to bring an immersive 3D effect to PC games. Using the depth buffer information stored in DirectX, the NVIDIA software is able to construct a stereo 3D image out of existing game content while the 120 Hz requirement gives each eye 60 frames of motion per second negating the physical detriments that were known to occur with previous 3D offerings. The review at PC Perspective details how the technology works, the performance hit your games take while using it and the advantages and disadvantages to the user's gaming experience with 3D Vision."
Oh boy. Not only does this add a whole new dimension to porn, it also means people will be walking and porning. Yeesh.
It's wouldn't be susceptible to parallax error. They had it in the Star Trek future, why can't we have it in our proper future?
Man is annoyed by this.
Does it come with Aspirin?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
A company named Elsa had 3D shutter glasses for NVidia cards in 2000-2001 or so. I still have a wired and wireless pair. I think NVidia bought them out ages ago and put the 3D stuff in the Detonator drivers. I remember playing Thief 2 with those glasses (it was AWESOME). No idea if they still work, my current game rig has an ATI card.
Trolling is a art,
Who thought of selling a 3d display system for gaming?
Let's see. How many gamers watch porn regularly?
Now, how many non-gamers watch porn regularly?
And finally, how many games get so greater for being in 3d as porn?
How hard can it be to sell a product with "Full 3D titties. $X. Pay here."
How hard? I ask you.
I can imagine this being an epic fail, if your specs aren't good enough. You'll need top of the line to make sure that the refresh rates don't jitter and your framerate doesn't die.
So, I definitely want one, but I'm not going to pretend that this would be remotely useful until I upgrade to a brand new machine.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Seems like those glasses would not fit over mine. So I guess this product is going purely for the good vision and contact lens market?
The glasses work great. Any direct3D will show in full 3D. The only reasons I don't wear them all the time (or ever really) are bad 3d driver support from nvidia in the past, and more importantly, every game I've ever played in 3D has used some weird visual shortcuts for displaying explosions or gunshots or something that breaks the whole immersion. For example, in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, it's all full 3D except the streetlights and headlights. Those appear to be painted on a 2D window in front of you because they don't really appear in the 3D space. Anyway, it's weird enough to make me not want to play it that way. So if this is going to ever work in the mainstream, game developers have to meet halfway and stop using graphical shortcuts like that.
Screw this shutter glass nonsense!
The masses don't need no stinkin glasses (active, passive or whatever), what they need is autostereoscopy.
Manufacturers have been teasing with autostereoscopic technology (I'm looking at you Philips) throughout 2008, now they need to actualy push these to market.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
Looks to me like the headline is an invitation for nerdcore.
3D glasses
For the masses
Aliens come out of the screen
to kick your a33s3s...
Nothing new. I got these with my Asus V7700 GFX card (a very good card, btw!) - but they had a cable rather than wireless sync. The GFX card had an extra connector for these. The glasses worked but needed calibrating and were a guarantee for headache after playing for 10 minutes or so. But Dark Reign 2 and simular games looked really cool with them. For 3D RTS I think something like this can even give you an advantage - if you can raise your monitor refresh rate enough, that is.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
OK, OK, 3D Glasses for the Masses, but who will be able to afford them? I wasn't able to find anything related to pricing. Please enlighten me if you know anything related to the price.
I have played with 3D glasses and found the experience disappointing. Parallax is only important within a few feet, and most of my depth cues seem to come from other sources. In game settings a 3-D "feel" was obtained only by exaggerating the parallax cues, which quickly became unpleasant. IMO, the sense of immersion depends much more on peripheral vision. Hopefully we will have that before long, through some technique more elegant than having 16 monitors.
... I expected the Slashdot story to be something like:
3 young lasses from Manassas made glasses for the masses rendering 3d in two passes. Currently the glasses are omitting noxious gasses and they're receiving an action lawsuit in classes so they really need to cover their asses.
more as time passes.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If anyone has ever worn sunglasses while looking at an LCD monitor, you quickly discover that tilting your head causes the screen to go black in specific orientations.
Hasn't anyone tried to manufacture an LCD with alternating LCD polarity between adjacent lines of pixels? Mounting cheap polarized films on any frame is all you'd need to split the monitor image between left and right eye. No shutter frames needed, the video card merely splits an image into stripes for the left and right eye at normal refesh rates. Same idea as "progressive scanning" images on some HDTVs
Who are you? Buddy Holly?
So will graphic clipping issues poke you in the eye?
It would be great if cheap glasses leads to the development of cheap stereoscopic digital cameras. Why should 3-d photography be limited to running only on your grandpas antiques?
For most of the games we tried (FPS games, etc), 3d wasn't spectacular. But for racing games, I found the 3d effect (with an eMagin head mounted display) to really make the game better - you got a real sense of speed.
I think the thing that will push this over the top is good head tracking. If your perspective changed with head movement, I think the 3d illusion would be really compelling.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
After reading the article, I notice they make mention that this works by utilizing data provided from Direc3D....does anyone know if this works with OpenGL-based games as well?
Seems like those glasses would not fit over mine. So I guess this product is going purely for the good vision and contact lens market?
Can you wear contact lenses? Dunno, I have 20/20 and am probably an insensitive clod.
But a new and more likely useful implementation. First off it's wireless which makes them much more practical for general use. The big deal these days is the faster monitors. Back when they first came out, you had to use them CRTs, LCDs were too slow. However even good CRTs had real hell doing refresh rates high enough not to produce severe flicker. 85Hz was fine for a normal image, too slow for this sort of thing to work well. It took a top of the line CRT to do 120Hz at even 1024x768.
Well that's not a problem now. DLP screens update way, waaaaaay, faster. They cycle colours thousands of times per second. So doing 120Hz, or rather 60Hz per eye, is no problem at all.
Nothing revolutionary, but it is practical now. I remember playing with it when it first came out. It was kinda cool, but not all that usable and only really worked when I tried it on a professional CRT at work. This sounds like I could make it work in my living room on a normal DLP screen.
I suppose one could, although I've grown quite accustomed to my good ol spectacles and I can't really see changing one of the major parts of my lifestyle and appearance merely to use a product...
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any dvi mode that can reach 120Hz. In the article NV was talking about working with some proprietary TI dlp stuff. Is this technology condemned to HDMI/HDCP + Projectors with a lamp life of 1/2 of your typical sandbox game?
Try Audiosurf with the glasses! I bet that's enough to give a heart attack.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Well, except that some of us can still see the 60Hz flicker. I want to gouge my eyes out looking at anything less than 75Hz, which would work out to 150Hz combined for this technology.
To understand why this may be a poor choice for 3D glasses technology for consumers, as well as some thoughts on why NVIDIA might have gone with it anyways, here's an article that gets into the nitty gritty. Brief summary; headaches and batteries.
(Insert usual disclaimer about the Inquirer not exactly being an enthusiastic supporter of NVIDIA here..)
Can these glasses be worn over prescription glasses?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I saw no mention in the article if Linux, OSX, or other OS'es would be supported. That is a large issue for me if I'm going to come off $200...
I've owned and used heavily 2 stereoscopic 3d systems.
One used a large CRT monitor that could run at 150Hz. I had two different 3d shutter glasses I used. I remember having to do quite a bit of tweaking with each game I wanted to play, but eventually I was able to get 'perfect' effects that were completely and totally awesome.
You can't really know til you try it, but 3d can make games feel dramatically more real. It can make even older games look a LOT better. Deus Ex was pretty darn awesome looking when your weapons actually have depth to them, and so do the enemies.
I then built a passive stereoscopic rig using polarized glasses and 2 LCD monitors, as well as a half-silvered mirror. Total cost : about $650. That one also ruled, and worked better than the shutter glasses. I found that the killer app game for it was World of Warcraft.
This was 18 months ago : I was playing WoW in full 3d. I had to disable just 1 effect to get it to work perfectly, all of the time, smooth as glass. Again, a lot of the graphics of that game look amazing when they have depth, because your brain automatically fills in details that aren't really in the low detail graphics.
Why did I quit? Time, and the fact that Nvidia basically abandoned stereo 3d for a while. My 8800GT did not work at all for a long time. Stereo 3d IS worth it, but it requires heavy driver support or it doesn't work.
Also, I never could eliminate "ghosting". That is where the images from one eye leak into the other. One game in particular, a horror game, was AWESOME and VASTLY more scary with depth. The problem was, the dark shadows and flashlights would create various halos on the screen from ghosting which was very unrealistic and distracting.
Ghosting is inherent to shutter glasses. The only 3d tech that completely eliminates it is a headset with a separate display for each eye. However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)
First thing I thought when seeing the article is, 'As soon as I buy myself those glasses, I'll also buy a wii remote; might as well go all the way.'
I'd combine this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw) with the glasses.
And you're Mary Tyler Moore...
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I'm not a gamer, so I immediately began to think of other 3D exploration uses:
But I *didn't* think of porn. I should go see a doctor, there must be something wrong with me.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And they gave me terrible headaches. Playing Descent in real 3d was pretty durned cool, though. Too bad 15 minutes of play left me hurting pretty badly.
I'm guessing the old ones probably shuttered at 60Hz. I'm doubtful that the 120Hz rate solves the issues. I bet it still looks a bit flickery, because I know I can't look at a 60Hz display without eye strain and headaches. They'll need to hit 150 Hz before it really looks smooth.
I, for one, can't wait to use it with Blender. That will surely help in 3D modeling. Finally we'll have a 3D cursor that is really 3D! :)
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
At least older generations of these glasses (as others have said, lower refresh rate versions were available with even the original GeForce, many were bundled by Asus) fit just fine over glasses.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I still have around the StereoTek LCD shutter glasses that I used with a lowly Atari ST during the second half of the 80's. Maybe I can adapt them for the PC ;-)
It's about time.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
I totally agree with what you have to say about manufacturers getting together to make this kind of thing really work right. When I was 12, I was completely blown away by Disney's Captain Eo. If you saw it, then you know exactly what I mean. Crisp, dare I say, close to perfect 3D. I was literally reaching out at the end of the movie to touch that furry guy. I'd love to have that experience again. Cheers.
Why did I quit? Time, and the fact that Nvidia basically abandoned stereo 3d for a while.
That's the problem. They always do. 3D glasses have been in and out of favour with manufacturers for years and years. They keep trying it, and then giving up. Maybe it's just too invasive to require people to use special glasses, but for whatever reason it never seems to catch on.
I remember that the Sega system had 3D glasses. I think there were about 2 games for them. I even bought (and still have) a pair for my Amiga computer. I literally only ever used them with the demo game that came with them. Nothing else was available, as far as I could tell.
Even earlier, stereoscopic movies were made in the 50's. It also turned out to be nothing but a passing fad.
I think stereoscopic vision adds a really cool level of detail to the 3D experience. Combine it with head tracking for *truly* impressive results. But unless the industry gets its act together and actually produces games and applications that use them, this technology will forever be doomed to last about a week and then disappear.
Maybe this time around it will be different: At least at this point we have many more games and applications that are actually rendered in 3D, which is a significant difference from the state of computing circa 1995. And the level of detail and realism in 3D rendering has increased dramatically. We also have operating systems that fully utilize 3D technology for day-to-day interaction, which might have interesting uses for depth perception.
Also, from a consumer point of view the glasses themselves seem to be quite a bit more stylish and less bulky, which should help quite a bit.
For those who say these will induce headaches: when I had the old glasses for the Amiga they refreshed at 30 Hz, alternating with the interlaced scanlines of the monitor display. Heck even just staring at a 30 Hz monitor without glasses will give you a headache. If these really update at 120 Hz, I don't think headaches will be a problem.
From TFA
These aren't the kind of video glasses that display the image right in front of each eye - these are shutter glasses that alternately black out the left and right sides, synchronized with your monitor that's alternately showing right and left images.
So if you're walking around instead of looking at your monitor, unless the real world is blinking on and off in sync with your glasses, it'll just look a little dimmer. And if the real world *is* blinking on and off in sync with your glasses, you've found Owsley's Secret Lost Acid Stash... let me help you with that :-)
(My first question when reading the headline about new 3D glasses was to wonder what resolution they are, since I'm not happy reading text at less than 800x600, and most gamer glasses have been 640x200 or less, , but of course they don't work for that either, so no gargoyle mode for me yet.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A common way to render alpha blended (translucent) objects is to first render everything that is not alpha blended, then turn off the depth buffer and render the alpha blended objects in order of furthest from the camera to closest. This is necessary to keep an object you can see through from occluding objects that are behind it. How does their software account for these objects that were rendered without any depth information?
...at "DirectX".
factor 966971: 966971
Is it possible to make videos to show on all this hardware? I also did not see anything about what OS was required. "Gaming" often implies PCs.
Working on new views of old physics at http://VisualPhysics.org
I may be responsible for the fact that Duke Nukem 4ever has yet to be released.
A year or three (a long time ago, I don't remember exactly when) after Duke Nukem 3-D came out, there was a gaming discussion site called Planet Crap. It was a low visibility site, and most of the folks who posted there tried to keep it that way, not mentioning or linking it on their own sites.
It was a site shared by gamers, game webmasters (who were of course all gamers), and industry insiders. Warren Marshall posted there (he was a pirate in his college days, which is why he fears pirates so badly), as did several of his artists and programmers. People from ID posted there, and Charles Broussard and his people posted there as well.
There was a discussion one day, I don't remember the topic, but Mr. broussard was posting. I wondered out loud why Duke Nukem 3-D was not really 3-D at all, but 2-D perspective. Charles said something to the effect of "we don't yet have holographic displays". I mentioned stereoscopic viewing and suggested red/green glasses.
Duke Nukem 4ever became more and more a joke as time went by, but I've always wondered if they were working on a true 3-D game. These glasses in TFA would do the trick far better than the red/green glasses.
I also wonder when we're going to have truly holographic displays? All one would need would be a high enough resolution LCD, with instead of a white backlight, a mirrored back and a laser frontlight. It would be monochromatic, but I think you could work it out with three lasers each firing in turn and tied to display different diffraction patters so that it could be true color, true 3-D. It would be more than stereoscopic viewing as these glasses are, but true 3-D, so you could actually see around the displayed objects by moving your head (if you've ever seen a real hologram you know what I mean).
Free Martian Whores!
If I want to run OS X on my "Beige G4" because it's got a better video card than a Mac mini, or run 3d at 85 Hz because that's what my monitor can handle, that should be on me.
This good either be really, really good for porn, or really, really bad.
Does those fantastic 3D glasses come with 3D hardware programming specifications? >:D
So, will this enhance my FreeCiv experience?
-l
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Perhaps in the future they will make such 3D glasses with your prescribed dioptres for the lenses.
Gamespot has an article on these 3d glasses as well. One of the screenshots shows the 3d lenses fitting over a pair of standard eye glasses, so unless you have giant coke bottle glasses, you should be good to go.
The problem with head tracking is that when I look to my right or my left, I don't see my monitor anymore.
The magic behind keeping the full resolution image lies with the TI SmoothPicture technology that uses the mirror array and optical actuator of a DLP display system to slightly modify the left and right channel frames and then optically offset the grid pattern created in the above diagram. With the high switching speed of the mirrors of the DLP technology all of the original pixels in the image can be displayed with a 8ms field time and thus allowing the display to show 60 effective frames in under a second (8ms x 120 = 960 ms). An added benefit of this offset and displacement method that the DLP technology uses is that the images on the screen are somewhat softened thus lessening edge artifact. Oh, and also, you can get DLPs in sizes up to 73-in; who doesnâ(TM)t want to take on the zombies with that kind of screen?
So DLPs are effectively interlacing pixels instead of scanlines and using an actuator to achieve full resolution. The DLP chip is really outputting 960x1080P / 120Hz, but interlaced together to produce the image at 1920x1080 / 60Hz. The difference of 3D of course is the way each 2 frames interlace (part of same image or split in the way 3D would be).
I've had this question since the tech was shown last year. Can you choose to run this on older displays? Some people still have older 120hz+ capable CRTs that should work just fine. Other people, like myself, have never had a problem with eyestrain on low refresh monitors and would like to try it on their existing monitors. Mine is a brand new 28" LCD with ~85hz max refresh. I have no intention of spending more money on a new monitor after having just purchased one, especially not a monitor significantly smaller than what I have now.
The article, however, suggests that the drivers are designed to check for (not just the 120hz capability) but for specific models of monitor that are "approved" by Nvidia. What I think is going on here is very similar to what happened when they released their first Stereo 3d drivers for Vista and I consider it a product tie-in scam as well as poor treatment of their customers.
Nvidia sold people on the 3d shutter glasses tech years ago. When CRTs died and the first generation of LCDs couldn't handle decent refresh rates Nvidia dropped support for the drivers. They didn't do it in a classy way, they just stopped talking about it and left their customers hanging. They never made it clear that they weren't going to update them and when rumors spread about stereo support being planned for the 8800 series people bought the new cards expecting the drivers that never came. Again, Nvidia kept quiet.
When news of the upcoming Vista stereo drivers started leaking, with what seemed to be tacit confirmation from Nvidia, people that had spent money on the hardware were excited. They were in for a rude awakening when it turned out that Nvidia had gone as far as to remove support for any stereo hardware they had pushed in the past and tried to require specific models of 3D monitors sold by their business partners. Basically, my understanding is, they had screwed over their past and present customers by handy-capping their drivers in exchange for payment from the monitor company. Here is a company that wants us to buy their video card (and now their shutter glasses) but is also trying to force us to throw out our present monitors, whether we need to or not, before we are allowed to use their 3d features and the only real justification is an artificial software block they put there themselves.
This is what I think is happening here again. I think they've probably made a deal with the monitor/projector manufacturers to be paid for the "Nvidia Approved" status which is why only two displays are allowed regardless of all the older CRTs still existing that match their supposed justification of high refresh rate. I'm smart enough to understand that it took extra work to go out of their way to take the power to decide for myself away from me. Nvidia needs to remember who their actual customers are and stop treating them as an afterthought. They're already on shaky ground with their present generation of cards competing poorly against ATI for price/performance. I, certainly, don't need Nvidia trying to force a Mitsubishi (or any other specific company's) monitor down my throat before I'm able to use a Nvidia product).
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Someone said NVIDIA is making a winning bet, because video cards will now need to deliver much higher frame rates, and thus the specs required to play games comfortably will be even higher. This is true.
However, 120 Hz doesn't mean you need your game to render at 120 FPS. It simply means you need to be able to display 120 images per second (60 per eye per second). Most likely, the implementation will involve using two frame buffers in the video card instead of one. The video card will render one frame for each eye, at whatever pace it can sustain. This rendering process will be decoupled from the display subsystem, which will simply have to switch to display the proper image for each eye at the right time. If the video card can't render at 120 FPS, then the video card can simply alternate between the same pair of left-right images until a new pair of images is done rendering.
Anyways, this is just speculation, but obviously, while 120 FPS is hard to maintain constantly on modern games, 60+ FPS will be more feasible. Some people might also be willing to reduce their display resolution so they can get a good enough frame rate for 3D play to be comfortable.
Or not.
1. Because mapping the z-buffer to eye depth will make a lousy experience because all UI overlay panels and info bars (which is right in front of your nose) will make you loose in-game focus.
2. API support i DirectX has existed for 8 years. Didn't help.
3. Frame rate cut in half. Most people would prefere 2x framerate or higher resolution instead. Most games would not be playable at all with 3D goggles on modest hardware. Crysis isn't playable with 3D goggles. Period.
4. 3D goggles will always be a hack. Will not be compatible with light pistol and other rare features. Compatible with XP/Linux compatible? No. DRM-compatible? No.
Does anyone know whether there is anyway at all to simulate 3d for those with only one eye?
because i am going to hook a gyroscope up to these glasses and interface them with my mouse. and then i am going to put myself in a hampster ball setup, also connected to my mouse/movement interface. ...and then i'm going to buy a Fleshlight...
Actually nope.
They were made very much in mind with people with glasses as they have ample space for prescriptions underneath.
The only 3d tech that completely eliminates it is a headset with a separate display for each eye.
There's also the kind that tracks the user's head location and renders the display based on position, like Johnny Lee's work.
My guess is a monitor-mounted webcam with software eye tracking gets rid of all the required hardware.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nvidia fucked over the consumer with these.
I've had a pair of shutter glasses (as have a hell of a lot of other people) for years. For years, I was a fan of Nvidia because they included shutter support in an add-on driver release. I played Portal with my original-series VRStandard glasses and it was AMAZING.
Six months ago, Nvidia entered into a monetary partnership with people who make some shitty, half-assed "3d compatible" lcd monitors. All of a sudden, the latest version of the add-on driver (a) is Vista-Only (fucking bullshit) and (b) dropped support for anything but anaglyph, these "3d compatible lcd monitors", or "official Nvidia shutter glasses."
I'm not about to infect my computer with the Vista Virus to have this, much less have to go spend money on buying more new hardware that, internally, is exactly the fucking same as I already own except for having the monitor-sync bit use a different one of the 14 VGA pins to hide its left/right signal.
Fuck Nvidia till they start putting the consumer first again. And if they don't fix this and give us back the driver support, then I won't buy their cards anymore.
it could likely be coded in to account for a given persons vision, like to distort it so that it would appear correct to you, probably just a few lines of code at that
This isn't a "review", this is a paid-for advert disguised as one.
A few examples:
Active glasses for stereo 3D viewing are not a technology created by NVIDIA and in fact they have been around for some time as well. However, the quality of the glasses and the user experience has been low due to low frame rates (30 Hz to each eye usually) and bulky hardware.
Reality: Existing glasses solutions (from companies like EDimensional and preceding them, VRStandard) are just as slim as the NVidia offering and run at the same framerate (100-120 Hz).
As of today, NVIDIA's 3D technology will work with only two types of displays: true 120 Hz LCD monitors and 3D-Ready DLP projection televisions.
That's only because Nvidia has a monetary interest in forcing people to buy new hardware; the old glasses solutions worked just fine with true 120-Hz monitors, DLP projection TV's, and even standard CRT monitors until recently when Nvidia deliberately broke the drivers and made 3D-support only available on Windows Vista.
I feel it is also important to realize that while the 3D effects we are seeing today are really cool and well worth the investment of $199,
A pair of EDimensional glasses six months ago ran you $60-80 depending on where you bought them, and were exactly the same technology inside; all NVidia's done is changed which pin they're hiding the monitor/glasses sync signal in on the video cable. Charging $200 is fucking highway robbery and they know it.
It's a pity that "PC Perspective" ran a shitty, paid-for "review" and are trying to fool everyone. I call Scam because I see one.
Well actually, because these NVIDIA glasses are already using an infrared connection to synchronize the shutter glasses with the monitor, you could also implement the head tracking solution as demonstrated by Johnny Chung Lee with the Wii-remote
If you were living under a rock around 2 years ago, for more information visit his website
I'd like my regular GNOME desktop and its windows to be displayed with a real Z-buffer, with windows behind windows. These glasses should do something like that without much development work.
I'd also like to see these glasses coupled with a camera that recognizes real objects in view and displays annotations overlaid on them. That's harder, but still not too hard.
If these glasses could squeeze most of 1600x1200 into just the foveal central focus of vision , with lower rez for the majority of the view that is peripheral vision, we might get extremely high rez 3D displays without the higher manufacturing and bandwidth costs of high rez in the entire field. That's possible with 3D glasses, even though it's not for single field displays like monitors.
I'm hoping these glasses are trivial enough to use for everyone, and cheap enough to make, that they finally jump the watershed into a whole new era of display features. Because the old ones are getting boring. And not just for gamers.
--
make install -not war
Which "masses" would these be? Mr and Mrs. Neutrino?
Get back to me when then have incorporated head tracking (which is already possible with a webcam). A GREAT example :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
(Johnny Chung Lee)
Head tracking plus this 3d depth technology would be amazing. Throw in Touchscreen and you have something really out there.
Why don't you put your normal glasses over the 3D glasses then. They would still work.
mediocrity rules, man
The only 3d tech that completely eliminates it is a headset with a separate display for each eye. However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)
http://www.vr920.com/iwear/products_vr920.html $400 retail price (you can find them for S300 on eBay) and you get a 640x480 60hz display for each eye. Not quite Hi res but reviews seem to imply that you can't really tell, with a display for each eyeball.
"Civilization is all about beating the environment into forms that suit us better." - John Carmack
No. The ability to focus at different distances (accommodation depth cue) works only for short distances... maybe max 1 meter (3 feet) if you have 20/20 vision.
Indeed, there is the problem you are referring to. It is called convergence-accommodation rivalry and is caused by the following - your vision uses feedback, and if your eyes converge to certain point the lens of the eye automatically gets focused on that distance. So if the disparity in the eyes suggests an object is being 20cm in front of your nose, your eye lens will auto-focus to that distance. As the object is really projected on the display (1 meter away) it will look out of focus.
This problem can be solved by making the display extra bright. Your pupil contracts, the depth-of-field enlarges, and scene is all in focus regardless of the perceived disparity.
Furthermore, this rivalry will affect only objects that attempt to come "out of the screen". The "depth information stored in the directX buffer" rarely has objects in front of the screen, most of the game scenery will exist at different depths INSIDE of the display. No c-a rivalry there.
The human vision has the ability fuse a single image out of different retinal projections in each eye. (Foundations of Cyclopean Vision, Blea Julez, 1971) You don't really see double images behind your point of attention (point of focus != point of attention).
Instead of using "jumping cross-hair" to aim at enemies, do what Chuck Norris would do. Close one eye.
Simply turn on the 3D effect, put on a pair of stylish shades with mismatched lenses, and BAMMO! Instant 3D.
...and BAMMO!, loose half the resolution in each eye.
In your article you mentioned that the depth was from the plane of the screen backward. Seems that you could have a dial to adjust the virtual plane outward from the screen and get the image to move forward of the screen. It would still be the same information.
Just think of the embarrassment to be caught wanking with wearing some weird glasses connected to your computer.
Ive had the edimensional glasses for ages, also thankfully i had a monitor that does 120hz. The only problem i had was that it only really works with a couple of games (best ones were ghost recon and morrowind, nearly all the other games had issues with huds or aim sights. Joint Operation for example, it works really well except for the hud and the targetting reticle, since they were only 2d overlays you got 2 aimsights and 2 huds which hurt the eyes to look at, but was fine without them turned on (had to use a black mark on the monitor screen to aim by), and i cant remember a rts game that actually worked properly with them (homeworld was close).
So unless the games are made specifically with 3d glasses in mind, they will still mostly suck
Is this how Cory Doctorow reproduces?
I had a pair of these come with my old GeForce 2 (gts deluxe (?) - can't remember all the bloody codenames and digits) and played Theif with them... but all it really succeeded in doing was giving me a headache. perhaps the tech has gotten better, but they just seem to be rehashing tech from 6 years ago
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
... However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)
Depends on what you consider to be 'high-resolution' for a head mounted display. The Vuzix iWear VR920 boasts dual 640x480 displays and 3DOF head tracking for $400 US. Add a Wiimote to the mix and you can get 6DOF head tracking for $450 + some time getting it all to work together. That's not to shabby when compared to the $2000+ pro-headsets or say a $15,000+ tactical HUD visor :)
Sure,
I and a multitude of others will be replacing all our monitors with more expensive models just to accommodate an expensive toy.
This will suffer the same fate as countless other niche devices.
"The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
It won't help the 10-15% of the population who are incapable of seeing in 3D (and lots of them don't even know it!).
Hmmm... If I want 120Hz, I think I'll dig my old faithful Trinitron CRT out of the shed (if I can still lift it).
FTA:
The nose bridge pieces seen in this photo can be installed on the glasses and vary the height at which the glasses sit on your face. If you use standard glasses on a normal basis these bridges will allow you to use the NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses over them.
Glass wearers should be fine..
Actually, it's not. Most systems synchronize the two, so you don't get flicker (monitor refresh) during refreshes of the video buffer (FPS). Otherwise, the result can be a bit like driving past railings, looking at something behind them. I'm not sure it's an issue for LCDs, but on standard CRTs and TVs (mainly consoles these days), it's a definite issue, and only bad game designs don't use sync. It's quite strange that PC gamers have accepted increasing FPS beyond their monitor refresh as a good thing.
I'm not sure the glasses are the thing you need to be most worried about in this sort of situation.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Seems like those glasses would not fit over mine. So I guess this product is going purely for the good vision and contact lens market?
I hate that attitude.
People can't cater everything for everyone. You cater for the majority, or a particular demographic(s). Financially, and practically, that is right.
I don't mean to sound offensive, but I'm sick of people with some sort of disability bitching and moaning when products are introduced that cannot suit their (relatively) unique needs. Now I'm not saying that no one should not *care* about people who need glasses, or to more extremes, people who are blind and whatnot....but when a product is made with these things catered for, it's a good thing - it shouldn't be an *expected* thing. Especially not for something as novelty or low-volume selling as a pair of 3D glasses. I can understand if it's something necessary to living - like public infrastructure, or even to some extent commonly used products, but a piece of entertainment? Is catering for those needs worth the money spent into the design, for the extra products sold?
~Jarik
I bought a $600 "guaranteed" HDCP compliant nVidia card, and a $900 HCDP compliant television so I could watch BluRays and HDDVDs on my comp. What I ended up with was an overscanned video scaling my 1080p signal to (approximately) 2160x1200 (and cutting off the edges). After months of ignoring angry, angry customers, nVidia finally "fixed" the problem. One can now fix ones overscan issue using their "Utility" (and hunting for the exact set of drivers of course, you may install 5 sets of nVidia drivers before you can resize your desktop). Of course this falls outside the bounds of HDCP compliance. I will probably never buy another nVidia card. I may be negged for saying this, but I guess nVidia sucks maybe (not as far as technical capabilities go, obviously, simply as a company; a good and/or service provider). Obviously off topic, but I wanted to reiterate the above's statement of poor treatment of customers. I'll probably never buy another nVidia Card again.
Actually I agree with your sentiment. The main reason I would say this is different is because the majority of gamers I know wear glasses. Now, obviously I don't mean this to be any sort of claim that everyone does. It just seems that in my experience a large percentage of gamers do and it could be a serious defect if they didn't take that into account. As for it being a demand for them to cater to my needs. I don't really care, just seems to be an oversight in my opinion to ignore a large percentage of their target group. Seems the makers of the glasses agreed since another comment said that the glasses come with extensions or something to fit over glasses.
Mmm, fair enough actually.