ED 3D glasses are now Radeon compatible!

[dakels]

From edimensional customer sales:

Hello,

You have requested to be notified of the release of ATI drivers for use with
our E-D 3-D gaming glasses. We're thrilled to announce they are finally
here! The new patented E-D drivers work on every ATI card and currently on
all OpenGL games (visit www.eDimensional.com/atigames.html for a list of
many compatible games, DirectX coming soon.) The new drivers work
exceptionally well, producing the highest quality effect we've ever seen,
with no flicker! We appreciate your patience and are pleased to now be the
exclusive provider of stereoscopic 3D gaming for the graphics performance
leader, ATI.

You can also read the full press release at www.eDimensional.com/atipr.html
then go and select your system today!

If you have any questions about our new software or products, please do not
hesitate to contact me. Having used it myself extensively, I'm absolutely
positive you'll be amazed at the 3-D effect. One beta tester said, "Thank
you, thank you, thank you, these glasses have exceeded all my expectations.
Have tried SOF2 and UT2K3 and it works great on my Radeon 9700! It even
improved the game performance!" We look forward to receiving your order!

Kind Regards,

Michael

Customer Sales

eDimensional, Inc.

www.eDimensional.com

I have been waiting to have these supported on my Radeon 9700, finally it's done. The drivers are ready. The problem was that ATI didn't have native support for stereoscopic glasses. Now they do With the type of games I play like MOH, SOF, Freelancer, etc, I know I'm gonna have some fun! Just beware that stereoscopic glasses cut your percievable refresh in half so make sure you have a montior that can crank up the refresh at the resolutions you want. I play most of my games at 1024x768 and my monitor can handle at least 100hz at that resolution so I am not worried.

Here's Edimensional's site
Reviews (there's alot more on google, I have yet to find a negative review):
pcgamereview
techspot's review

 

[Wag]

Shutter glasses are kind of fun for a while, but I think I'd get bored with them quickly.

Do people consistantly use them for gaming? $100 isn't a huge investment- if it makes a big difference I might shell out for a pair.

 

[Creig]

I'll have to try their driver on my Elsa Revelator glasses. AFAIK, all LCD glasses work the same.

Wag - If you thought it was creepy playing HL when those face huggers came jumping out at you while you're in the air ducts, try playing it at midnight with a pair of LCD shutter glasses on. 'Bout jumped out of my skin! They work better in some games than others. But after a while you'll find yourself moving your head to try to see around the next corner.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Creig
I'll have to try their driver on my Elsa Revelator glasses. AFAIK, all LCD glasses work the same.

Wag - If you thought it was creepy playing HL when those face huggers came jumping out at you while you're in the air ducts, try playing it at midnight with a pair of LCD shutter glasses on. 'Bout jumped out of my skin! They work better in some games than others. But after a while you'll find yourself moving your head to try to see around the next corner.

If you want to have a scary experience with those Goggles , try playing something that is scary, like AvP or AvP2. That will either make you have nightmares or you will be spending a long time in a padded cell

 

[Computergasm]

So, are you saying that it won't work well on LCD's, especially the large 18" or bigger using very high resolutions at 60hz?

 

[glugglug]

It won't work at all with an LCD. You'll just get a double image.

Whats more important than refresh rate for stereovision is pixel response time. Having pixels that fade really fast (causing noticable flickering at less than 85Hz) is a desirable monitor characteristic for this. For 3D stereoscopic images displayed at 50Hz/100Hz without double images you need a monitor with better than 10ms response time.

 

[dakels]

yanno I have read about 12 reviews on the ED 3D glasses and have yet to find a bad review

I did see that X-arcade makes a pair of stereoscopic 3D glasses too, and they look cooler and cost less. But edimensional's is very well reviewed whereas I can't find any reviews for the X-arcade's extreme 3D version. Also, I think edimensional wrote their own sterescopic video compatibility for the ED 3D glasses instead of relying on ATI for stereo support like Nvidia already has in their Detonator drivers.

 

[FearoftheNight]

Won't work on LCD? SOmeone confirm that?

 

[Creig]

An LCD display is made up on pixels that turn on and off (3 mini pixels per normal pixel I understand). Once on they will stay on until told to turn off. Therefore an LCD does not have a refresh rate.

In contrast, a CRT uses a gun to shoot the picture on the back of the screen. This gun shoots each pixel separately in horizontal lines from top to bottom. By the time it finishes the full screen at the bottom it must start over again at the top as the original pixels start to fade. The faster the refresh rate the less likely you will see the flicker from the screen being redrawn. This is why people want to run higher refresh rates.

And the LCD glasses work by "fogging" one LCD lens at a time, alternating back and forth. While your left eye is covered by the "fogged" lens, the screen draws the image for your right eye. When the right eye is fogged, the screen is displaying the image for your left eye with the 3D characters/elements slightly shifted so that your brain gets fooled into thinking there is actually depth to the image. If you've ever seen a comic book that came with the 3D red/green glasses you would have noticed that there were actually two images drawn for each cel. One in red and one in green, both slightly divergent. It works on the same principal.

The reason you need a really high refresh rate on your monitor for LCD glasses to work well is that your screen is now displaying two different images, one for each eye. So if you have a monitor at 100Hz, your eyes are actually seeing the images at 50Hz since 100Hz divided by 2 images = 50Hz per image. So you would want to run a MINIMUM of 120Hz on your screen at whatever resolution it can handle, preferably higher. I would say that 140Hz would be the minimum for comfort, otherwise the flicker can give you a bit of a headache after a while.

You can go here for more info on 3D glasses and how they work.

 

[FearoftheNight]

Sorry. So LCD monitors do not work? Is that the gist of it? ;o

 

[FearoftheNight]

Sorry. So LCD monitors do not work? Is that the gist of it? ;o

 

[glugglug]

Theoretically it could work with an LCD monitor...... if that LCD monitor has pixel response times better than 10ms. But no LCD on the market today has this.

 

[BFG10K]

I've read a few posts on other forums about these glasses and the reponses have been very positive so far. It could well be that these glasses are beyond a gimmick and are actually quite useful.

 

[glugglug]

I used similar shutter glasses with a Voodoo2 back in 1998 or 1999.
The 3D effect is just like an I-max movie once you get it adjusted IF you use a fast-fading monitor. (There first has to be some adjustment to tell the drivers exactly how far apart your eyes are to adjust the separation between left and right image) By fast-fading I mean when you change a pixel from white to black, it has to be able to get there very quickly. If your monitor doesn't fade fast enough you see a double image. Usually a dimmer 2nd image which your mind blocks out after awhile but its still annoying and lessens the 3D effect if it's there. If the fade time is WAY too high (i.e. an LCD) the 2nd image isn't dimmer and the 3D effect basically doesn't work at all. I would recommend a trinitron for this, but a shadow-mask CRT will work (just more likely to get the dim 2nd image).

NOTE: The 3D effect is actually "too good". Don't know if this new system comes with the same warning as the WickedVision 3D shutter glasses did back in the 90's, but basically there was 4 pages of warnings on how you shouldn't operate a motor vehicle for a few hours after using the glasses, and you may experience dizziness, disorientation, nausea, etc. because what your eyes are seeing doesn't match what the sense of balance in your ears is telling your brain. You seriously will not be able to walk a straight line after a few hours of Quake or Unreal with stereoscopic 3D.

 

[BFG10K]

Also the video card has to be powerful enough to render two frames instead of the usual two, one for each eye. In that case I'd recommend only the high-end cards to get a truly good experience.

 

[dakels]

well I have the glasses now but one problem... no drivers. You have to email the company for them to send you the new ATI R9000-9700 compatible drivers. They are not on their site for download. I assume this is because they aren't completely done with them yet (they have OpenGL but no DX 9 support).

I have emailed them this afternoon but no response yet. so here I am sitting with these glasses and no drivers. If they leave for the weekend and nobody is there to send me the drivers until monday, I am gonna be upset. :disgust:

If by a miracle someone out there has the ATI driver package for these or can get them, I'd really appreciate it. PM me

 

[Goose77]

quick question... would an R 8500 @ 240/450 or GF3 ti 200 @ 270/475 be good enough to do the work for like HL and BF 1942???

 

[glugglug]

An original Voodoo is enough for HL....
BF 1942? probably not.

 

[dakels]

Actually both those cards should work ok. The Radeon 8500 did have some problems with BF1942 but most of that was resolved with newer Cat drivers for the ATI, and patch updates in BF1942. It also depends on how good your processor and RAM are. One thing with BF is that you should have 512mb RAM or more, especially for large online games. You should also make sure your page filing/VM settings are pointing to a fast drive (preferable a clean partition).

You may not be able to run at super high resolutions with all eyecandy on, but it should be playable as long as the rest of your system is decent.

 

[dnoyeb]

i been running full throttle with a GF2Ti200. It does seem to be a bit jumpy but for some reason in this game it took me a while to notice. Quake, slow frames makes everything jump, but in BF1942, its not quite the same.

I dont know about VM settings, if you are hitting the harddrive you need more RAM.

 

[dakels]

You can display the FPS in BF1942 by hitting the console (press the tilde ~ button in game) then type "Console.showfps 1" -no quotes. To turn it off just type the same but with a 0. 1 is on 0 is off. If you are getting less then 40 fps and sinking below 20, then you should trim your graphics settings bit. Try lowering your resolution to 1024x768 or 800x600 or keep the resolution but lower some of the texture settings or the color depth from 32 to 16.

While you want to have enough physical RAM to avoid hitting the page file, it is inevitable with almost any game since it will automatically put some functions in the PF cache, unless you disable PF on your system. The bulk of your memory usage should not hit the PF though. BF1942 is one of the most RAM intensive hogs I have seen for a game. Even at 512mb of physical RAM, it will usually start hitting the VM. At 768mb RAM, you should be ok unless you are in a game with alot of users 32+. I run 1gb of DDR 3000 and it won't hit the page file except for some non critical items that are normally stored in the PF. Memory delays usually look like off timed 1-2 second pauses and not the constant low fps of a slow video card. I think if you display the FPS through the console, it will show you page file usage.

so how did my ED 3D glasses thread get changed into a BF 1942 thread...?