Questions about Stereoscopic 3D

[PrayForDeath]

Back in 2001 my brother got us a couple Geforce 2 Pros as well as two pairs of 3D stereo glasses. The glasses were the kind that required batteries, and you had to turn them on vie a small button on the side. They also came with a small base that you place on top of your monitor (it sends a signal to the glasses or something)

nVidia's drivers had solid support for 3D stereo, and we were able to run most games at the time in 3D with no trouble (GTA 3, Fifa, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed, Quake 3, UT, and many others)

Now 3D stereo is back, and I'm hearing all sorts of stories about incompatibilities with titles, displays, etc. What's the reason behind that? Did anything change in the last 10 years that made it harder to run 3D stereo? AMD's website has a list of supported displays (back in the day it ran on almost any CRT), is it because it's more difficult to run on LCDs?

 

[BrightCandle]

A couple of things changed making it a bit more difficult today:
1) LCDs are mostly 60Hz, whereas CRTs often went up to 100Hz or higher depending on the resolution. 60Hz is not enough to show each eye a different image (although 30fps is supposedly good enough for games and movies!)
2) Games have changed. The introduction of pixel shaders has complicated the depth information that 3D displays rely on. A number of games either use sprites or pixel programs that don't contain depth information and that cause problems with 3D. A common problem is smoke, which while looking like a load of particles in the world they are actually just a program ran at the depth of the game camera. When you use the depth to produce 3D the smoke appears in the wrong place.

 

[SonicIce]

3d was great back then. it was a fad though and they stopped releasing newer 3d drivers after a few years. now its a fad again but basically they scrapped everything they spent years building up and started over for some reason. if you still have an nvidia 7900 or earlier gpu, a crt monitor, and windows xp, you can enjoy superior 3d then the modern nvidia system using the old glasses for like 40 bucks if you can find them.

 

[Oyeve]

Wow, I still have my glasses for my old nvidia card. They plugged into the card tho. Still have the card too. Wonder if it still works.

 

[KingFatty]

What is the excuse given for why 60 Hz (e.g., 30 Hz per eyeball) is too slow for 3D?

Why is this considered a hard limit - can't it be like everything else videocard related, where you at least give the user the option of slower FPS if they want to run something on their slow-ish card? Why not allow anyone to run 3D on a 60 Hz display and provide 30 FPS per eye? If it's dimmer, OK, well, at least let me have the choice of dim 3D if I want to put up with lower performance instead of forcing me to buy all new hardware?

 

[SirPauly]

For example, can run Stereo at 100hz, 50hz per eye, and the flickering and pulsation is noticeable and very uncomfortable, when 110 isn't too bad, 120hz, 60hz per eye, for me is very fine.

The reason, for me, was the move to LCD displays and the market sort of diminished based on the technology for Stereo3d and the new displays just wasn't there yet.

Also, 3d stereo is more than just games , but movies, videos, broadcasts, photos, Internet -- a virtual ecosystem that is slowly being adopted. There is still a lot of work to do to improve this but glad the important players are trying to improve and innovate and certainly nice to have the choice once again with some new goodies to fool with.

It is pretty seamless these days, with some modest tweaking to improve the experience a bit more, but the quality is much better than the past. Personally gamed on Metabyte Eye Scream glasses and a Wicked 3d Voodoo 2 sli, that offered 1024 x 1024 gaming, back in the day, and the difference in quality today compared to the past is much better. Still, there are limitations and sacrifices -- can't enjoy all content but gaming is about trade-offs to me -- lose here but gain there. With enough awareness, hopefully developers will create more content that shines with Stereo3d, less limitations; and display companies offering more innovation here as well.

 

[Seero]

Back in 2001 my brother got us a couple Geforce 2 Pros as well as two pairs of 3D stereo glasses. The glasses were the kind that required batteries, and you had to turn them on vie a small button on the side. They also came with a small base that you place on top of your monitor (it sends a signal to the glasses or something)

nVidia's drivers had solid support for 3D stereo, and we were able to run most games at the time in 3D with no trouble (GTA 3, Fifa, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed, Quake 3, UT, and many others)

Now 3D stereo is back, and I'm hearing all sorts of stories about incompatibilities with titles, displays, etc. What's the reason behind that? Did anything change in the last 10 years that made it harder to run 3D stereo? AMD's website has a list of supported displays (back in the day it ran on almost any CRT), is it because it's more difficult to run on LCDs?

The problem now is the specification of LCD. Unless CRT were the tube flashes (which is where refresh rate originated), LCD doesn't flash, but update pixel lines. The refresh rate is the time required to update the whole screen 60 times a second on a 60hz certified LCD. However, is there a time where the screen doesn't refresh? If the timing is not precise, then there will be sever ghosting, or simply fail to work at all. This is why there are 3d vision ready monitors, where the 3d effect is guarantee(how good is another story.)

As to the game, if the game is coded correctly, meaning it goes through the entire render process, then there will not be an issue (except shadow). However, sometimes game developers add pre-rendered arts at the post render stage. In 2D, everything looks fine. In 3D, the pre-rendered art stays at 2d while the rest is in 3d. Let say the roof is pre-rendered, and the house is not, then the house appears to be broken in an weird way through 3d.