Dark Mod in 3D for Nvidia users

[Fidcal]

Looking at a review for the nvidia 3D pack @ http://www.legitreviews.com/article/889/1/ I wondered if it would work with Doom3 - it wasn't in a list of games I was looking at on Christmas day. But this post seems to indicate it will. http://forums.cclonline.com/showthread.php?t=13655 Whether it will or not it seems 3D is the future. Sounds awesome.

[STiFU]

Nvidia 3D Vision is apparently only compatible with direct 3d games currently and as far as I know, they don't intend to add openGL support. But the last time I checked was quite some time ago, so maybe, there are some good news for us by now!

 

So far, I only tried 3D vision with anaglyph-glasses (those red-cyan plastic glasses) and that has already been an amazing experience, although you have a serious colorreduction and it leads to headaches on the long term, because the colorcontours aren't filtered completely, so your brain is getting kind of confused... (I tried to edit the colors in the registry, but nvidia turned this option off in the recent drivers)

 

Anyway, all this fun is pretty expensive. You have to consider that despite the nvidia 3d package, you also need the non-plus-ultra hardware if you want to play the current games in full-detail 3d-optic, since you get an performance-loss of about 70% (if I remember correctly) when stereovision is activated. I tried stereovision in Crysis at work on a very fine machine (Intel i7 975 extreme, 12 gb ddr3, 2x EVGA Geforce GTX 295) and it was unplayable, even on lower detaillevels. And that machine already costs 4000€...

 

I also spent some time eyeballing that package, but I couldn't try it anywhere yet and I don't want to buy the cat in the bag. You see, the shutter-system introduces some motionblur and I am concerned that it might somehow add to the native motion blur of the LCD, making it all a blurry sludge. Depending on the display, that native motionblur can be pretty bad as well. I'd prefer a solution with a plasma-display, which would also be a big cost factor again.

Edited December 29, 2009 by STiFU

[Fidcal]

Yes, I'd be slow to get that package but the review is an indicator that this is the next big development push - in TV too. From what I recall the they were seeing the eyestrain thing appeared to be solved but the performance hit probably means we need to wait a while...

[Fidcal]

btw this reminds me it is possible to make a screenshot in 3D without any special equipment. I did this in Thief and posted some images somewhere. You just find a good view and save a screenshot then move a step left or right and repeat. With care you can view the two images in 3D but it takes practice to de-focus the eyes.

[Serpentine]

I have a sterioscopic ATI fullscreen shader somewhere around here, should work in doom3... lemme find that and get some screenshots

 

Also, just remember that the '3D' that the nvidia glasses uses requires a 120hz lcd for the glasses to run, if you use any rendering tricks in games you will most likely get strange effects, also if you didnt deal well with running crt's at 60hz back in the day, good luck with headaches etc

 

A friend has just got all the kit, so I'm gonna go take a spin in a few weeks and will try out tdm... for science!

[STiFU]

Hehe, manual stereoscopy. Nice! The nvidia drivers ship with a tool for taking 3d screenshots nowadays though.

 

About the eyestrain:

 

• The cameras have to be an exact eye-distance away from each other. Higher or lower distances cause headaches and worse. This is not much of a big deal anymore today though and I am almost sure that the distance can be adjusted to your personal needs somewhere in the driver settings (maybe registry).
• The cameras shoot parallel, which is basically not a correct representation of the human visual system, but it is the only option that allows viewers to perceive more or less correct 3d in the borderregions of a screen.
• This last point is mostly just an issue with movies, since it is caused by depth of field. Sometimes the viewer focuses on things that appear to be nearer to him, but aren't actually focused by the camera, which is why they are blurred. The brain tries to deblur those objects and is once again confused that it can't do anything about it. =) So the best thing to do in a 3d cinema is to actively focus on things, the director wants you to focus on... In games, it would be good to disable DOF for that matter.

So in conclusion, we are pretty much done with too high eyestrain. It's really just up to the viewer now...

 

The 120 Hz Monitors shouldn't be a problem in this aspect, because LCD are hold-type displays, hence no flicker can be perceived. If you can wear activated shutter-glasses without getting a headache, you're good to go and it's very unlikely that you're going to get an headache from those.

 

 

Edited December 29, 2009 by STiFU

[Serpentine]

I did mean the shutter flashing causing issues, I last wore a pair of industrial glasses 2-3 years ago to look at some CAD work and couldnt deal with it, had the same experience in the late 90's on one of those cheesey 3d cinemas. I couldnt deal with 60Hz CRT's while friends had no problem using them for extended periods, even 75 would make my eyes water a bit if I didnt have lights on (and I love gamnig in the dark )... No problems at all with LCD as you've said. I think I'm just bitter that I miss out, but personally I think its a pretty silly move when they could have gone for polarised glasses considering how almost everyone that has bought a pair has to change monitor anyway...

 

Just a side note : that reviewer either received some cash... or he's retarded due to the fact that in 30 days during the best release season all year all he could find up to base his findings on was L4D2, when they go on about supporting everything? ;/

[STiFU]

I don't know many TVs that emit polarized light for stereoscopic viewing, but the ones I know do it like this: The uneven lines are polarized horizontally and the even lines are polarized vertically. So it is an interlaced signal and the resolution of the picture seen by one eye is half as big as it could be. Maybe that's the reason they decided to go for shutter-glasses. Better a smaller temporal resolution than a smaller spatial resolution.

 

Also you will probably see weird linestructures all over the screen.

 

 

Edited December 30, 2009 by STiFU

[Crispy]

I can't stand 60 Hz flickering either. My LCD is set to 60 Hz and I have no problem with that, but that's because LCDs don't flicker. Shutter glasses give me the same problem as 60 Hz CRTs.

 

Polarised light is the way to go; it's by far the most eye-friendly solution, although you'll still get some eye strain due to depth of field issues (trying to focus on something that's blurred, or getting freaked out because nothing is blurred) and focus issues (the screen is a constant distance from you but the geometry's apparent distance keeps changing, which messes with your eyes; there's a conflict between where you have to focus the lenses in your eyes in order to see properly, and where you think you should have to focus them). Those are problems with all 3D display tech, not unique to polarised light.

 

Sucks that it has to be interlaced though, at least for now. (Big-budget projection systems, as in cinemas, excepted.)

[stumpy]

we did something like this when I was a college in the 1980's, it is possible to have two images on a screen, and if you sit a specific distance from the screen the two images merge into one 3d image, without the use of special glasses. I had a 3d coke can morphing into a 3d kitkat bar.

Although this was all done by doing it in lines and points as polygon meshes didn't exist at this time.

[STiFU]

Yeah, there are quite a few glass-free 3d display techniques by now and some of them don't even require to be configured on a certain viewing distance, but they are really expensive, so it's useless again for a "mainstream" 3d package. But still very interesting...

 

But I generally prefer polarized vs shutter-glasses too. It is indeed a little kinder to the eyes and you don't have to puke during a camera pan, because of totally blurred contours...