GeForce 3D Vision: Stereoscopic 3D From NVIDIA
by Derek Wilson on January 8, 2009 2:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
All in all, this is like a very polished version of what we've had since the turn of the century. No flicker, less headaches (though there may still be some issue with people who have motion sickness -- I just don't have a large enough sample size to say definitively), and broad game support with less of a performance hit than other solutions. NVIDIA has a very good active shutter stereoscopic solution with GeForce 3D Vision. But the problem is that its value is still very dependent on the application(s) the end user wants it for. It works absolutely perfectly for viewing stereo images and 3D movies (which might be more of a factor when those start coming to bluray) and applications built with stereo support. But for games, though it works with 350 titles, it's just a little hit or miss.
We really hate to say that because we love seeing anyone push through the chicken and egg problem. NVIDIA getting this technology out there and getting developers excited about it and publishers excited about a new market will ultimately really make this a reality. But until most devs program in ways that are friendly to NVIDIA's version of stereo rendering, the gaming experience will be either good or not so good and there's just no way of knowing how much each individual title's problems will bother you until you try it. And at $200 that's a bit of a plunge for the risk. Especially if you don't have a 120Hz display device (which will cost several hundred more).
If you absolutely love a few of the games that works great with it, then it will be worth it. The problem is that NVIDIA's rating make is so that you can't rely on "excellent" as being excellent. Most of the people who played with Left 4 Dead loved it, but one person was really bothered by the floating names being 2D sprites at screen depth. Which is annoying, but the rest of it looked good enough for me not to care (and I'm pretty picky). If NVIDIA wants to play fast and loose with it's ratings, thats fine, but we don't have time to tests all their games and confirm their rating or come up with our own. They really should at least have another class of rating called "perfect" where there are absolutely no issues and all settings work great and we get exactly what we expect.
Shutter glasses have been around for a long time. Perhaps now the time is right for them to start pushing into the mainstream. But NVIDIA isn't doing the technology any favors if they put something out there and let it fail. This technology needs to be developed and needs to be pervasive because it is just that cool. But until it works perfectly in a multitude of games or until 3D movies start hitting PCs near you, we have the potential for a set back. If GeForce 3D Vision is successful, however, that will open the door for us to really move forward with stereoscopic effects.
What we really need, rather than a proprietary solution, is something like stereoscopic support built in to DirectX and OpenGL that developers can tap into very easily. Relying on NVIDIA to discern the proper information and then handle rendering images for both eyes off of one scene is great as a stop gap, just like CUDA was a good interim solution before we had OpenCL. We need the API to be able to handle knowing if there is stereo hardware present and making it easy to generate images for both eyes while duplicating as little work as possible. Giving developers simple tools to make stereo effects cooler and more real or to embed hits about convergence and separation would be great as well.
And hopefully GeForce 3D Vision is a real step toward that future that can become viable right now. I could see some World of Warcraft devotees being really excited about it. Those out there like me who love 3D technology in every form will be excited by it. People who want to create there own stereo images or videos (there are lenses available for this and techniques you can improvise to make it work) will like it, but people waiting for 3D movies will need some content available at home first. But the guys who we would love to see drive the adoption of the technology might not be as into it. The hardcore gamers out there looking to upgrade will probably be better served at this point by going with a high end graphics card and a 30" display rather than a 120Hz monitor and shutter glasses.
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roop452 - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - link
Ashu Rege is coming this February to India's first and independent annual summit for the game development ecosystem - India Game Developer Summit (http://www.gamedevelopersummit.com/)">http://www.gamedevelopersummit.com/) to talk about the novel uses of GPU computing for solving a variety of problems in game computing including game physics, artificial intelligence, animation, post-processing effects and others.Webster4 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
SonicIce has left links that, according to WOT Firefox extension, redirect you to a malware website called jord.nm.ru. I wouldn't go there, especially if you're using IE. Just thought I'd warn you. There's nothing of interest in his links anyway in my opinion.has407 - Sunday, January 11, 2009 - link
If this is the chicken needed to to get us the eggs we need and increases stereo/3D adoption and support to critical mass, wonderful. However, a truly immersive experience--something that puts it beyond a novelty--is going to require much more, such as HMD's with decent resolutions, FOV, binocular overlap, etc. The price/performance/quality of those has improved significantly as OLED and related microdisplay technology advances, so we may be close... *IF* the game/app support is there. Unfortunately, I don't see much compelling about NVIDIA's offering, but if nothing else, they deserve an E for effort. IMHO I expect this will be at best a waypoint; in a couple years we'll have truly immersive HMD/VR systems that are affordable and will provide a compelling improvement in experience (again, IF the game/app support is there).quanta - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
As I recalled, NVIDIA has made a lot of reference cards with stereoscopic outputs since the earlist Quadro. And who can forget all those ASUS TNT(2) cards that came with stereo glasses options? Considering that virtually ZERO game developers even care about making games using 3D glasses since the day of Descent, I fail to see how will NVIDIA suddenly able to convince game developers to make games that require people to by a $200 accessory on top of $400 video card for optimal experience. That kind of market is too small to be viable for any commercial game developers.Beoir - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
I can understand NVIDIA wanting to branch out to the gamer in 3D rendering, but what I don't understand is why they don't leverage off of their strengths and do a Joint venture. What I'm getting at is this:1) NVIDIA is exceptional in creating Graphics rendering processing. Nvidia is not so good at developing physical Optical systems and understanding the Human Eye.
2)Vuzix is an expert in HUDs, and also has a viable (competitive) commercial HUD for watching movies. I speaking with a rep last year they were also interested in stereoscopic displays but could not pursue it since there was not a lot of market support or venture capital
These two guys sound like a great match to me. Toss in the fact that Vuzix is Rochester, NY where they have the University of Rochester institute of optics, and RIT's imagaing science center.
Have I painted a decent enough picture yet Nvidia? I can flowchart it out for the corporate suits if you like.
nubie - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
This is what nVidia used to support:http://picasaweb.google.com/nubie07/3DMonitor#5057...">http://picasaweb.google.com/nubie07/3DMonitor#5057...
That is a picture of the driver panel from my nVidia drivers before they dropped support for real 3D.
I would love to spend $1000 on these glasses, and a new system, Vista, new video cards, and of course a new monitor to use them on.
I find this stupid because the quickest way to get this product a success is to appeal to people who have been vocal about their previous good 3D support, not pull the rug out from under these people with no warning, no comment, and no incentive.
quanta - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
I believe you can still use it on Quadro (which NVIDIA still design video cards with stereo connectors). Just use the softquadro feature in RivaTuner to turn it on.nubie - Saturday, January 10, 2009 - link
I wish, and I don't need any stereo connectors for my dual polarized LCD display. Just dual outputs (vga or dvi, or one of each).I haven't been able to successfully soft-quadro my g92 or g80 card, and I don't think the drivers are for DirectX games anyway.
strikeback03 - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
Actually, one of my friends does have to take dramamine before playing FPS games. And this is just with a PS3 and an LCD TV, no stereo anything.DerekWilson - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
I believe Gary turned us all on to ginger root -- taking a good bit of it before playing Left 4 Dead with it's disorienting source engine FOV is the only way I can survive normally ... actually, you know what? I was able to play the game without taking anything with the glasses and I didn't even think of that til now. It seems the 3D Vision may have actually fixed my nausea with tight fov games ... I'll have to do some more testing to see if this pans out ...