Make your 3D games work with 3D glasses!

[SomePerson]

Ever wanted to do THIS?



...No?... Well it probably never even crossed your mind, but you can. iZ3D has a really nifty program that does just that. They make stereo drivers that allow you to view games in 3D.

The free version only supports DirectX which means that your games that use OpenGL will NOT work. If you want OpenGL support that'll cost you $100 which is a lot more than I'm willing to pay at the moment. So Worms3D will not work, sadly. Unreal Tournament works great though.

They also sell monitors that work with polarized 3D glasses that don't change the colors at all, but those are pricey. Anaglyph mode, which uses red/cyan glasses, will work on any monitor.

Oh, and you may have to lower the graphics settings. Stereo graphics means your video card has to render everything twice, cutting your frame rate in half. Hence the ut2004 screen shot being 640*480.


Just thought I'd share. It really DOES make everything that much better.

[*Splinter*]

How much did you pay for that?

[franpa]

if you read, you would know.

[franpa]

The drivers a trial. (time limited)

[*Splinter*]

Oh ok thanks

Why was my post deleted?

[thomasp]

Originally Posted by *Splinter*

Oh ok thanks

Why was my post deleted?

Nobody, it would seem. Perhaps it didn't get posted or there was a glitch in the database. Nothing shows up in the modlog.


Anyway, as that software only supports DirectX, I doubt it's Mac-compatible

[quakerworm]

meh. anaglyphs aren't that great. you lose all the color.

they have been making the shutter glasses systems for years now. they are pretty cheap. why not invest into one of these? you can get the same effect, but without losing the color.

there is one downside, however, which is probably the main reason that shutter glasses aren't as popular as they should be. they don't work with lcd because lcd screen has very slow response times. i'm not sure about plasma, either. but if you are one of the people still using a crt, or if you have an old one collecting dust in your basement, it is a great thing to try.

[SomePerson]

Originally Posted by franpa

The drivers a trial. (time limited)

That's actually a point I'm a tad confused on. It says in the list of updates that it added the "days left" count to the OSD, but I've been looking in all the menus and in the OSD that appears when you change divergence and all the other stuff you can tweak, and I've yet to find any kind of mention of days left.

And then if you look at the page where they sell the licenses you'll see they charge $49.99 for the "dual output drivers" that run their crazy polarized monitors they sell which require two plugs on the video card, and then $99.99 for the OpenGL license. I don't feel like either of those licenses really applies to anaglyph on a standard screen like I'm doing, and coupled with my inability to find any mention of time left leads me to be confused.

I've had it for 20 days now so the only thing to do is just wait and see if it keeps working.

Originally Posted by quakerworm

meh. anaglyphs aren't that great. you lose all the color.

they have been making the shutter glasses systems for years now. they are pretty cheap. why not invest into one of these? you can get the same effect, but without losing the color.

there is one downside, however, which is probably the main reason that shutter glasses aren't as popular as they should be. they don't work with lcd because lcd screen has very slow response times. i'm not sure about plasma, either. but if you are one of the people still using a crt, or if you have an old one collecting dust in your basement, it is a great thing to try.

I did look into that one too, but I'm on a laptop. And I'm going back to uni pretty soon so I won't have much space for a crt so for now I'm stuck with anaglyph.


Oh, and for those of you with nVidia cards, nVidia has their own set of stereo drivers. Sadly I'm stuck with Intel integrated, but if you have an nVidia you should check that out.

[quakerworm]

i wrote some quad-buffered stereo software to run under opengl via nvidia hardware. it is a breeze. all you add is a few lines of code to switch between back-left and back-right buffer, then you do buffer swap at the end of cycle as normal. the only part that slowed me down was doing my own transforms for stereo, but that was only necessary because i was doing volume rendering and needed to recompute the billboards and 3d texture coordinates for that.

that said, i don't see why game devs don't do their own 3d support. as stated above, it is really easy to do, and it doesn't alter your rendering code, so possibility to introduce new bugs is virtually nill. at the same time, it would allow the gamers to bypass iffy 3rd party drivers, and run the game in stereo natively.

[franpa]

I believe the problem with shutter glasses is it halves your framerate.

[Xinos]

Yes and your screens refreshrate, which is why they only work on crt moniters. lcd's arn't quick enough.

[quakerworm]

Originally Posted by franpa

I believe the problem with shutter glasses is it halves your framerate.

most apps can run at double frame rate quite easily. just get a slightly more powerful machine. alternatively, run two cards in sli. it doesn't quite bring it back up to normal, but the drop will be a lot less than 2x.

refresh rate is a bigger problem. the crt projector that was used in a project i was working on was capable of 90hz. that means you get steady 45fps out of it with stereo. for the most part, you cannot see any flicker past 30fps, so with a good crt, you're set.

[bonz]

Originally Posted by quakerworm

for the most part, you cannot see any flicker past 30fps, so with a good crt, you're set.

I can recognize the flickering with anything lower than 60Hz when looking straight onto a CRT screen. And I still recognize it in the periphery (looking past the monitor) up to 75Hz.

For years I had to cope with a badly distorted image that I got with 85Hz on higher resolutions with my CRT monitor back in 1997.

I guess shutter glasses would give me serious headaches.

I think I have to search for some good red/cyan anaglyph glasses made with a proper plastic frame, not those flimsy cardboard ones.

[shadowman]

This seems bad for the eyes.

[robowurmz]

Originally Posted by shadowman

This seems bad for the eyes.

It's merely an anaglyph: you know, the red/blue glasses.

[SomePerson]

Originally Posted by bonz

I can recognize the flickering with anything lower than 60Hz when looking straight onto a CRT screen. And I still recognize it in the periphery (looking past the monitor) up to 75Hz.

For years I had to cope with a badly distorted image that I got with 85Hz on higher resolutions with my CRT monitor back in 1997.

I guess shutter glasses would give me serious headaches.

I think I have to search for some good red/cyan anaglyph glasses made with a proper plastic frame, not those flimsy cardboard ones.

I was fine looking at 60Hz when that was my primary monitor, but then once I got 85Hz there was no going back - 60Hz looks like a strobe light now. Then I got a nice monitor that got 120Hz, and now 85Hz bothers me although I can't see any strobing. Sadly that monitor broke so I can't use it for the semi-tolerable shutter glasses speeds.

And they do make decent platic anaglyph glasses but I opted to buy a pack of 20 cardboard ones for dirt cheap on ebay, in part because I wasn't sure how well plastic ones would fit over my existing glasses (they're reading glasses, so contact lenses are not an option) and just because it's nice to have 19 spares for whatever purpose. And the cardboard, in addition to fitting nicely over glasses, also hides the glasses so I don't look quite so silly wearing two pairs of glasses at once. At some point I might make some kind of attachment to go over my glasses, but for now the cardboard ones works well enough

@shadowman:
I'll be the first to admit that it does feel kind of awkward until you get used to it, but then you get used to it. It's less severe than when I had to start wearing glasses. And now my brain has started fixing the colors and I hardly can tell it's an anaglyph except that it makes the game more awesome.

[WormGod]

They already have this built-in with Trackmania Nations Forever, and thus Trackmania United Forever, I presume.

I have yet to find my pair of 3-D glasses. Anyone tried this with theirs?

[bonz]

Originally Posted by WormGod

They already have this built-in with Trackmania Nations Forever, and thus Trackmania United Forever, I presume.

I have yet to find my pair of 3-D glasses. Anyone tried this with theirs?

The boxed copy of Trackmania United Forever contains a pair of red/blue 3D glasses, so red/cyan ones won't work.