You're right. I did not pay attention and made a stupid calculation error. 43.9 is in Mb. It gives about 5.5 MB. I was not sure how to do the conversion and used this webpage but read the wrong line. It's still too much to use the onboard memory of a microcontroller or FPGA.

This is precisely why provision is made in most compilers for assembly code injection, so you can work with both. No-one would work in strictly one or the other in a scenario such as this, that would be extremely restrictive. It is this that iz3d will need to do to achieve this somewhat trivial task following an investigation into the code execution of existing nvidia drivers.

For me it seems, that it´s just a problem of a missing officially
global API. I´m sure that iz3d could do the job, but they have to implement
it for different producers and perhaps for different chips as well. This
might be too expensive.

By the way, within some high level languages, you´re able to use
assembler (c++ -> asm{...})

So the "Game draw to left and right view surfaces" is slower (e.g. managing only 30 fps) than the CRT monitor refresh rate (e.g. 85Hz). I think you need to make this into 2 execution threads:

the main "game draw" thread continues to do the "Game draw to left and right view surfaces", but keep 2 buffers for left view and 2 buffer for right view, so we always have a stable copy of each view

the "display thread" does something like this:
1. wake up at regular interval according to monitor refresh rate (e.g. every 10 ms if 100Hz)
2. copy from (stable version of) left view surface to backbuffer
3. Call D3D9 method Present()
4. sleep till next wake-up time
5. copy from (stable version of) right view surface to backbuffer
6. Call D3D9 method Present()
Repeat

Disclaimer: I know nothing about D3D programming; just throwing out ideas ...

Unfortunately, that solution does not quite work as far as I know. I think the problem if you try to do it that way is that the two threads still have to share the same GPU (they can't execute at the same time) and even if you set different priorities, the "game draw thread" often ends up taking too much time so the "display thread" misses the flip at the current VSYNC and you get eyes that reverse.

Okay so it's not like multi-threaded CPU programming, that's too bad ...

Yes and no. I mean that it's like a CPU with one core. If you execute two tasks at the same time, you are actually separating the time in time slices and giving each task some time slices and you can give more time slices to the task with higher priority. That feature to give more priority to some tasks is only available in Vista in an upgraded version of DirectX 9 and in DirectX 10 and it has its limitations.

But every modern GPU has multiple (unified) shaders. Why not take some from them and leave them idle when they wait and do the flipping? It wouldn't need that much power - if it worked. But is it even possible to program single shader units

Didnt you read this thread? This was already covered here several days ago. TBH thats not a D3D programming issue, its more fundamental programming. You cannot possibly guarantee you'd have enough thread priority for one to sit there doing the page flipping without losing sync.

Isn't that what I said in the post above?

I have to say some of the ideas being thrown around here do seem to be getting increasingly optimistic and confusing the issue somewhat - there is provision in the HW to do this already, and afaik the absolute only solution (without a dedicated buffering contoller which would require input decoding, frame buffers and output signal generation as described above) is to use this HW provision. If there was any 'trick' to work around this it is unlikely nvidia would have bothered providing this functionality in HW in the first place.

No matter how good a workaround anyone thinks they have, the implementation is so realtime-critical (i.e. drop one sync and you're screwed) that the only way to do this (without said hardware dongle) is the proper way, otherwise it is likely the knowledgable bods (and not people who 'dont know anything about d3d programming') would have already experiemented with this. As with anyone else however, I do think its great the time and effort people are putting in here to try and find a solution to this problem, and (at the risk of being told you need to 'explore these possibilities before you can eliminate them') I honestly think, in my professional experience, this time and effort would be much better spent helping iz3d look to find the specifics of the actual low-level API calls they need to implement. However, I'd have thought they have the in-house experience to do these invesigations themselves being graphics driver experts, and perhaps now its likely they will dedicate some more resources to doing this (after seeing the _3000_ views this thread has had in as many days! ).

I agree completely. It also seems clear that the BETA was released according to their schedule and was delivered incomplete to meet (or nearly meet) a deadline. Now, given enough time, they will have to deliver the functionality, eventually. The job has been done by others before, so the information exists somewhere in the vast sea of electrons and the rest is just a matter of asking (or hiring) the right people. As BlackQ mentioned on the BETA forum, the Nvidia API doesn't contain relevant info. The visible commitment to getting this done is promising, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a major breakthrough within the week. But I shouldn't pollute your thread with my pointless comments anymore - I'm just excited by the prospect of finally dusting off my shutters.

hi Mercy Yamada,

if you have a minute, can you tell me what you did to get the Z800 working with the IZ3D driver? I am having no luck

I think the iZ3D uses the VSync signal for syncing. I think he will find that when the frame rate drops low, the eyes will swap, much like it does with shutter glasses

Setting the driver out to shutter simple should just "work", in theory.

i am having the same problem now but only for shutter.

I did get it to come back again but reinstalling on a different hard drive and only shutter and OpenGL selected for install. tha worked but only for about 15 minutes and then I was no longer able to use shutter again.

In that 15 minutes, I was still unable to get my Z800 to work. i terned on Vsink but nothing new happened

What I did is:

1) Go to http://edimensional.com/support_updates.php

and download E-D Activator from there. It's a very small program that when launched, it goes to your system tray.

2) By right-clicking on the system tray, I place a check next to the Page Flip mode rather than Interleaved mode.

3) I launch the game (Portal, for example) and then press Ctrl + F10 to "activate" the shutterglasses so that they start blinking. (Or before launching the game, you could turn on the S3D glasses by checking Stereo-On/Resync in the system tray so that you do not have to press Ctrl + F10 in the game)

4) I press Num* to toggle Stereo3D using IZ3D's drivers. And then increase the separation to like 50%.

It works perfectly fine as long as the frame rate is above the refresh rate. If I fire the gun, the frame rate drops below the refresh, only letting me see S-3D for one eye rather than both eyes. After a few seconds of moving around, it returns to normal S-3D.


Anyways, where do I place the MarkingSpecXml file? Is it supposed to help maintain correct S-3D if the frame rates drop?

oops double post

Hi, guys!

Let me make some summary here:

1. simple shutter output - done as promised - driver generates LRLR signal, but sync is an issue as we expected - if you think this output is senseless we can remove it
2. marked shutter output - we decided to release it also to potential cooperator who can make any device in between of iZ3D driver and shutter glasses
3. only things we can use for better synchronization is VSync and in some cases it works if fps is higher than refresh rate
4. nothing else we can do atm because of:
a. no API (for both nVidia and ATI) to access this level
b. no way to interrupt rendering thread to insert own sync signal

It does not mean we are not going to continue our search - we'lll continue. Good luck to all of us!

Thanks so much for trying to implement support for shutter glasses!!! I was impressed at how it actually worked in Portal as long as the frame rates exceeded the refresh rate (which had to be set at over 100Hz for flicker-free play). It actually worked in Vista x64 edition!

Never mind my question about the XML file.. I figured it out now what the file was for. Oh well..

BlackQ, the mere thought of you 'removing' the shutter output doesnt even bare thinking about!? :s Many people have waited months and months for this functionality since you claimed you would be supporting it, so surely this is an extremely important issue (see how many hits this thread has had!). It is not done as promised as it does not generate an LRLRLR signal, it can sometimes be LRLRLRRRLRLLRR etc.

The marked shutter output is also pretty unusable as this would result in significant glasses flicker.

It is not the sync signal that is the issue, it is access to the page-flipping buffers. Sync can be generated via a simple square wave converted from the V-sync output of any card - there are extrenal modules out there which convert a vertical sync output to the standard 3-pin DDC signal required by a lot of shutter glasses.

You need to access the page-flipping capability of the graphics card to guarantee a LRLRLR output - thats your side of things. This is certainly a bug as it renders the feature useless without it.
Personally I've had an 8800 working on a CRT with 8800 Ultra running PRAY, with no problems whatsoever, so I know for a fact eDimensional have page-flipping working with their own driver. Certaintly if they can do it, iz3d can!

With respect, it would really be very,very bad if iz3d gave up on this - there is definatley a solution out there and you are in a very good position to find it. I know you have said you will carry on looking, I just find it surprising as a 3d driver software house you cannot recruit the expertise to be able to do this.

If you were using Ed driver, you were using interlaced. IZ3D can do that better.
If not, you used the hacked NV drivers wich work for G80 chips sometimes.

@ Topic:
What does Triple buffering do? Can't you heck that, so that it flips first and second buffer efery frame? In the third buffer the new frame for either left or right would be rendered. That method wouldn't need quadbuffered, but that is not the problem right?
I bet you are working on this and a removal for Pageflipping output is only temporally until it works better.

Has anyone with an interlaced 3D dongle tried to run a higher resolution, so that the screen (DLP) interpolates the image and does NOT display the black lines? That would bring 100% sync @ 100% Frequency @ 100% resolution

I'd like to hire expertise (don't propose nVidia pls ), but we did not find yet any - again we preparing LRLR, but GPU is sending them out and we can not interrupt this process - we'll try to search further

Thanks BlackQ. I guess we are all relieved that ya'll are still working on it hard

I do have a question for people using interlacing though.

I recently pulled my ED glasses out of retirement. Even with ED.exe activated, the glasses do not "flicker" at all. there is no signal on the wireless emitter lines. Have also tested the wired version.

Can anyone help? I haven't tried interlaced in years and im very rusty. I think it might be a hardware incompatibility or msaybe the dongle has just decided to die

Guess this should be in the tech support section but even here, I would appreciate any help

-- Shahzad

right this is probably a silly question have you tried right clicking it and selecting "interlaced", and activating them?
Also make sure the screen you want to use for 3d is your primary screen.

other than that no idea.

Hi yuriythebest1,

thanks for the reply mate.

Unfortunately, I've already tried that

Looks more and more like I have a dead dongle

-- Shahzad.

I have a pair of something else (not edim) and they have the same kind of program that you select what type you want to use (interlace/shutters etc). With the nvidia driver and shutter it would just start by itself, no need to even install that small "activator". I can't get them to start at all with the iz3d driver, shutter or interlaced mode even when selecting it in that activator and starting it. The other pair I have have a button on the wire and that switches between the modes (doesn't use software to select the type) and they start fine.

hey RAGE.
I sumtimes have a probs gettin it to actually activate also.

some solutions that can help are...

1). change your current resolution/refresh rate then try activate it again.

2). Fresh restart

thats all i usually do to get it to work

all the best

Thanks shonofear,

I tried it but still doesn't work.

I think this is revenge for not using them for so long

Umm, try Page Flip mode with the E-D.exe? Those are DDC shutterglasses we're talking about, and they use page-flip mode.

Research has now shown me (with a GTX 280 and the latest B2 driver) the Stereographics Stereo Enabler in conunction with BLC (which can be acheived with tweaks to the marker specs) is a viable solution for projectors used with high end cards such as the 200 series. BlackQ is investigating another possible render thread hack apparently, failing that though this may be a good intermediate solution. On a lot of modern games frame rates that never drop below 100fps are easily acheivable (don't even think about citing Crysis, thats obviously an exception to this rule!).

If the other lines of enquiry fall through, I've asked BlackQ for changes to the way the markers are specified instead - I'll then purchase a SG Enabler (which will work with the Edimenstional glasses and other 3 Pin VESA standard solutions) the minute these are published, and post my findings here (along with a mondified XML file to be used with a newer driver release).

Of course, this does restrict use to higher end cards at the moment, but if this is the only way this can be done then what better excuse to upgrade

If anyone has gotten the z800 to work can you please tell me what you did?

I assume they upgraded the firmware. Without the upgraded firmware the Z800 only supports nvidia stereo. With the upgraded firmware the Z800 also supports page-flipping, but there is no way to sync it, you just need a swap-eyes key and to keep the frame-rate high.

The firmware can only be upgraded by physically removing and replacing the chip.

CarlKenner, Thank You for the info.

Would you, by chance, know what version of firmware is compatible with page-flipping?

Thanks in advance,
-- Shahzad.

that would be: v6.38

At $25 plus shipping I was hoping that Mercy Yamada or someone could confirm that it was needed or not.

Here my edimensional wireless glasses are working with ed-activator (interleaved-StereoNormal-LCDMode1). Choosing S3DShutter-Marked in iZ3D driver gives me Stereo3d (loosing half of the resolution) in Tomb Raider Anniversary (I´ve played only one minute). I´m using iz3d driver 1.09b2 and Windows XP.

BlackQ:

If you had complete control of turning on/off the left and right LCD's on shutterglasses would that work?

The reason I am asking is that I built a circuit that allows me to use the computer's RS232 serial port to control the shutterglasses manually in my stereo3d programming experiments:

http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/sega3d.html

Hi, XYandZ!

Let me discuss this with our developers tomorrow (Monday) and I'll return back to you

I guess it could work limited. The problem now is, they don't have fast access to the backbuffers, like NV seems to have it.

However it should be possible to get a refresh rate (the flickering) about as high as your 2D FPS are. So if you have a high end System and play not too recent titles or turn off some specs you should have a good refreshrate with a super high FPS as a 'bonus'.

Example: HL2 engine based games run easyly at (nearly) 120FPS in 2D. Now every second or third frame switches the left and right, so you get an equivalent of 100hz with NV drivers.
It may be lower at complex scenes and higer at simple scenes. But you would get allways a very high Frame rate or heavy flickering.

But since many games need to be very fluent anyway it's still not the worst thing to do.

Oh and for comparison: with NV driver you need still 30+ S-3D FPS = 60+ 2D FPS That means you'd 'only' need about 50-100% more performance than with NV shutters or turn things down.

But maybe my guess is completly wrong

Hello. I don't know alot about 3-D gaming, but I have heard that IZ3D is being made compatible with shutter glasses now. Would it be possible to use IZ3D with the TriDef shutter glasses (made to work with a DLP TV), and would the experience match that of the TriDef glasses with TriDef software?

Thanks.

-Syn

http://mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t ... t=iz3d+dlp

Not sure about using the Tridef shutters but normal shutters appear to work somewhat.

What exactly do you mean by "normal" shutters? Elsa Revelators as mentioned in that link? What brands are "normal" shutters? And are they as good as the TriDef ones? If it works with eDimension glasses I thought it might work with the TriDef ones.

-Syn