To the contrary, I think we do, and this is a massive issue. You may think its easy to do this but speaking to Vadim what he is saying makes sense. iz3D simply do not have the same access to the same low level routines to interrupt the rendering process that nVidia do, and I assume they keep this close to their chest for business reasons. The bottom line is though in my opinion it was _completely_ pointless releasing a 'simple shutter output' that can not at least guarantee every second frame is for an alternate eye (so you can sync on the v-sync, just flip a switch to correct l/r eye and it will stay in sync after that until gameplay stops). I am very concerned and disappointed that even this requirement is not met but hopefully this can be fixed next week by using some sort of hardware pageflipping?

I for one will be devastated (and frustrated at having just spent a fortune on a decent card and set of CrystalEyes for my projector rig) if the simple shutter mode falls flat on its arse. I wanted to have a look at the possibility of a hardware dongle for the marked shutter output but we've been told very little here - what is the meaning of the XML file? It this the pixel values of the top or bottom rows? How is this file to be interpretted? Is this information on every single frame? (as it would need to be to guarantee the L and R frames never swap over if hardware page flipping is not being used).

I really hope we can all find a solution that works and pronto, many of us have waited months for the release of this functionality and it appears first hand to be completely useless

Not meaning to be ranty, I'm just very disappointed... iz3d made quite a big thing about the shutter support saying they couldnt support it because of 'sync issues'. Then they state they have a simple shutter output, and after the long wait you'd expect to have seen something other than just sending alternating L/R images to the frame buffer with no guaranteed ordering - As my understanding goes, thats nothing really that they didnt have already all along. So, it does beg the question what is it iz3d have actually done? I ws concerned to hear they hadnt even tested this functionality in their labs other than 'checking on a monitor that a page-flipped image was being displayed'; obviously that is going to tell you nothing!

Really we need to get the info on how the nVidia s3d driver is managing to send out the ddc signal and have iz3d do the same. If iz3d claim to not have 'access to those APIs' there should be some way to work around it - even tracing the execution flow of the nVidia driver to see what low-level API calls it is making and replicate them - iz3D have a lab full of developers so surely someone there has the technical nouce to do this?

Dont waste your time, it wont work!

For shutters:
It is so big problem incorporate in the frame one block of pixels for activation of ED glasses? (as ED activator , only for new cards and VISTA)?

It is possibility of use sync pulses synchronisation created syntetic DDC signal for glases? (on VGA this is no problem), than the only necesarry next thing is rendering L and R frames (and this is no problem for drivers).
The synchronisation of glasses is depending only from sync.of frames.

It is possible only rendering with driver, and controling of glasses totally driver independent. Hope this is a way.

Hello! It waited for with great anxiety drivers for shutter´s of IZ3D! 1 But that deception! Years hoping to improve fps….I have one 7900 GS, and my stereo works well but I need some pictures per second and, CALL OF DUTY, GRID, DIRT, ETC CANNOT SUPPORT THEM IN 1280 Xs 1024 Lamentably drivers works really badly! For example. it does not allow nor that executes rFactor, and some the more! In addition I have one 9600 gt and so it hoped to be able to play the modern games with acceptable fps, nothing! they want to eliminate shutter´s by economic convenience? nVidia is not going to remove drivers stereo for the 9600 gt? very I am really disappointed, and by all means these drivers… of iz3d would buy them never!

Two words for you: "Beta Drivers".

Regards,
Neil

You're not the only one! Hopefully iz3d will have this fixed very soon!

Oh, and I've already tried this driver (in anaglyph) with dirt and GrID, it just flat-out crashes both of them under both XP and Vista.

More like alpha, as beta = feature complete, but not fully tested in the public domain. This is a complete lack of function we are talking about here

We had nothing. Was that any better?

Use interlaced for now, we didn't even have that before.

Think thats missing the point slightly as tbh we have nothing now either, despite shutters being bigged up the last few months. I havent got the interlacing working either, personally, and I know a few others have had problems with this.

I know there are a lot of new features here but shutters is the one most were waiting for with baited breath.

Another problem for me personally is the first couple of times I loaded these drivers they worked in anaglyph, now when I try and lauch them all I get is a message 'no such output' and they dont work. This surprises me as it is the first thing you see, and these drivers were delayed for a week to undergo extensive testing and bugfixing. Is anyone else seeing this?

Yes, Vadim wrote that it's a known bug, reinstall will fix it.

I understand you are frustrated, but I'm sure they can work on all the problems we find and come up with something (together with all the people here).

Interlaced works for me, it looks very good at high resolutions, I did have some problems with rfactor not starting up. All these things need work, it has to start somewhere.

Already tried that - doesnt. (rather, it does, but it'll only happen again).

Thanks sortted will now do some testing

Yes, if you close it it will happen again. Don't close the control center thing. There's also some problems with key bindings, however these are all minor things, fixing interface stuff will not be hard compared to driver fixes.

I have no problems with rFactor in anaglyph mode. Interlacing isnt really an option for me anyway as I use a projector setup and am restricted to XGA as it is.
I know a solution will be found, its just surprising the functionality is pretty much non-existant at first release - especially the fact the LRLR sequence can become misordered. Anyway, lets see...

Hi chrisjarram,

I understand your disappointment but please do not fret - there are many solutions so this problem.

One of the great things about our community is that it attracts all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds, and they are damn smart. Someone is always there to make ends meet as long as we have a solid base to work from. This driver hopefully will be that solid base.

There was one gentleman a few years back who generated a DDC signal on a serial port pin by some simple programming.

There are many ways to deal with this issue and many people here can make it happen in many different ways.

On my side, I too have an XGA projector setup that i use primarily with shutter glasses.
All we need is to generate a square wave which syncs to the refresh rate. This is easily done using 555 timer chip. We set it to oscillate at 50% duty cycle and then use the reset pin as a synchronizer to the refresh rate from the refresh sync pin. In goes the monitor refresh signal, out comes the synchronised squarewave.

A while back, I made a very simple circuit to delay the square wave.

http://mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=25

Although i didnt post the diagram, on the same stripboard, i made an oscillator too. It worked very well but used the old DDC signal as an input. It was designed as a signal conditioner to remove any artifacts from the DDC signal so there would be no flicker where the glasses lose sync with the screen refresh.

If a software solution can't be found, I'll try to make one to use the vsync pulse. All it requires is one 555 timer, few resistors and a few capacitors. All in all, it will cost a few $ maximum and the components are easily available from all electronics component type stores. No programming needed, but a little soldering might be required, or you could buy a "breadboard" to just plug the components into.

The good people at iZ3D have done an amazing job with this one. We are very close - I think we just need to be patient for a little longer

-- Shahzad

New Issue:

Is anyone having problem with the activation screen? I am now locked out of all new driver modes. It asks for activation. I try to buy the driver but the page it takes me to only asks for username and password but does not allow me to purchase the driver.

Well, I can't work on anything anymore till I can get access to the driver modes which will hopefully be in the new release.

Is anyone else having problems with activation? Can anyone tell me how I go about getting an activation code?

Thanks

-- Shahzad.

Hi,

I am actually a professional software engineer and my business partner is an electronic engineer with 15 years experience. Simply generating a square wave that synchronizes to the refresh rate will not work, as the LRLRLR sequence is not guaranteed (only if the graphics card can keep up), so the problem is more serious than this.

There is a marked frame version which a dongle could be developed for, but again this is extra hardware and more than the primitive timer chip solution you suggest. I've already requested Vadim look into supporting the Stereographics WLC markers to give a possible solution.

Ideally, we need iz3d to be able to output exactly what the nvidia driver does - this includes a guaranteed LRLRLR sequence for each eye (without the chance of this becoming misordered) as well as the sync signal.

Chris J

Of course, that would be an ideal solution. But, in the short term, the primitive solution would mean that anyone with even 0 electronics experience could build it and there is no need for programming.

When it syncs, there is no reason why it would come out of sync and the eyes should swap. That would be a failure at the hardware level.

Not a professional solution by any means, but the vast majority of us only use it to play computer games after all, and it might be a good temp solution to tide us over till something better inevitably comes along


Peace, my friend. We are finally getting there

-- Shahzad.

HI RAGEDemon,

Have you read the other reads re: the rendering queue ordering and the sync issue? It is not hardware, it is a software problem.

Chris J

Software problems indeed, due to glitches in the driver. There is no reason why they can't be easily fixed. Many drivers in the past have done exactly that.

I believe we are talking about the hardware side - getting glasses to flicker in sync to what will be a proper page flipped display regardless of the performance of the card or the FPS.

This is a Beta driver my friend. Think of it as a "proof of concept". Perhaps not useful, but it shows great promise. In the final releases after the bugs are fixed, it will be what we are looking for.

Currently it's a free trial Beta. No need to get upset about it

RAGEDemon, the LRLR sequence does not switch as fast as the refresh rate if the card can't keep up. A basic circuit to make a square wave from VSYNC like you said would not help. My Another Eye 2000 glasses only use VSYNC so such a circuit is unnecessary. The eyes swap in demanding scenes in games.

It's difficult to get right because of the way DirectX works. DirectX sends commands to the video card and the commands are put in a queue. If fps is slow, it takes time to get to the command that tells to swap the frame to the front buffer to show it on screen. There are probably/maybe/doubtfully some workarounds to get the intended result even if the rendering is a bit too slow.

I'm not sure but maybe it was easier to do in the DirectX 7 or 8 time because of the different architecture of DirectX (I really don't know, it's just an idea). That would explain why some old drivers (not the NVIDIA one) like the Wicked3D worked.

Thanks for the explanation.

In that case, I guess that would have always been an issue with the technology your glasses use, regardless of the driver.

I only have the Revelators and ED glasses which work with "simple shutter" and square wave DDC, which most of us use. To my knowledge, I have never had issues with the LRLR sequence on the display not being able to keep up with the refresh rate, no matter how bad the performance got.

The nVidia drivers and the old Elsa drivers never had issues so there has to be away around it... did they not use command queuing?

I don't quite understand what is so fundamentally different that this driver cannot be made to work the same way. I was under the impression that the only thing different was that iZ3D couldn't get access to the low level DDC output.

Do you think you could explain to me in a little bit more detail? I would really appreciate it.

Regarding the issue you have... I remember in one of the old technologies, a long bar at the top would be used to indicate what frame was being displayed. Hardware would detect this and sync to it. Is this what you are trying to achieve?

-- Shahzad.

It is interesting new driver with new cards had problem with synchronous 3d rendering?

I use ED activator and old NV drivers and L/R orientation is for hours stabile. Is the ED activator not working with Vista?

The ED activator works in Vista. The problem is not that the glasses don't flicker at the correct rate, it's that the driver is not able to swap the left/right frames always perfectly at the right rate.

So it seems to be a driver issue. If nVidia and even old Elsa could do it fine, then i don't think the smart people at iZ3D will have any problems doing it.

From what I gather, they haven't tested with actual shutter glasses yet. They have only briefly tested the output.

Hopefully, this will be a non-issue now that it has been reported and they are aware of it

I think someone needs to send BlackQ a pair of shutter glasses for his birthday present

From my sight then this piece of software is not 3D driver

For ME the E-D in vista makes alot of games crash.

There's a setting that can be changed in Vista that may help (but it's not enough for me). In Vista, every window content is kept in memory and they are drawn on the desktop from this memory. This may be detrimental to shutter glasses mode. It can be deactivated. Here's how to disable it :

Press Windows key+Pause key. Press Advanced system settings. Press Settings under Performance. Uncheck "Enable desktop composition".

Nor is there any need to patronise I am not 'getting upset about it'.. it is a beta, not an alpha (i.e. should be 'feature complete', but not debugged thouroughly - there is a difference), and these things should have been previously considered before release, thats all. I speak for a lot of people and this is needed in order to get things moving - We are all here to try and fix this, and I was trying to explain to you there are issues you have overlooked, simple as

This is exactly the point RAGEdemon, they have been aware of this for the last couple of months at least - it has not only just been reported. It would seem little has been done to address the problem however- perhaps because it is more than just a 'non-issue'... BlackQ how about clearing this up?



TBH I think we'd all be mortified in the CTO of a 3d-driver company didn't already own some!

Apologies if I sounded patronizing. It was not my intention.

We are all here as friends

My point is, and please don't take this the wrong way - there is every chance that the driver issue can be fixed since older drivers have never had problems with that aspect.

On the other hand, there is little chance that the DDC issue can be fixed in software from what I have heard. Keeping that in mind, I am mostly concerned about the signal generation and how to fix this side of things

-- Shahzad.

No worries.

The older drivers, from what I understand, have been developed either in collaboration with nVidia or by nVidia themselves,which is the problem here - iz3D state they simply do not have the low level access to be able to do this. The thing is, they have been saying this for months so what is needed to be able to push this forward? Its all sounding a little tired now - The hardware is indeed practically a non-issue as you can switch on vertical sync anyway, but without the software fix nothing is likely to work.

As I say, at least iz3D have been willing to try and introduce frame markers to resolve this issue, so I give them credit for that - but I'm just surprised the actual (more obvious) solution of getting an existing nVidia 7 series card (running nVidia drivers), comparing the outputs in page-flipped mode and seeking to replicate that by whatever means possible don't seem to have been addressed.

Absolute best case scenario afa I'm concerned - have iz3d sit down with a set of eDimensionals (perhaps the most common shutter glasses out there at this time) and get the bloody thing working

I was not aware that this thing had been dragging on for a while.

I remember a company called DDD (I forget what the letters stand for) was selling using a "driver per game" model. Even their driver didn't have the issue and I don't think they worked closely with nVidia.

Perhaps, all that is needed is a kind email to nVidia driver dev team to ask them how to do it... might not yield a result however, seeing that nVidia's driver is being poised to compete directly with iZ3D.

But then, iZ3D driver works on ATi cards too, doesn't it? Maybe a nice email to AMD might be an idea. I'm sure they will be only too glad to help nVidia's competition, especially in a field where they don't have a product

wow, you guys know your $hit.
But Im having tryin to understand all the DDC, block waves, etc etc

could you plz explain it in Laymen terms....
I'm genuinely interested in whats happening in theory with shutters behind the scenes
but havin trouble picturing it in my head

cheers well knowledgeable peoples

It is quite simple, friend.

To synchronize the shutters to the display, the videocard outputs a square signal on pin 12 of the VGA output or pin 7 of the DVI output. This pin is usually used to communicate DDC data between the display device and the video card but it is "hijacked" by Stereo3D drivers.

When the frame for one eye is being drawn, the card outputs a high (+5v), and when the frame for the other eye is being drawn, it outputs a low (0v) something like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/e ... _T.svg.png

A small microcontroller in either the shutter glasses emitter or dongle detects this signal and uses it to "drive" the shutters. It shuts one shutter when it gets a high signal while opening the other, and then vise versa when the low signal is received.

This means that the glasses are always in sync with the display. But if there is no signal, then shutter glasses don't work, as is currently the case with the beta iZ3D driver, so we are trying to make our own, as well as fixing some synchronization glitches on the actual display


-- Shahzad.

ok gottcha now, cheers.
in mean time like others I will just use Interlaced option,
but a few games dont load up though (BF2)
and i still got old NV stereo for backup

Got to ask. Sorry not an electronics type here, but always willing to learn.What does DCC stand for?

Also I have to say that this is a free trial BETA. Give iZ3D a break. Who here could do better? Did you pay them money? I paid nVidia and they dumped me like a cheap one night stand (usually that doesn’t bother me, but this time it did). And it was even worst (proper folk don’t use the kind of language needed here with their outdoor voice) when it comes to E-D. I've been 3Ding for about seven years and believe it or not it's getting easier and better. Although more expensive.

DDC = Display Data Channel
DCC = Direct Client to Client connection

I get both terms mixed up more often than not too as I use DCC on mIRC quite a bit at work

Well, seeing as Nvidia actually went the extra mile to lock out our preexisting support in their drivers, how on earth can anyone be angry at IZ3D for their effort?

Ahem, thank you IZ3D for your hard work. We know you didn’t have to do this and we are glad that you did.

Well, maybe it is easier for me to take because as a Z800 user, I was more or less expecting to be out of luck with the new drivers anyway.

On that note,

RAGEdemon, if you still have your Z800 on hand can you give it a test run for me? Also on that, do I need to uninstall my Nvidia stereo drivers first? That would be unfortunate given the circumstances.

Problem is not with Hi/low level signal for Odd/even frames. Simple solution is put counter (79HCT93) on vertical synchronization pin. Problem is with real R/L sequence what iZ3D driver produce. It may be L-R-L-R-R-L-R-L-L-R-L-R-L-L-R-L-R etc. Without direct L/R signal from driver to glasses this doesn't work. nVidia produce strictly L-R-L-R-L-R sequence and this may be problem. What if DDC signal is HW controled with actual L/R buffer sending to RAMDAC information?