Interview with Vadim Asadov, CTO of iZ3D LLC

[Neil]

Excited for what iZ3D 1.10 and 2.00 drivers have in store? Share your thoughts!

Regards,
Neil

[CarlKenner]

It's the eMagin Z800 that requires page flipping, not the Vuzix VR920.

Actually Z800s with the new firmware require page flipping, but Z800s with the normal firmware require "nvidia stereo", which ironically will probably only be available on ATI.

I think the HeadPlay HMD might also require page flipping.

And any older stereoscopic HMDs tend to require "nvidia stereo", although we don't hear much about them these days.

And of course shutter glasses often require page flipping, although they may work in other modes.

[CarlKenner]

(I am guessing what Buddha is talking about, but I'm not sure.)

The idea of subpixel rendering is to triple the resolution by acknowledging that different coloured subpixels are not all in the same location, but are actually a row of 3 seperate pixels. Windows already supports it for fonts (although it doesn't work when I rotate the screen in control panel), but I have never seen anyone implement it in Direct3D.

So instead of 1680 x 1050, your monitor would have a resolution of 5040 x 1050. Maybe iZ3D doesn't need the extra resolution. But the VR920 for example would have a resolution of 1920 x 480.

How would it improve 3D?, you ask. Well the horizontal resolution doesn't just determine the X resolution, it also determines the Z resolution. People can see the difference between a single pixel of separation. The Z resolution might only be a hundred pixels sometimes. Although I think the idea was mostly to improve the graphics as a whole, rather than just the 3D.

You could try rendering to a texture 3 times the width of the screen, and then using a pixel shader to colour the subpixel based on the colour of the "pixel" in the texture that corresponds to that subpixel's location. You might need some form of compensation for the colouring of the edges or fine lines that would result.

Alternatively, you could render geometry at the pixel level, but change all the pixel shaders to work at a subpixel level (so textures would have increased resolution). That would add very little processing cost, although it would only provide half the benefit.

I was hoping to try it on the VR920 to get better than the 640x480 it is limited to. Unfortunately I ran into a few problems... I have no way of knowing the subpixel layout on the VR920, and the VR920 has optics that bend the red, green and blue by different amounts, and strangely some of the red light seems to go straight through while other red light is ghosted lots.

Please read http://www.grc.com/ctwhat.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; to see what we mean by subpixel rendering. It explains it much better than I could.

EDIT: I just realised, the convergence for anaglyph mode is wrong by half a pixel for LCD monitors. Things rendered at "screen depth" where there is "no separation" actually have a 0.5 pixel separation. A totally useless observation, but I found it interesting. Maybe that's just me though.

[BlackQ]

Hi, Carl!

I understand sub-pixel render point. But in terms of 3D quality it will not help. Common rendering can do similar thing and doing back and front images we use common rendering mechanism - if user have highest setting pixels will be smooth in both 2D and 3D

Regarding separation / convergence control we can do changes lower than 1 pixel - like .01 pixel put button click, but as we found such small change (lower than pixel) is not visible in term of 3D management.

[rocksparow]

People can see the difference between a single pixel of separation. The Z resolution might only be a hundred pixels sometimes there will be an idea to improve the graphics.