Hi all,

I decided to try some old Activators and now I thought I would start a thread about them. Please post any info or comments about Activators here.

Here are the Activators I have and have tested on XP with a 7800GTX card:
(I expect them to work on Vista with newer cards too)

H3D Activator (versions 1.3.0.0 from 1998 and 1.4.0.0 from 1999),
H3D Controller version 1.0.0.0 from 2000
X3D Controller version 2.5.0.0 from 2002
E-D Activator version 2.7.0.0 from 2004 (original filename R3DCTL for Razor3D)

All these activate my glasses using the dongle I tested and so I think they are interchangable but there are some differences. The dongles that should work with these are triangular and have either an "H3D" logo or a "3D World" logo or an "E-Dimensional" logo on it (possibly X3D or maybe Razor3D as well but I haven't seen these). These Activators work by putting some colored lines on the top of the screen and the dongle watches for that and uses it as a signal to trigger the proper 3d mode on/off. It's a hardware function that happens in your dongle but it is triggered by those colored lines. That will generally be interlaced mode (which generates line-blanking inside the dongle) or over/under mode (which generates sync-doubling in the dongle) and page-flippig mode which shutters the glasses on/off. In that mode, it syncs perfectly with refresh rate but not necessarily with frame generation. On to the details...

H3D Activator 1.3 does NOT put an icon in the taskbar tray and has no hotkeys. You use it from it's own control window. It has 4 modes: page-flipping, interleaved, top/bottom, and top/bottom interlaced. That last mode is unusual and I didn't notice any difference from normal top/bottom mode.

H3D Activator 1.4 puts an icon in the taskbar tray and otherwise is the same as 1.3.

H3D Controller 1.0 uses a taskbar icon and has the 3 basic modes: page-flipping, interleaved, and over/under. Only interleaved mode has a stereo reverse option. If you select properties, then you can change a hardware setting between H3D Gamer and H3D Cruiser. This is the only Activator that has a Cruiser opton that I know of. I'm not sure what the difference is but it looks like the Cruiser only has interleaved mode and I can't select the test button to test it. I don't have a cruiser so maybe that's why but I think the cruiser may be tricky to get working. This is the first Activator to have hotkey settings.

X3D Controller 2.5 is like H3D Controller 1.0 but only shows "3D Viewer" under the hardware selection box so there's no Cruiser mode.

E-D Activator (H3D/R3D Controller) version 2.7 is like X3D Controller 2.5 but includes 2 optional LCD modes. These do nothing on my hardware and I think my dongle doesn't have those functions and so does not respond to the LCD mode signals. I think I need a newer dongle to test these LCD modes or else there is no difference on/off. I will update this later. Don't get your hopes up for generic LCD monitor support. They just don't really work right for 3d.

E-D Update installs ED Controller 4.0.0.10: be advised that this is not just an activator but an actual activator/driver combo. I will discuss it elsewhere/elsewhen. If you just want an activator to turn on your glasses, this is not for you. It has only interlaced mode although you can tweak an ini file but that doesn't seem to help any.

I have some wicked3d-eye-scream files but they must be tested on my win98 computer some other day.

Be warned that if you try the top/bottom modes, it doubles your vertical sync so make sure that your monitor can handle both 60 and 120 Hz, then set your display to 60Hz and when you activate over/under-sync-doubling mode, the dongle will generate the 120Hz signal by changing the vertical sync. This is usable on a CRT if it can handle it and might be OK for the iZ3D driver if they change the driver so that you can adjust the vertical alignment of the images. If your monitor goes black due to a too high refresh rate, you may need to mouse-click blindly to hit the deactivate function or else remember the "off" hotkey.

Bottom line, just use E-D Activator if you need to. The only reason to use a different one would be if you have a cruser, then use H3D Controller 1.0.

Bye now.

Hi again,

well I was curious about the LCD modes on the ED-Activator which seemed to do nothing with the dongles I had so I got a new one and this one was straight from E-Dimensional with their logo on it. My other dongles were older and had different logos... H3D and 3D-world (X3D). I figured if the LCD modes do something, they should work with the actual E-Dim dongle and I was right. Somewhere, I read about how to use those LCD modes and so I tried them with the new dongle on my CRT first and got a weird view. The top 3/4 screen was wrong-eyed and only the bottom was correct. I looked at the signals with my oscilloscope and found what was happening. The shutters were being delayed from normal by 3/4 of a screen refresh. That's why there was a transition (eye-view-swapping) 3/4 of the way down the screen. So what must have happened somewhere is that someone thought that a delay like that would help on an LCD display but it didn't on the one I tested with. It just sort of shifted the bad 3d down a bit. It's not even worth describing. Anyway, if you want to try it, do it like this. For Pageflipping mode, start it like normal with the Activator, then once it's on, right click the tray icon again and select "LCD mode 2". Then start some test like iZ3D's shutterglass test or nvidia's floating logo test in DDC stereo 3d mode and you will see what I mean. Try it on a CRT if you can. Shut it off in the reverse order. LCD mode off first, then stereo mode off. If you don't do it this way, it will still probably be OK but there's a chance the dongle may get stuck on and you'll have to power-down your computer to reset the dongle. "LCD mode 1" is just like mode 2 except that it's interlaced. You use it the same way so first turn on interlaced mode, then LCD mode 1. Later, turn off LCD mode 1, then turn off interlaced mode. Obviously you need a horizontally interlaced 3d image on the screen in order to see the effect. Basically, this was a waste of time except for satisfying my curiosity. Anyway, onward...

BLC: blue line coding
This is not a function of ED-Activator but I thought I'ld mention it anyway as a feature of the dongle. I've posted a long post elsewhere so I'll just point you to it:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=5794

For this method of s3d, you can forget all about using the Activator. The dongle will detect when the BLC is present or not and will turn on/off automatically. It's pretty nice except for it's shortcomings mentioned in the other post.

I think that's it for this thread. Bye all.

--- iondrive ---

Hi,

Why is it that we can't swap eyes in pageflip mode ?

DDD tridef doesn't have a hotkey to eye swap, unlike iz3D, and that's anoying now that we managed to make the quadbuffer works on the CRT monitors

hi houpla,

I haven't checked this thread for a long time but anyway, regarding eye-swapping, these dongles are kind of dumb. They have no idea about what is on the screen. All it does it notice when the video signal reaches the bottom of the screen and has a vertical refresh pulse. It locks on to that pulse and just toggles the glasses. It doesn't really know if the view is meant for the left or right eye since there is no way for it to tell, it just guesses and toggles and toggles. At least it stays in perfect sync with the hardware signal so if your view suddenly flips sync, it's not because of the dongle missing a sync pulse unless there was an actual hardware glitch which I think is almost never. But to answer your question a little more fully, I guess the answer is because the makers of the dongle didn't build in that function. Some other dongles have a hardware switch or button that can flip the sync and that's handy sometimes. The other answer there's no sync-flipper would be because the 3d-driver makers didn't program one in. Either software or hardware sync-flipping would be helpful but sometimes there's neither and you just have to say "darn" or else make your own like in this other thread:

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=4661

Again, sorry for the late response, PM me next time and I'll try to visit here more regularly. But now on to my original reason for checking this thread: Color Codes!

=======

Hi all,

Some time ago I investigated the color codes for activating some dongles and they are pretty similar. I just used the activator, took a screenshot and counted the lines and colors. The first set of data comes from a viewing program called "DepthCharge Viewer". Most people will probably want to skip that and get to the codes for the E-Dim Activator. It works with some H3D and X3D and 3D-World dongles as well since they all look similar. Here's the details:
(b=black, r=red, y=yellow, g=green, x=any color (background color, whatever is on the screen))


top-of-screen colored line codes from DepthCharge Viewer output options:

"old" H3D dongle colored line codes:
xxxrbrbrbrbgbybybbb(xxx...) - turns off any mode
xxxrbrbrbrbgbybybrrbb(xxx...) - turns on interlaced mode
xxxrbrbrbrbgbybybyb(xxx...) - turns on sync-doubling mode

"new" H3D dongle colored line codes:
xxxrrggyyyybb(xxx...) - turns off any mode
xxxrrggyyyyrr(xxx...) - turns on interlaced mode (top line goes to left eye)
xxxrrggyyyyyy(xxx...) - turns on sync-doubling mode


top of screen color line codes: from ED-Activator (R3D Controller 2.7.0.0)

rrggyyyybb(xxx...) - turns off any mode
rrggyyyyrr(xxx...) - turns on interlaced mode (top line goes to left eye)
rrggyyyybr(xxx...) - turns on interlaced mode in reversed mode (top line goes to right eye, Zalman style)
rrggyyyyyy(xxx...) - turns on sync-doubling mode
rrggyyyygg(xxx...) - turns on page-flipping mode

Ignore the following LCD modes. I'm pretty confident that they are useless for everyone.
for LCD modes, turn on page-flipping mode first, then try the LCD mode you want.
LCD mode 1 : rrrrrrggyyyygr - interlaced mode with 3/4 refresh delay
LCD mode 2 : rrrrrrggyyyyrg - page-flipping mode with 3/4 refresh delay
LCD mode off: rrrrrrggyyyybg - remove refresh delay to normal shutterglass operation


What good is all this? Well, you can use this info to make your own activator using mplayer like if you're using Linux or something and ED-Activator won't work in your case. Follow me to the netpbm-tools thread if you want an activator that uses png files and mplayer. It's post 3 on page 1.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10607

==========

Blue-Line Code and White-Line Code:

For Blue-line code and White-line code, the standard seems to be a line on the bottom of the screen that is either 25% long or 75% long from left to right. 25% is for the left-eye view and 75% is for the right, but if you're using a DLP projector that has a one-frame delay, then you can reverse those numbers and then you'll be in sync. The remainder (right side) of your line should be black. Also if you are adding BLC to a 3d video, you probably should make it more than 1-pixel tall. Personally, I like 4. I'll post a link here to a future thread for those interested in 3d video processing/playback in this style. Also note that I recently got a WLC device and it also responds to BLC as well. I'm just not sure if it was actually designed that way or if it's just a happy coincidence. BLC is a great way to keep videos in sync and not worry about sync issues but you have to have a video that matches your system and playback style is also important. More in the mplayer thread eventually. I'm making a Table of Contents for that thread so you will be able to easily find a post about using mplayer to test your dongle for BLC sensitivity.


--- iondrive ---