MTBS-TV: Neil Schneider Interviews Bit Cauldron (AMD S-3D!)

[Neil]

This is an interview with James Mentz, President & CEO of Bit Cauldron. To our knowledge, these are the first LCD shutter glasses designed to work with AMD graphics cards for cinema and S-3D gaming.

[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DU4u5Z133k[/youtube-hd]

Could this mark a huge paradigm shift in PC stereoscopic 3D gaming? Share your thoughts!

Regards,
Neil

[BlackShark]

Finally, the interview we were all waiting for !

[Neil]

I'm sorry it took so long. Lots of videos to share still.

Regards,
Neil

[budda]

Hi,


I hope Bit Cauldron include an alarm in the S3D glasses so you can find them if they get lost somewhere in the lounge room.

Thats my "patent pending" idea. .... be grateful I gave it away for free.


Thanks.

[crim3]

Hi,


I hope Bit Cauldron include an alarm in the S3D glasses so you can find them if they get lost somewhere in the lounge room.

Thats my "patent pending" idea. .... be grateful I gave it away for free.


Thanks.

I need something like that for almost all things in my house, specially for the TV's remote control. I'll wait eagerly for your invention

[drcurtis]

Neil,

Did you get to demo the glasses? I've been working on securing a pair to make comparisons with the Samsung and Razor3d glasses on DLP-TVs.

[DmitryKo]

these are the first LCD shutter glasses designed to work with AMD graphics cards for cinema and S-3D gaming. Could this mark a huge paradigm shift in PC stereoscopic 3D gaming?

I don't think so, it's still the good old model where each company supports its own set of stereoscopic solutions in their proprietary drivers.

Neil, I can't stress enough that a real paradigm shift would be built-in support for stereo at the graphics API level and an extensible driver model for stereo displays and shutter glasses.

Until lately, there was no enough stereoscopic hardware and games for Microsoft and Khronos to bother, but that is changing and now there are considerably more stereo products on the market than it was 2 years ago, and there will be even more in 2 years, so we should start pushing now. And S3D Gaming Alliance is in best position to push for this paradigm shift.

[Neil]

This is not true. While Bit Cauldron is a sample case, there is a standard being pushed through to make it possible for a diverse market to synchronize with shutter glasses, etc. on more than one brand of GPU. This is the paradigm shift.

If DX12 implements S-3D support, great - but this can only start with the thinking of "we need a standard" by one or more of the GPU manufacturers which is clearly happening.

The President of the Khronos Group (OpenGL) is an advisory board member of S3DGA, by the way.

Regards,
Neil

[DmitryKo]

This is not true. While Bit Cauldron is a sample case, there is a standard being pushed through

If the work on industry-wide standards has begun, I can only welcome that; so far, the interviewee only said that AMD and Bit Cauldron share some "understanding" that standards are needed. While AMD shutter glasses support is a nice and welcome addition, proprietary vendor-specific standards are surely not going to "shift the paradigm".

The President of the Khronos Group (OpenGL) is an advisory board member of S3DGA

Good, seems like you have all the cards in your hands.

[cirk2]

Nice product, realy.

He did a great job to avoid the question about the Driver problem.

I hope they will manage it to work with nvidia glasses. If they get that to work they're on a good way

[zebrastealer]

Serious question Neil - How many times did you have to practice saying the phrase, "this is Neil Schneider With MTBS3D TV at CES 2011"? Man. That sounds like a tongue twister!

[Neil]

Once I mastered "S3DGA", I was set.

Regards,
Neil

[Okta]

Those glasses sound great and with mulitple vendors the prices will be awesome. i can see Nvidia getting an ass kicking here . Unfortunately it sounds like there wont be any page flipping, just more interlaced support through iz3d.

[cybereality]

Great news, its nice to see actual hardware and put a face on these Bit Cauldron people.

What I hope is that AMD gets more involved in this and develops their own driver but an arrangement with IZ3D is good enough for now. If I understand things correctly this will mean people could buy a 120Hz 3D capable LCD screen and using an ATI card and Bit Cauldron glasses with the IZ3D driver game in stereo 3D. This could also open up a world of other orphaned devices like DLP projectors / CRTs that are no longer compatible with the Nvidia solution. This is very big news indeed.

[budda]

Hi,


I am confused about the so-called New Standard for interfacing shutterglasses to S3D display hardware.


Can someone explain how this upcoming "New Standard" will differ from the "Old Standard", namely VESA-1997-11 (Title: Connector and Signal Standards for Stereoscopic Display Hardware).


Thanks.

[chilledsanity]

Well good try Neil, I could see you took multiple passes to get him to answer the driver question, but he kept dodging it. For those who don't want to sit through the video, here's the condensed version:

Q. Will there be driver support from AMD or Nvidia for your glasses?
A. We really hope so.

[crim3]

Hi,

I am confused about the so-called New Standard for interfacing shutterglasses to S3D display hardware.

Can someone explain how this upcoming "New Standard" will differ from the "Old Standard", namely VESA-1997-11 (Title: Connector and Signal Standards for Stereoscopic Display Hardware).

Thanks.

Good point. Looks like there is a lot of "let's re-invent the wheel" lately in S-3D.

[DmitryKo]

how this upcoming "New Standard" will differ from the "Old Standard", namely VESA-1997-11

VESA Stereo is a very simple protocol. Just like other USB and analog VGA solutions, it essentially privides the way to physically syncronize shutters with each frame of seqiential stereo, describing the sync protocol and the connector plug. It does not specify any underlying application model that can be used to work with the sequential stereo.


If you are a developer who needs to support stereo in his/her application, you face many complex questions. How to detect the type of stereo display and transmission method (line-interleaved, side-by-side, dual video interface, frame sequential etc)? How many different devices and formats to support? Where can you get the source code for pre-processing the images for all these devices and formats? How to ensure a proper sync with shutter glasses for sequential stereo? What internal stereo format to use and how to transcode your internal format to the native display format?

At this time, none of these points are adressed by industry standards. The current effort is only about making ATI/AMD hardware compatible with 3rd party shutters and 3rd party stereo drivers. Software developers will still have to code explicit support for many different solutions and formats right in their applications, and the users will still have the burden of configuring up each different application to work with the stereoscopic solution they use.


But in orfer for stereoscopic gaming and home video to become more popular, everyting should be far more easier for both developers and users, so we need to have standard programming interfaces. At a minimum, these should include:

1) a OS-level device driver model (or a 3rd-party plug-in model) which lets hardware vendors provide a standard driver/plug-in for their specific display and/or shutter glasses solutions, and
2) a 3rd-party or OS component which will provide a standard programming interface, abstracting the underlying hardware for application developers.

So the user would only have to plug-in the glasses and install the drivers, and the application developer would use a standard API to pass the picture in device-independent stereo format. The middleware component will directly talk with the vendor-provided driver and provide format conversion, image processing and frame syncronisation.

I could see you took multiple passes to get him to answer the driver question, but he kept dodging it

What else could he say? We all know Nvidia is not currently interested in supporting anything other than their own 3D Vision glasses, and Bit Cauldron are not in charge of the whole industry, unlike Microsoft and Khronos, they are only trying to ensure their product will at least work with AMD hardware.

[jumbo_spaceman]

This guy is a very good, fast-talking salesman, but I'll reserve my judgement until I see some of this tech being demo-ed in stores.

[chilledsanity]

What else could he say? We all know Nvidia is not currently interested in supporting anything other than their own 3D Vision glasses, and Bit Cauldron are not in charge of the whole industry, unlike Microsoft and Khronos, they are only trying to ensure their product will at least work with AMD hardware.

Of course, but even that wasn't assured in the interview. AMD/ATI has never taken a stance of offering stereoscopic driver support. So either they need to have their own drivers like iz3d does, or else they have to work with AMD to make sure they produce drivers. It doesn't matter if the hardware is compatible if nobody is developing the drivers. Until he confirms anything, these may as well be treated like edimensional's fantastic S-3D solution.

[Neil]

You really should have more confidence in our interview choices.

He said in the interview that they are working with DDD, iZ3D, and AMD for driver support. Bit Cauldron's exhibit was part of the AMD booth.

Regards,
Neil

[Likay]

Besides there are more than just hints on the iz3d forums about iz3d teamship with amd. The next driver release for instance is delayed partly because of shuttersupport for amd. I have no clue if it's about shutters in general or only glasses from Bit Cauldron. I'm quite sure it's not about an interlaced solution though since it's already existent since a while back in iz3d drivers.

[taz291819]

Besides there are more than just hints on the iz3d forums about iz3d teamship with amd. The next driver release for instance is delayed partly because of shuttersupport for amd. I have no clue if it's about shutters in general or only glasses from Bit Cauldron. I'm quite sure it's not about an interlaced solution though since it's already existent since a while back in iz3d drivers.

This is correct.

AMD has supplied us with a document giving information on the improvements that will be implemented over the course of the next months in Catalyst drivers:

- CrossFire X profiles per application will now be in a separate XML file that it will be possible to update independently of the driver itself
- ATI CrossFire X with PowerPlay for the Radeon 5x00s: reduced energy consumption of additional cards
-AMD Dual Graphics: Possibility of combining performances of the IGP of the RS880 with the forthcoming entry level GPUs from the Cedar and Park ranges.
- 3D Stereoscopics: Update of the D3D driver so as to allow third party firms such as IZ3D to use their 3D solution with 120 Hz screens. Support for Bit Cauldron glasses.
- Eyefinity: Bezel Management
- Better GPU acceleration in Windows 7 Video Converter
- Support for DisplayPort Audio (already in the 9.12 hotfix)
- If laptop manufacturers allow it, possibility of installing the Catalysts on a laptop in Vista and 7
- Improvement of 2D performance in Linux
- Support for Ubuntu 9.10 and OpenSUSE 11.2

http://www.behardware.com/news/10636/ca ... r-way.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DickDastardly]

+ Wireless sync rather than IR seems like a good thing, though tbh IR is perfectly adequate for most PC setups (I don't run a drive-through movie theatre)

+ Some interesting claims about improved sync reducing crosstalk and increasing brightness

+ Claim to work with any 3d tv

+ Their attitude to standards seems positive


- The stuff he said about standards is exactly what you'd expect anyone who hasn't invested anything in their own drivers to say

-No word on price (and if neither AMD or Bit Cauldron are making their own drivers, presumably you'd need to buy IZ3D or DDD drivers on top of the cost of the glasses)

- Didn't mention anything about working with other PC display tech like CRTs, <120Hz DLP projectors etc (though I can't see any reason they wouldn't work)

-Not out for at least half a year


Overall, however, my reaction is positive -nVidia's lacklustre support for 3D Vision is exactly what you'd expect from a company which is effectively the only game in town shutterglass-wise. Hopefully the prospect of more competition will finally get them to actively support their product. And if they don't, well if looks like 3D Vision users might eventually have alternatives (that aren't tied to tiny monitors or restricted to games that have to maintain 60fps constantly to avoid losing sync).
Cheers,
DD

[taz291819]

Was reading the PDF about XpanD's new X103s. DLP-Link built-in, and works with all displays also. Supposedly works with several different IR emitters (XpanD, VESA, and two others). No word on price, but they look nice.

[JohnPeterson]

Will the Monster Vision “Max 3D” glasses be the first bit cauldron glasses on the market?

I can't believe it's taking so long for amd to have a pair of glasses out in stores.

[tritosine5G]

Finally, the interview we were all waiting for !

im waiting for MEMS (micromechanical) shutterglasses with high transmittance ,

no mems = obsolete

are we 2010 or what, who wants 80's lc glasses with zigbee or whatever sync. Not intrested. Let's see who brings us MEMS shutter first.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost ... stcount=12" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
my post over AVS
kthxxbai