As requested by yuri on the iz3d forums, I'll post my (p)review here :
Review - First Impressions (Keep in mind, those are only the first impressions!
) : Time - 1 hour + 30 minutes playtime
I will post another long term review soon
Please keep in mind, that graphic artefacts are quite apparent to me as a cg student (You keep developing a sixth sense for those artefacts
). Some of the drawbacks mentioned here may not apply to other people.
Ok, lets sum it up at the beginning :
I'm overwhelmed and little bit disappointed at the same time.
Fortunately, I'm overwhelmed enough to keep the monitor!
Now let me explain why.
Ok, first thing I did was examining the glasses. I used some of my LCD displays to look at the glasses behaviour. I realized quickly, that the glasses design was far more complex than I thought. The glasses show some very interessting patterns when viewing the LCD screen and rotating the glasses at the same time. Now I understand, why it has to be that difficult to optimize those glasses.
I have to admit, I have no idea why the glasses polarize this way. I have only a basic idea of polarization, and for the rest I've got my math skills
. In the general case of linear polarization, after considering all view rays to the screen plane at a given sitting position, the glasses should block out the light uniformly (also considering the glasses curvature). However, this is not the case for iz3d-glasses with an usual LCD. I guess there's going on some magic stuff behind the polarization by the front panel, the implicit hardwareside screenbuffer->polarization conversion seems to be not uniform over the whole screen.
Nah, I'll be honest, I have no idea
Well, enough glass-talk. Let's see how this screen performs. I tried Mass Effect with 1.09. Deactivated shadows and motion blur.
Ok, game menu pops up : Oh ma fuggn god! I was sitting there starring at the screen for about 30 seconds with my mouth wide open. This was great! No comparision to the half-res Zalman. Not at all!
Ok, let's go for one savegame...Loading...Ouch! Well, this was the moment I realized conversion and separation are the stereoscopic users best friend! My eyes poped out because of the color trash. After fiddling a bit with the settings I came to the result : Oh well, that's not that bad at all!
Let's make a small break at this point : Mass Effect wasn't probably the best game to start with. Especially the savegames I tried had a very high contrast, especially in structure details. Of course this is quite difficult to manage with a polarization screen, as the color bleeding problem is nearly unsolvable afaik. Simple said : Don't consider this review to be fair, results may be far better in a game with a more limited color range (Like the Mass Effect menu for example - you have to love those minigames
).
Let us go on. After about 20 secs I got some settings which were satisfying. I just tried to set the convergence so that the maximum object separation in the whole scene didn't exceed an intuitive threshold. After that I matched the separation so that it focused at my character, as I'm looking at her the most time ( I'm a guy....come on, you have to understand that Very Happy )
If you keep focusing on your character, and just look at objects in a near focal plane, you'll get a very good 3D experience (honestly, it's great). The rest of the scene which you are not focusing on will contribute enough to the 3D experience, as long as you don't keep focusing on it. However, if you do, the color bleeding becomes quite apparent.
The next thing I was interessted in was the tinting problem. This was a great suprise, and I have to agree with the community : It's sausage! Really, I looked at my characters arms, closed the left eye, than the right ... quite apparent difference. But as soon as you open both of your eyes, the brain compensates this problem. Good work on this one iz3d guys
( Actually not only on this one, but I have to accent this point).
But! This problem comes into play in combination with color bleeding. These color artifacts make the color bleeding more disturbing. At this point I also have to agree with the community : Ghosting is priority number one! Reducing this problem to a certain point should help a lot. A certain improvement should also eliminate the need for tinting reduction.
Another thing some users meant over at mtbs3d : Using gaze tracking to improve the results. Well, I now understand what you mean, but I have to disagree (at least to a certain degree). Yes, of course you could set the focal plane at the gazed at depth. But this will slide the scene towards/away from you every time you gaze at a different depth. Currently most users are adjusting their settings in game, they do it consciously. However, doing this automized would lead to a lot of irritation I think. But I agree, as long as there are no objects with a huge depth difference in the proximity of the object you're gazing at, this would eliminate ghosting.
My eye tracker is nearly finished, I could give it a try. One problem is, I didn't think the glasses are THAT reflective. I don't know if I can deal with that, but I'll try my best (still far better than with shutter glasses).
Custom improvements advised by the community : Tilting back the monitor helps in my case, confirmed! I'm sorry yuri, but your suggestion didn't work for me. It DID bring some improvements, but also some drawbacks, which made the overall results worse for me.
I also tried some darker levels in Mass Effect, the impression was very good! However, Mass Effect seems to hate stereoscopy
. At each point of this game there is some singularity with a very high contrast.
Also I have to confirm : The black range of the iz3d is improveable. It isn't tragic, not at all. But the overall image contrast suffers in dark scenes. As already stated, this is nothing urgent, but for sure something that should be improved in future hardware releases.
Allthough the monitor has a high resolution, at some points of the game (small details with complex structure) aliasing becomes apparent (To clarify : more apparent than aliasing on my Samsung LCD ). I'll stick to my previous statement -> future improvements.
Next point : the drivers. I have to admit : Good work! I'm impressed. The effects work quite good, and the billboards are not too apparent. There were some bugs with the dialogs which you told you're going to fix with 2.0, but this isn't tragic at all (there are also some extreme situations considering the depth in dialogs, I don't know what the Bioware team was messing around with to have such inconsistencies between two camera positions
)
I would like to skip the feedback about the installation and all the configuration stuff difficulty, as this wouldn't be objective enough. This is my everydays stuff, it was easy to me, but I don't know if somebody else feels the same way. I think it was quite intuitive, but of course, it could be difficult to someone with no stereo-experience to get started with all the setup stuff.
My personal feeling : You did a good job. I think this big explanation chart helps alot.
Let's come to an end : I'll repeat my first words. The iz3d is an impressive piece of work. It is very difficult to offer such a low cost fullres polarization solution compared to a shutter glass solution. As I said, I have no idea how hard the maths behind the polarization stuff is, as I have no insight into your approach. But my impression is, that it was a lot of hard work. I guess, the iz3d is a adorable piece of technology.
The screen has flaws, I can't deny. Most of these flaws are irrelevant, but sadly, the color bleeding is a quite disturbing aspect. But I don't think, that this aspect is that bad, that you don't give it at a least a fair try.
At this point I have to say, that this is only a first impression. You have to consider one thing ( all newcomers ) : Every technology needs at least at the beginning some compromises. Think about it. You are used to your high res LCD screen with a very high contrast, and you expect exactly the same experience from a stereo solution, just with the freaking awesome 3D experience! This isn't going to happen soon! Not with any solution on the market! So, the thing you have to consider is, as you get used to the monitor, you get used to it's quality drawbacks. On the other hand you get rewarded with an awesome 3D experience (and the experience is really awesome, this isn't just a gadget! ). If this reward justifies the quality drawbacks, the iz3d will be your best friend. I'm quite sure my long term review will be even better than this one. To me, the rewarding experience has outweighted the flaws + the 500 bucks (europe). Also, the experience was better than most of the stereo solutions on my university, except the stereo projector rig.
Finally, lets look into the future. Iz3d steadily prepares to release their new glasses. They seem to be promissing according to the community ( which is great in turn. I have to agree in almost all aspects ). If those glasses reduce the ghosting significant, I will fall in love with this screen.
Also, my experience with the iz3d support is very good. If you're a motivated developer, I think this is the best way to go. You've got a good communication platform, and I'm quite sure, that if you want to go into specific details, the devs at iz3d will answer them gladly over PM ( at least if there are not to many people asking at the same time ). All the developers over here could also improve this solutions attractiveness. Lot of ideas, lot of innovation. You never know, maybe you're the next coming up with a good idea compensating some problems on the software side.
Thank you for reading this, stay tuned for my long term review!
Oh yeah, sorry if I sounded bit arrogant, this wasn't my intention. I'm still lucky that I'm not that experienced as all those guys in the industry. It must be horrible to them watching cg-movies
edit : UPDATE
Review 2nd part - playtime about 10 hours ( I've got much free time right now
)
Again, I'll give a small résumé at the beginning :
The monitor definitely is worth it's money.
As you already probably guessed, my oppinion changed to a more positive one since my first review.
Well, let's go a bit into the depth.
My main criticism I mentioned last time was the color bleeding. However, I need to clarify some things. In most of the cases, this problem doesn't disturb the 3D effect at all. This mainly depends on the objects size and the given image contrast. You'll get a really good 3D experience, without any headaches (at least in my case ).
The problem about this crosstalk is, that it reduces the image resolution, depending on the amount of the perceived ghosting. The worst case is, if the object you are looking at is separated by about 0.5 inches (screenspace). This jittering effect has a similar, but less displeasing effect as any convolution kernels like for example a gaussian filter. It reduces the perceived resolution, so in turn the image quality is reduced.
I'm playing most of the time with separation settings about 200%. This value gives me the best result in most cases, as my eye distance to the screen is also pretty small. With such settings, most of the objects in the scene are separated by such a huge amount, that the color bleeding isn't that apparent anymore. The leaked images from the other eye seem to be compensated by the brain, as it cannot relate this information to any 3d information. Anyways, all the objects with a absolute separation ~0.5 inches look quite ugly, sometimes you even cannot recognize what the object really is. The impact of this artefact depends actually on the image contrast in the given area.
In most of the cases, this effect won't distract you, but sometimes you won't get around it.
Some games seem to really like the iz3d, as psychonauts for example. The 3D effect is overwhelming, and in this game for example, most of the time you won't even realize the color bleeding.
In general I have to say, the game experience with the iz3d is much better than with an usual LCD. I really enjoy gaming with the iz3d, makes a lot more fun. With a pure conscience I can recommend this product to everyone willing to spend some money on innovations.
But the color bleeding is a problem, that one cannot deny. I'm quite sure, if this crosstalk could be reduced by about 50% it would be already a huge step forward. I'm really excited how crucial the new glasses improvement will be.