Meant to be Seen

I've been playing around with the iz3d driver. It has been exciting to see there is life beyond the nvidia stereo driver.

As expected, the shutter output just works with the z800 (first, stereo must be enabled manually on the z800, it's not automatic like with nvidia's driver. I suppose that is due to the lack of the synchronization signal). And also as expected, the game must be running completely smooth or stereo will flicker and eventually flip. But at least this is a beginning. I tried fsx at very low settings and found that the lights, smoke and other effects are rendered at screen depth like it happens with nvidia's driver. A pitty, I still have to wait more for a S-3D night flight.

I have also tried anaglyph, first with the monitor and then with... the z800
I put the glasses on and over them the z800. Crosstalk (ghosting) is horrible, but it works! Then I thought that, as the red, green and blue levels of each display can be configured indepently, I could turn off all red on the red filter eye and all blue (or all blue and green? as it is cyan. I'm not sure on that) on the blue filter eye to eliminate ghosting completely. I still haven't tried that. It was an 'at bed' idea the last night before sleep.
I wonder if the idea can be further developed and with selected colors of the driver output and asymmetrical configuration of each display a better color quality can be achieved.

I find very difficult to configure stereo to suit my liking. I was used to consider stereo separation a fixed value (100%) and only care about convergence. Now that I can configure stereo separation far beyond my inter-ocular distance I'm not sure what to do. On my first attempt I end up with little separation and high convergence. Later I end up with more separation but the close objects (cockpit) seem elongated (field of view is already set correctly within the game, I think). I have had very few time to try things anyway.
What steps should I follow? I already saw the quick start guide, but I'm not just looking for viewing comfort, but for full size 'reality'.
What do the convergence values mean? Degrees? And what does it mean when it's negative?

By the way, I forgot to mention that the iz3d driver seems to interefere with the ability of FSX to switch between full screen and windowed mode, and often I have to exit FSX completely and restart to enter a new flight.

hi crim3,
i read your thread with great interest, because i am also a user of a z800.
what do you mean with -the game has to run absolutely smooth- can i manage it to make it smooth? is there a button or do i have to buy a new grafikcard?
what about my firmware? i can see the game and play it, but it is flickering (iz3d driver aktivated in shutter mode) is this good firmware or do i have to upgrade?

an answer would be nice

sincerely hassovr

hi hassovr
With smooth I just mean that the game must run at high frames per second. Any interruption of the "frame stream" and you can have your stereo reversed. That happens, for example, when the game access the hard drive.
So, it's all about the details settings of the game and how your computer can deal with them. As I said, I used FSX, which needs very powerful hardware, but with low settings I was able to do the tests with my rather old computer.

Most old games should run fine in any modern computer so they are a good option to make tests.

I haven't been able to do any more tests by my part anyway

To display S-3D graphics, the z800 must be in 3D mode. It enters 3D mode automatically with nvidia's 3D driver, but must be activated by the user in any other case. You can download Labtool from http://www.3dvisor.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and use it to activate the 3D mode.
I did a mini-application with only a single button as user interface that does just that, activate/deactivate z800's 3D mode. I can share it if you'd wish.

I don't know about the firmware issues. I've never had problems with it, so, I just don't know what can or can not be done depending the firmware version.

And, a very useful key, Ctrl+F8 to reverse stereo.

EDIT: wrong key now showing the right one, I hope

hi crim3
thank you for your answer and for the tip.
i t w o r k s
the labtool-tip was great. there you can force 3d to on, i dont even know of the existence of this tool.
by the way i am very interessted in your mini-tool to aktivate 3d.

my configuration:
intel dual 5200, nvidia 8800gtx, z800 firmw 6.3e
winxp32 sp3, fw 180.48, iz3d 1.09b4

I uploaded it here:
http://webs.ono.com/crim3doesnotcost/z8003Denabler.zip" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And this is the source code:
http://webs.ono.com/crim3doesnotcost/z8 ... er_src.zip" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I did it because Labtool makes you wait a lot each time you run it. Mine just connects without any further ceremony.

I have the same firmware version, 6.3e.

And it seems you have a powerful system. Anyway, right now the iz3d driver is only good for testing. It's impossible to keep the frame output without interruption. Maybe... installing a game in a RAM driver...

hi crim3,
i just downloaded your mini-tool, iwill have a try this afternoon.
in your first mail you said that you are seaching for a good 3dstereo adjustment.
here is th way i did it:

1. adjust the convergence to 0.
2. adjust the separation to +50
3. switch into cocpit-view, and close one eye after the other, then the dashboard flips from left to right, the distance of this flipping has to be about a diameter of a normal round-shaped instrument. ajust it with the keys.
4. then increase or decrease convergence. my values are about 0,05 to 0,1

i hope it works for you too.

I forgot to include the dll, now it's included in the zip along the exe

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them if I ever have time again....

Has anyone tried it with Vista and Nvidia/ATI?

HI

I dusted off my Z800 and dowloaded the v1.1 driver but can't see any shutterglass option. The driver seems to be for the IZ3d and I'm guessing that the Universal driver is a different one but I can't find anything else on the site.

Can anyone help?

Currently running a 9600GT and XP SP2 ( Z800 been gathering dust for a while due to needing to move to a better video card)...

Reinstall the driver and choose the Full Installation option when you install. I just used my Z800 with Vista and my new ATI 4870 video card and it worked in 3D! No flicker and nice! Great 3D!

Thanks Stereomania, I did that . Now my Z800 is not being recognised by the PC. It seemed that when I installed Labtool ( to be able to activeate 3D) it wanted to uninstall the Z800 Software Utility, so I guess Labtool is the only piece of Z800 driving software I need on the PC ? I will try to install Labtool and the IZ3d drivers on my other PC which has Vista but a lesser card. If I can get the Z800 working, I can install Vista on my main PC...I'm only running XP because of the Z800 issue.

Yes, Labtool is all you need. Enable the 3D with Labtool and set the iZ3D Driver to S3DShutter, Marked. That is it! Vista and ATI work Great!

OK , I have a little more progress to report.

I had no success on either my Vista or XP machine in getting Labtool to find the Z800 ( even by clicking REFRESH) However when I clicked the Disable headtracker box and hit Refresh the Z800 was found on both machines.

With 3d enable on both Labtool and IZ3d drivers , the IZ3d logo test flicks from one eye to the other randomly with bursts of 3d in between.

Unfortunately I don't have any games on my older machine ( Athlon 3800, NVidea 7600GT running Vista)
My newer machine ( Athlon 6400+ X2 , NVidea 9600GT running XP SP2 ) has World of Warcraft with no current subscription , but the login page has a nice 3d animation. I get 3D with the Z800 in Windowed mode only , but the left and right eye swap about every 2 to 5 seconds, giving me alternating good 3d and then reverse 3D. I tried all the IZ3d settings ( ie simple, marked etc).

The bizzare thing , which I can't reproduce is that initilaly when WOW was set at 1024 X 768 rez, which the z800 seems to sync to horizontally , but missing the bottom 1/4 of the screen, I got faultless S3D without any L/R eye reversing. I simply looked for about 5 minutes at the looping animation. I had forgotten how dam good the Z800 was when it was working. Since I got WOW back into 600 X 800 I havent been able to reproduce this success at 1024 X 768, I just get a flicking of left and right images ( making everything look double)

So the drivers strike out on XP for me.

My next goal will be to get a game on the Vista machine and see if the Z800 works on that. I notice that the S3D worked on the XP sorta in windowed mode, so I guess any basic direct X game will be worth a try on the Vista machine. I'll download some demo games and give them a try.

Sounds like you may have an older Z800 with the old firmware. How old is it?

No its the more recent 6.3E.

It may be that I need to run things on Vista , and from what I gather from some of these posts on the shutterglasses/IZ3d drivers, that I need a S3d frame rate at least more than 30 FPS so the Z800 can sync properly.

Unfortunately the Vista machine is not that fast ( Athlon 3800 +7600GT and 512mb Ram ). I wonder if there is a simple graphics game that will run in 3D that I could test that the Z800 on the Vista machine will Sync properly, before I bit the bullet and put Vista on my main machine. Does anyone have any suggestions that I could download somewhere, a woirking demo maybe. It seems that IZ3d drivers will let the Z800 run in S3d inwindowed mode which is something the Nvidea drivers never did. There wrere so many little games I thought might have been good in 3d but would only run windowed mode.

Mark

For correct shuttering, the FPS in game must match your refresh rate otherwise your glasses could desync. So, example:

if you are running at 80HZ, you need at least more than 80 FPS

Ok, I'll look in world of warcraft and get a FPS. I should be getting at least 60 fps anyway with the 4600 dual core and 9600gt card..I remember I was getting about 40fps in WOW with the Athlon 3800 and 7600GT in S3D.

Three questions:

1. How are we all stopping the auto screensaver without the Z800 3D software? Glovepie?

2. Welder, Im happy to see you in this thread. Now that TDvisor is indefinitely shelved (I so wanted the HD visor!!!!) Z800 is once again the best consumer HMD in existence. Any chance IZ3D could specifically code for it like you did with the VR920?

3. can IZ3D drivers run along side Nvidia 3D drivers? I am running through the Doom3 co-op mod with my friend right now. Also, untill I upgread, Nvidia old drivers would still be better for games that can run 3D with Nvidia drivers due to frame rate issues. Left 4 Dead will not run in S-3D above 60 fps on my 7800 GTX...... Z800 fixed at 60 Hz

genetic wrote:Three questions:

1. How are we all stopping the auto screensaver without the Z800 3D software? Glovepie?

2. Welder, Im happy to see you in this thread. Now that TDvisor is indefinitely shelved (I so wanted the HD visor!!!!) Z800 is once again the best consumer HMD in existence. Any chance IZ3D could specifically code for it like you did with the VR920?

3. can IZ3D drivers run along side Nvidia 3D drivers? I am running through the Doom3 co-op mod with my friend right now. Also, untill I upgread, Nvidia old drivers would still be better for games that can run 3D with Nvidia drivers due to frame rate issues. Left 4 Dead will not run in S-3D above 60 fps on my 7800 GTX...... Z800 fixed at 60 Hz

2: I am unsure of this unfortunately

3: We always recommend to uninstall the nvidia drivers as a precaution, but it may be possible as long as you set the nvidia 3D to disabled, and vice versa.

genetic wrote: 1. How are we all stopping the auto screensaver without the Z800 3D software? Glovepie?

I set the highest time out with labtool. This way there is virtually no auto-off option. I turn the z800 displays on/off manually everytime I begin/end my gaming session.

satchmo wrote:However when I clicked the Disable headtracker box and hit Refresh the Z800 was found on both machines.

Only one program at a time can have access to the z800.
I don't use the old z800 software anyway 'cos I don't need the keep alive signal thanks to what I said above and I don't use mouse emulation anymore. I prefer not to use headtracking in games that the only option is mouse emulation. Only trackir emulation or joystick emulation for me.

satchmo wrote:The bizzare thing , which I can't reproduce is that initilaly when WOW was set at 1024 X 768 rez, which the z800 seems to sync to horizontally , but missing the bottom 1/4 of the screen, I got faultless S3D without any L/R eye reversing.

Surely it's strange :O I think I'll try and see what happens.

Ok just an update.

A new WOW update was installed . I noted in the new feature notes, it says now compatable with Stereo 3D...as its always worked fine I don't know what changes they could have made.

Results: with Iz3d driver I now get about 5 seconds before the seconds before the frames reverse.

Welder noted that you need a stereo frame rate higher than the refresh rate to avoid frame swapping.
Is the frame rate figure in the top left, created by the driver correct. Its showing around 30fps.
which is only half that required. I used to get 40-45fps with my 93.71 Nvidea drivers with single core Athlon 3800 and Nvidea 7600gt. Now I appear to be getting 30fps with a dial core AMD 6400+ and a Nvidea 9600GT. I have no idea how I will get better than 60fps. I can't afford to spend any more on my rig.

What about Vista 64? Did anyone get 3D on vista 64? Or windows 7?

Hi.

I downloaded the latest driver iz3d (v1.09) to test the 3D glasses Z800 (firmware 6.3E). My graphics card is a Geforce 7600GT SLI under Windows XP SP3 and the latest NVIDIA driver (v182.08). I also downloaded the program eMagin LabTool. The problem I have is that I see the same image for both eyes. The order of execution is:

1) I run the driver iz3d, I active the stereo status and I select the shutter (simple) output.
2) I run LabTool utility and I active the 3D mode (the led of Z800 controller turns green).
3) I open the program 3DCombine, I load the attached test image and I select parallel format.
4) I select the nVidia Stereo, to see the image, and I see only the image of the right eye on both screens . Also, I receive the message error "Can't load output.dll".

Can you help me?

Thanks in advance!

jjcarles wrote:Also, I receive the message error "Can't load output.dll".

I think that it was a problem with the iz3d driver installation. You'll have to uninsall it and then reinstall but select full installation when prompted.

crim3 wrote:

jjcarles wrote:Also, I receive the message error "Can't load output.dll".

I think that it was a problem with the iz3d driver installation. You'll have to uninsall it and then reinstall but select full installation when prompted.

I have the full installation of iz3d.

I've given up trying to run my z800 with the IZ3D drivers.

My S3d frame rate maxes at 37.5 , but as soon as it drops below 35 the L/R eye loses sync and its unusable.

I have a good CPU and video card so I can't see much more I can do. I also tried it on two differnt PC's and had the same problem.

My old setup with the old Nvidea drivers and 7600GT ran much better.

The Z800 is back in its box again.

My setup works just fine using an ATI 4870, Core i7 CPU and Vista. The 3D is great!

stereomania wrote:My setup works just fine using an ATI 4870, Core i7 CPU and Vista. The 3D is great!

Can you tell me what your frame rate maxes at ? I've got this limit of 37.5 and 30 on my two pc's and as soon as FPS drops below that it loses sync. I can see is that you have a very high end rig there.

Mark

Running at 60hz. I am sure if you are dropping under 30 it will crap out on you. Time to upgrade your processor and video card!

crim3 wrote:I uploaded it here:
http://webs.ono.com/crim3doesnotcost/z8003Denabler.zip" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And this is the source code:
http://webs.ono.com/crim3doesnotcost/z8 ... er_src.zip" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I did it because Labtool makes you wait a lot each time you run it. Mine just connects without any further ceremony.

I have the same firmware version, 6.3e.

And it seems you have a powerful system. Anyway, right now the iz3d driver is only good for testing. It's impossible to keep the frame output without interruption. Maybe... installing a game in a RAM driver...

Any chance in re-uploading the source and exe's

.........................
oops

Hi im trying to get the iz3d driver to work with my z800 and vista 32.

What do i need to do as im doing something wrong.
I have the driver downloaded from iz3d, done full instalation with s3d shutter selected, i havnt bought the licence yet as i need to see if it works first would that make a difference.
I have labtool also and 3d enabled in force 3d mode.
I cant get stereo 3d to work.
I have an 8800gtx do i also need the stereo 3d drivers from nvidea as well.

Hi and welcome sgall2775!

Check this thread about the z800. I don't have one myself but this might be useful.

Thanks managed to get it to work problem was i was trying it on doom 3 but theres a hit and miss with what games work.

does the z800 still update their drivers or firmwire? Maybe they can work some thing out with iz3d for better support?

1140 wrote:Any chance in re-uploading the source and exe's

I missed your post, sorry. But, anyway, the files are still there. I have just tried them right now and it downloads without problems.

does it work in games and where can I get a emagin?

It works in the same games that work with shutter glasses, it uses the same signal for stereo-3D. An additional constraint is that the game should run in 800x600.
You can get it from vrealities.com but I'm afraid 2 years ago emagin raised the price from 500$ to 1500$. There is a dual input version that would work with current versions of iz3d drivers but it's over 2000$.