Nvidia 3D Vision, Quadro & Linux

[ZezCon]

Making my first post on mtbs3d,

I purchased 3D Vision hardware just before Nvidia announced the slow death of the system. That was bad enough, but much more puzzling has been the confusion and haphazard information on 1) using the system where it still has minimal support and 2) how do we move on?

For reasons of economy, and I hope practicality, I'm focused on using the system in Linux (Ubuntu-mate), and a Quadro K4200 seems to be the simple choice. A modern driver and modern OS. Right now I have ONE application that displays the way it should: sView. It's fine for viewing stereo pairs and stereo movie files, and this happens with the standard 3D Vision equipment.

(Under Windows I have two working applications: Stereo Photo Maker and Nvidia 3D Video Player.)

Apparently similar to 3D Vision is Quad Buffered Stereo. Nvidia has enthusiastically indicated that QBS would continue to be supported. That's great, but we need HARDWARE, and there's very few discussions about that. CrystalEyes seems to be the most likely choice but no one writes about it; I found the website and it's more expensive than a 2nd-hand 3D Vision system! I guess the monitors are interchangeable. Is there a barrier to using 3D Vision when page-flipping (QBS or "time sequential") stereo is an option?

Blender is supposed to work with some kind of page-flipping stereo; I have installed Blender, found the Stereoscopy button, but no dice. There is no Time Sequential mode to select and I can't even get anaglyph to work. Hopefully a solvable problem.

Bino is a native Linux stereo application similar to sView, but it doesn't activate 3D Vision (so far.) Also hopefully a solvable problem.

All frustrating because the 3D Vision system offers everything one would need AND IS IN THE LINUX DRIVER but it just... doesn't... work... in many instances. Sometimes it's not just Nvidia's doing, but rather a drop of support from the software vendors. I wonder if that's the case with Blender.

Pluraview monitors are apparently Nvidia's preferred successor to 3D Vision, but come on: we can't all spend that kind of money and may not have the physical space at home even if we did.

A browser plugin called NVAPI was used to access stereo web content, but has been phased out due to security concerns. So no viewing stereo material directly from a browser.

Also confusing: a lot of posts treat GeForce stereo and Quadro stereo like they are something different; as if because I use a Quadro I therefore wouldn't be using 3D Vision. There is a "3D Vision Pro" (also discontinued) option which may have been limited to Quadro, that used RF glasses rather than IR. There's a long and detailed CalPoly article (2012?) describing how to get a GeForce card to run on a Quadro driver. That may have made sense at some time, but seems totally beside the point today: older Quadros are cheap (but don't go below the K4200 unless you stick with an older OS.)

What about VR? This is a different deal, both as a "computer" and as an experience. I'm not against it but prefer to look at a monitor if I can have it, rather than wear the headset.

So what's the upshot of all this? I'm hoping someone out there knows a way to handle common problems with 3D Vision, or the closely related Quad Buffered Stereo. I know how to set the Linux driver for 3D Vision, or other mode if I were to need it; it's easy. Is there something else?