IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

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Walky
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IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

Hi, I'm new here.
Today I received my X3D shutter glasses, the first ones I've ever had, and I'm having a few problems which I think might find a solution here :D

Problem 1:
The dongle have a single external switch to activate the glasses AND interlace the signal going to the monitor. The glasses won't activate at all without the monitor attached to the dongle (and actually showing an image). I plugged the main CRT to my video card directly, then attached the dongle with another CRT (which I won't have for too long) plugged into it and configure the latest Nvidia drivers to "Clone"; this way I am able to have a beautiful progressive image (way nicer and brighter than the crappy interlaced one), but I'm forced to have the second CRT in the way (and turned on). Is it possible to activate the glasses without using a monitor? Maybe it's possible by jumpering some pins at the vga output of the dongle?.

Problem 2: Enabling the IZ3D effects have a really weird effect in performance. Games play really smooth and fast, but the framerate drops horribly at some points (mostly when looking at long distances and/or open spaces), making the glasses lose sync and giving me an image that jumps from left to right and viceversa, which is very annoying. I must clarify that I'm aware I'm supposed to lose some performance as compared to 2D, but in this case I'm certain it isn't the reason; the framerate drop I'm experiencing in Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 also happens with Splinter Cell (yeah, the first one) and Halo (the first one too). Those are all the games I've tried so far, I've tried different resolutions, refresh rates and detail levels and it makes no difference at all (I also tried turning v-sync on and off). Deactivating the 3D effect immediately fixes the framerate issue, even when doing it in-game.

BTW, my pc is an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (slighty OC'd), an EVGA gt240 (DDR5), 1GB RAM, (yeah, I know I should get at least one gig more), and Win XP 32-bit. The framerate issue happens with both the 1.11B2 and 1.10 IZ3d drivers (not installed at the same time, of course).

I'll be very thankful is anyone could help me with these issues, thanks!
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cybereality
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by cybereality »

The dongle needs to be hooked up to a monitor in order to sync with it. You might be able to hack a device that would produce the right signal but then it wouldn't work with anything. I don't seem to understand what you are trying to do. In order to fix your sync issues it is recommended that you use interlaced mode. The iz3d driver doesn't handle page-flip very well at all.
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

I'm using simple shutter mode on IZ3D, I don't have a way to change the way the glasses shutter, only the on-off switch from the dongle; it seems to be hardware-only (ED-Activator have no effect at all with my glasses). Both Tridef and the ED drivers work fine (within their limitations), no slow-downs/unsynching at all; only IZ3D is unsynching (the performance problem is there even in anaglyph and other glassless modes).

Regarding my first problem, what I'm trying to do is to get a 3D non-interlaced image. The dongle automatically interlaces the image each time I switch to ON mode (with, as I said, turns the glasses on, which is the only way to make the glasses work). Normally I'd just play interlaced, but I know progressive works since I've done it cloning two displays (one crt for actually gaming, and the other one dedicated to the dongleto make the glasses work). The interlacing is caused by the dongle, no software-settings involved, so the gaming crt stays progressive. Sync is consistent between the cloned devices so there is no hardware-based desynchronization (works exactly as when playing interlaced with a single monitor).
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iondrive
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by iondrive »

OK,

It looks like your understanding is pretty good so far but you don't need the second monitor. Disconnect it and use the dongle on the main monitor. You should have 3 s3d viewing modes available to you with that device. One is interlaced and I see you understand that it does "line-blanking" to the display it's connected to. The hand control unit has two buttons in addition to the shutterglass "on/off" switch. The one marked "R" is to flip the sync of the glasses (reverse) and the one marked "M" is the one you need to use to stop the line-blanking. It cycles between 3 modes: interlaced, sync-doubling (over/under mode), and simple shutterglass mode. That's the one you want. Hit the "M" button and cycle through until you get a nice display with no line-blanking. Don't panic if your monitor goes black for a second or more, that's just the sync-doubling mode. Just hit the "M" button again when the monitor clicks. You don't have to wait for it to adapt to the new res. When the display looks normal, the glasses should be shuttering like you want now when the switch is on. I think it remembers which mode you're in so that you can switch the glasses off/on and you won't have to hit the "M" button anymore. Remember the "R" button if you need it but you can just use the "swap eyes" hotkey with iZ3D instead if you want.

You say "Both Tridef and the ED drivers work fine (within their limitations), no slow-downs/unsyncing at all" but that means you're using interlaced mode with them since they don't have simple shutterglass modes so that's why there's no sync-loss. You are having slowdown but just not noticing it. You can tell from the TriDef framerate counter and toggling s3d mode on/off and seeing the difference assuming that vsync is off and your game is not capping your fps at some too-low amount. If you use iZ3D in interlaced mode, then you will get similar "no-sync-loss" results but that's not what you want. You want to get rid of the line-blanking effect so after you're done trying simple shutterglass mode, try over/under-sync-doubling mode on your CRT. Here's how:

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=7056" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yes, in some games in simple shutterglass mode, when you look into the distance you start to get sync-loss and things start to flip like crazy or not so crazy. It's just that extra bit of rendering that pushes you under the fps limit with iZ3D. You were right to try and play at 60Hz with vsync off but the other thing that helps most is turning off anti-aliasing. You probably have that off already. Other than that, some games let you control your visibility distance. Yes I don't like that either and very rarely use it, but then I have a 3.2GHz CPU so that's an upgrade you might want to consider. 3Ghz CPU's should be good too and they are significantly cheaper than the 3.2's. Try 800x600 resolution. I think it's safe to stay in 32-bit color mode. I don't think switching to 16-bit color helps but I guess you could try it and report your findings. Always keep framerate displayed so you can gauge your performance except that in simple shutterglass mode it will try to lock to 1/2 refresh rate even if you set vsync to off. The newer iZ3D drivers may try to switch your refresh rate without your permission but there is a setting you can change if you need to. Version 1.10 does not do this so use that one for now.

--- iondrive ---

PS: wait, wait, before you change your setup, can you do a little test for me? Set your monitors into dual-monitor mode (different from clone mode) and use your shutterglasses to see if your monitors are still in perfect sync. I think you already know what I mean and how to do that. After you verify that your monitors can do that, then switch to horizontal spanning mode and run the iZ3D logo test (make sure it's set to fullscreen) and see if it stretches across both screens and is s3d in both screens. Right now I suspect that it will work for you. Make sure you use driver 1.10 so it doesn't try to change your freq. Then do the same for vertical spanning mode. If all those modes can stay in perfect sync with each other (freq and phase) then there's a chance that I might be able to make a hardware adapter that takes two video inputs and alternates the signal sending it to one monitor but it would only work with VGA connectors. Anyway, good luck and if you decide to not try these things, I won't hold it against you since you don't work for me. :)

PPS: You may find that line-blanking interlaced mode is acceptable with high res. Try TriDef's upscaling function. Set your desktop to run at 1600x1200 and set your game to 800x600. The upscaling will allow you see all 600 lines that the game generated since they are applied to 1200 lines now. Final trick: some games work with both drivers enabled. Try your game like above but with both drivers active, then disable TriDef s3d with the on-screen menu system or TriDef hotkey. iZ3D should now work in the upscaled res. It won't work with all games but at least some. Make a list of games you try and post it so we can let people know what works and what doesn't. All voluntary of course. Also since line-blanking darkens the screen and the shutterglasses do too, stick to games that are bright and colorful. They work much better than the dark games for this mode. Also turn up brightness/contrast/gamma in software/hardware as needed of course. I find I like to turn up digital vibrance too in order to make the colors more saturated and intense. Sorry to prattle on so much.
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

Thanks for your answer
I'm very, very sad to say that my dongle doesn't have any buttons at all, only the switch on the hand control :(
With the switch off I've found it impossible to activate the glasses, it seems it just shuts them off completely. A friend of mine bought the "same" (X3D) glasses from another seller, and reported than EDactivator works for him :shock: My dongle says 8039 while his says 8086, so I guess maybe I misses the "big" firmware update; his dongle seems exactly like mine, as seems by a picture he took (he lives in another city), but the glasses plastic frame is slightly different (almost unnoticeably); he sais his dongle doesn't have any buttons, too. I'll ask him if his control unit has any buttons beside the on/off switch). ¿Maybe the "M" button's solder pads are in my dongle's pcb just waiting to be soldered to a button? :?: Damn, I hate screw-less boxes :(
I might as well buy a new pair of glasses making sure I get the new firmware, then sell the old ones.
I want to get a 21" crt eventually, since 1280x1024 and higher resolution really look quite nice even when interlaced, just as you said. My 17" crts can only manage 85hz up to 1024x768, so flickering becomes unbearable at 1280x1024.

Regarding the performance issue, I've used the fps display to check framerates, and I think it's just too weird than Splinter Cell framerate suffers so much as Call of Duty 4 (they play smooth and suddenly drop to about half the usual framerate (from the smooth 1/2 to the choppy 1/4 of the refresh rate, and sometimes even worst). I mean, Splinter Cell is from 2002! It's not like my card will struggle with it.

I'll make the dual-monitor tests and report the results.

Thanks for your time!
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iondrive
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by iondrive »

OK, my mistake. I thought you were talking about x-force 3d glasses

http://xforce3d.com/wipcglki.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

since those are the only common ones I knew of with a hand control unit. The buttons I mentioned should be on that unit, not the dongle. Yes, it's possible the circuit board may have button spots on it but now I think you might be talking about these glasses:

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktop-monitor ... 02380.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

but I'm confused because I have those too and they don't have a switch. OK, so anyway you've got something I'm not that familiar with. My X3D dongle has no numbers on it. Just a logo saying "X3D Technologies" and "3d World". It does work with ED-Activator but not iZ3D's BLC line code. My X-Force3D dongle also has no number on it. It just says "AnotherWorld" and "Made in Korea". It does not respond to any activators, just the switches and buttons on the wired hand control unit. My X3D device has no physical controls.

Yeah, big sudden framedrops seem odd for a game from 2002. I can't really explain that unless there's some windows program that is suddenly waking up and taking CPU cycles but I don't think that's it if it just happens consistently when you look into the distance.

Oh yeah, shut off vsync. That should help you get framerates in between 1/2 and 1/4. I would shut it off both in the game and on the desktop video control panel. That really won't help that much since you'll still be below 1/2 but at least it won't step down to 1/4.

If you decide to get a new dongle, I suggest ordering directly from E-Dim since then you'll be more likely to get a modern one with blue-line-code support. I expect you could just order the dongle alone and use your current glasses with them. Your current dongle and glasses are just plain wired right, not wireless? The plug on the glasses should be like a regular small audio headphone jack plug.

OK, that's all I've got for you. Do you have a link pointing me to your dongle?

later,

--- iondrive ---
Walky
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

Well, a couple of days ago I got to know the truth about newer Nvidia cards and the DDC pin, which I was unaware of, and that explains a lot, so I guess there's no way to get actual page flipping except for some software trick (as far as I've read, that's only worked for 8800's so far :().

IZ3D's simple shutter mode unsynced at the slightest framerate drop because it uses the DDC pin's 0-5V page flipping signal (please correct me if I'm wrong) instead of the v-sync (which the dongle's uses); I tried IZ3D's interlaced mode and the image kept in sync.
COD 4 didn't feel so slow as before, so I guess shutter mode might be a little more CPU or GPU-intensive, or maybe it was just an illusion caused by the annoying lost of sync. Splinter Cell's framerate still drops, so I guess it must be some kind of driver's subtletly (videos don't show either, I don't know the format, but it seems like Bink). In short switching to interleaving actually "fixed" my problem; I'm still tied to interlaced, but getting a nice 21" CRT with high resolution might do the trick. I doubt it's worth messing with the dongle at this point.

Do glasses shutter twice as fast on interlaced mode as compared to DDC controlled page-flipping?
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cybereality
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by cybereality »

Walky wrote: Do glasses shutter twice as fast on interlaced mode as compared to DDC controlled page-flipping?
Interlaced and page-flip shutter at the same speed (whatever your refresh rate is).
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iondrive
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by iondrive »

Hi Walky,

iZ3D doesn't even use the DDC pin. It just tries its best to output frames as fast as it can up to the 1/2 refresh rate speed. So don't spend any time trying to get a DDC signal from your video card since it's not really there. nVidia did use the DDC pin for shutterglass control so that's probably what you've read about. The reason you never lose sync with interlaced mode is because it's easy for the driver to put left/right views on different parts of the screen. It's a physical location thing instead of a timing thing. As you know, the timing of the glasses is controlled by the dongle which gets triggered by the v-sync hardware signal so that's why they stay in sync with the monitor. The rest is done by the line-blanking function of the dongle and that too automatically stays in sync since it's a hardware thing. I hope that helps and I think that's all I've got for you. If you have a DLP projector, you can test it with your setup and if it works, it will look really bad with interlaced mode but then at least you'll know if that projector will work with other shutterglasses that you might get. Or else you could use your 2-monitor setup and play some less-demanding games with the projector as the non-interlaced game display.

--- iondrive ---
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

Wow, no DDC for IZ3D :shock:

I think I'll stay with IZ3D's interleaved mode (works fine). I understand how it works (even and odd lines make each eye's image), quite clever way to keep the sync :mrgreen:

I'd like to use white/blue line code, but it's not supported by my dongle. Maybe I can use a photodiode at the corner of my screen to detect the WLC signal (or a custom marked one, if I can figure that option out) and use it to trigger the glasses with a custom dongle, it shouldn't really be too hard to do. ¿Is +5VAC DC fine for this glasses? ¿how can I convert DC to an usable AC? (I read some guy used an oscillator, but I don't know how he implemented it and I don't want to kill my glasses). Maybe I'll just get the voltage from the dongle connected to the secondary unused vga port (as far as I remember, they remain blocking light if plugged into an unused port (they get voltage but no sync).

I can't wait to see how 3D gaming evolves since the latest 3D gaming "rebirth", I'm already amazed by the fact that there's already a 3d Vision clone (identical to Nvidia's one, but cheaper) at Dealextreme.com; I'm eager to read reviews about its performance, while hoping for new options for appear. I hope IZ3D decides to launch their own 3D glasses to use with their drivers.

120hz DLP projectors are getting cheaper lately, I hope to be able to get one in the future.
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iondrive
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by iondrive »

Hi again,

A VGA "Y" cable?
For a second there I thought I had a semi-good idea for you. You could use a VGA "Y" splitter cable and have one output go to your monitor and the other to your dongle but now I seem to remember that my VGA "Y" cables don't carry power on one of the pins that your dongle may need. Does your dongle have a separate plugin for power? So your monitor would not get its signal from the dongle in this case but your glasses would still be in sync with it. You would still have sync issues of course.

DepthCharge Viewer:
I wonder if you're willing to try something. By change I noticed something that I was trying and it has options for "old" and "new" H3D dongles. If your friend's dongle works with ED-Activator, then that's "new" and if yours doesn't then maybe it will work with the "old" color codes. If you want to test the idea, download and try DepthCharge Viewer 2.5 from Vrex:

http://www.vrex.com/depthcharge/DCInstaller_2_5.exe" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You'll find the viewing option easily without me telling you how/where. You can use this program with Firefox to help you view 3d screenshots. If you want, follow instructions for sView but substitute DepthCharge instead. At first I thought this was a cheapie little program but now I think it's good for interlaced users. Especially since sView doesn't have interlaced or BLC mode yet. Zalman users should check it out (hi cybereality :). Can your friend activate page-flipping mode with ED-Activator or can he only use interlaced? And what about Over/Under mode too?

Shutterglass signals:
These are more complicated than you might think. If you try just a 0 to 5 V square wave then it won't work good. One pair I have goes to +10V, then 0V, then -10V, then 0V like that and other glasses use a high frequency square wave on their wires and 24V peak-to-peak across the lenses. It looks like they need + and - voltages to work right. Still, other people have made custom BLC detectors but I don't have links for you now.

DLP projectors:
Actually, I was talking about non-3d-ready DLP projectors because they can work too but in my case I'm limited to 60, 72?, or 85 Hz max. Still, if you had one handy, I would definitely try it if I were you. You might find it awesome enough. It is for me. :)

OK, later,

--- iondrive ---
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

I misunderstood my friend, his dongle doesn't work with EDActivator after all.
My dongle takes its power from the VGA port. I think it should be easy to use the photodiode setup taking the power from the dongle's miniplug (my video card has two vga outputs: "real" vga, and the vga pins on the dvi port). As I said in my previous post, when no signal is being sent the glasses stay dark; so it should be enough to keep the dongle plugged in the unused port in order to get continuous "lcd ready" power from the dongle's miniplug without the need of cloning the display., and then use that power to drive the glasses with the photodiode and some simple components (NOT gate and little more). I'll been tinkering with IZ3D's markings, it doesn't seem too difficult really. I'll try to make a functional mock-up of this idea as soon as I finish a project I've been working on.

edit: oh, wait, we're talking of AC here, maybe it's not so simple then. My friend had success driving the glasses independently of the dongle, I'll ask him to help me with that.

I'll try DepthCharge Viewer anyway, maybe there's a slight chance that my dongle supports old codes, but the presence of the "glases on-off" switch on my dongle still makes me think it's quite unlikely.

I don't own a DLP projector, only an OHP with a 15" lcd on top of it, which looks very bright on 2D but dark as hell with glasses (polarization issues, I guess).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get this monster to replace my 17" monitor: http://www.monitorworld.com/Monitors/co ... 0_1023.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Check those specs!
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wuhlei
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by wuhlei »

you can lose sync in interlaced mode?
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Mymlan
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Mymlan »

Can you use the X3D dongle on a second port, while having your monitor plugged in through DVI?
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

wuhlei wrote:you can lose sync in interlaced mode?
At least not with these glasses, since they sync by v-sync and the dongle itself separate the even and odd fields to match each eye.
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Re: IZ3D + X3D glasses, a couple of problems

Post by Walky »

Mymlan wrote:Can you use the X3D dongle on a second port, while having your monitor plugged in through DVI?
You mean "real" DVI?, I'd bet it works, but I'd gain nothing with it, since only my lcd uses DVI and the glasses actually block it's light because of polarization (you can't see anything on the screen with the glasses on). It would still lower the glasses shuttering speed to the lcds refresh rate (75hz), so it's still a no-go. The dongle would still need an image coming out of it's port, so I'd still need to have a second monitor connected to the pc (defeats the whole point of this topic); unless there's a way to fool the NVidia drivers so you can clone the output without a second monitor being present. Please, if anyone knows how to do this I'll be very thankful.

On the other hand, when using a DVI-VGA adaptor it's just like having two VGA outputs, so no problems in that scenery.

I think I'll probably buy an ED dongle later, but I'm a little afraid of receiving one that doesn't work with BLC, even if I ask them first (ED's customer support doesn't seem to be good, as far as I've read). I still want to try the photodiode setup I mentioned in an earlier post, as soon as I have some spare time; I already managed to make a marking file of a white/black rectangle on the upper-left corner of the screen, it anyone needs it just ask and I'll post it.
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