Review of latest iz3d drivers

[chilledsanity]

With iz3d's recent release of their generic drivers (1.07.0027). I've gone and done some experimenting and wanted to share my results here. First off, my system specs are a Geforce 7950, Windows XP w/ SP2, AMD Athlon 3400+, 2GB of RAM. I was using the 169.21 Forceware drivers for the sake of this test, after uninstalling my all my other display/S-3D drivers and running driversweeper. All tests were done in anaglyph mode since that's the only version I could run. All tests were done on DirectX 8 and 9 games, just me picking random games I had available, many of which are a few years old. Here are the results I had:

Playable games:

Counter Strike Source - works great
Darkstar One - works pretty well
Dungeon Lords - works well, slight HUD problems
Deus Ex (with custom DX8.1 dll) - works great
FEAR Combat - works great
Gothic 3 - distance rendering a little off, but still good
Half Life 2: Episode 2 - works great
Prince of Persia: The Sands of time - had to disable some effects then it worked fine
The Thing - works great


Unplayable games:

Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 - crash on load
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 - everything shrouded in extreme fog, can't make out menu/backgrounds
Max Payne - won't start
Portal - crash on menu
SiN Episodes: crash on menu
Scrapland - crash on start
Unreal Tournament 2004 - works on logo, causes load screen to hang indefinitely

It could be the games I chose, but unfortunately the ratio of games I could get to run v. those that didn't wasn't so good. Also one thing I didn't notice at first that bugged me later is how the iz3d drivers handle convergence. On the Nvidia drivers, the angle is changed for each eye to you can adjust the level of your depth. With the iz3d drivers, the image for the right eye is left unchanged from the original 3D image, and only the left eye's angle is adjusted. While the depth was good, this created an odd effect and caused some strain on one of my eyes after a while.

While I commend iz3d's efforts and am willing to retest any of the games if there is some fix I don't know about, right now I have to conclude that the results are a little disappointing for me. I would be willing to pay for stereoscopic drivers, but they would need a higher compatibility ratio than this. Also the way that the drivers handle convergence is a turn-off as well.

[Likay]

Regarding portal (and maybe other source-engine games as well): Be sure to have ingame resolution at 1680x1050. This helped me. Since Sin episodes also is such games you can try with that too.

cheers

[LukePC1]

Also one thing I didn't notice at first that bugged me later is how the iz3d drivers handle convergence. On the Nvidia drivers, the angle is changed for each eye to you can adjust the level of your depth. With the iz3d drivers, the image for the right eye is left unchanged from the original 3D image, and only the left eye's angle is adjusted. While the depth was good, this created an odd effect and caused some strain on one of my eyes after a while.

I read that you can change, which perspective is changed. You can select left or righ eye or both. Unfortunatly I don't know, how to achieve this. Maybe the manuel'd help, but I'd like to have it in the controll panel.

I think the reason that only one eye is shifted is, that you have the crosshair for one eye completly normal, so you can aim correctly.
But in racing games this doesn't make a real sense, because you see the track from the side

[chilledsanity]

Likay: I don't have the actual monitor, these tests are being done on a regular 21" CRT in anaglyph mode. I doubt I even support that resolution since it's not a 4x3 one.

LukePC1: Yeah there doesn't seem to be any reason not to have that as an option. If I could have both enabled, that would retract all my statements about the convergence. As for a crosshair, I usually turn that off in S-3D anyway. I play it because it's more immersive, not because it gives me a gaming advantage.

[Welder]

Odd that you could not get UT2K4 Working, we use that as one of our primary test games, and use it for pretty much every demo we do.

You may want to try going in game without our drivers enabled, and try to set the resolution in-game as the same as your desktop resolution and see if that helps.

[chilledsanity]

Welder: I can get into the menu, but I tried to run a map and it just hangs in the load screen, occasionally flashing between bright and not and stays there forever. Disabling the iz3D drivers doesn't fix the problem at all. I have to actually uninstall them before the game will work normally again. And it already was the same as my desktop resolution/depth.

[Welder]

Welder: I can get into the menu, but I tried to run a map and it just hangs in the load screen, occasionally flashing between bright and not and stays there forever. Disabling the iz3D drivers doesn't fix the problem at all. I have to actually uninstall them before the game will work normally again. And it already was the same as my desktop resolution/depth.

Hm, I have never heard of that issue before. You don't currently have the nVidia stereo drivers installed at the same time do you?

Also, good news! You can adjust how the camera is shifted.

Refer to the post here: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... c&start=45

[chilledsanity]

Cool I'll doublecheck the settings on that for the camera shift. And no, I didn't have Nvidia's drivers installed at the time. I intentionally uninstalled those and the 162.18 drivers so I could install the latest ones off Nvidia's site.

[sean_skroht]

I would like to put in my two bobs worth in regard to the latest iZ3D beta drivers.

I concur with chilledsanity regarding his review of the driver, but there is a problem that I have discovered. Counter Strike Source does not work in anaglyph 3D on Windows XP x64 (but it does in 32 bit Windows).

I run a Geforce 8800GTS 512 and im using Forceware 174.74 on Windows x64. The release notes for the iZ3D driver state that it will work on x64, and it does - Half Life 2 works, but Counter Strike Source refuses to work. I don't know if the devs read these forums but hopefully they can fix this little problem up. Would it also be possible in some way to put in a feature to alter the red/blue shades so that we can calibrate these colours to our anaglyph glasses?

I am new to these drivers and this forum so maybe you already can. Any suggestions?

Thanx