New Questions For Vadim!

[Neil]

Ok! Some of this has been indirectly answered already, but here are some new questions for Vadim:

1. According to 2007 figures by the NPD Group, PC video game retail sales reached $911 million, and additional revenues earned from digital downloads have not been calculated. The console market earned $18 billion dollars in 2007. Do you think stereoscopic 3D technology is appropriate for today's console market? Why or why not?

2. A lot of companies are enamored by the console market and are trying to find ways to interface with it. Does iZ3D have a strategy on this front?

3. Some of the S-3D manufacturers are working on offering on the fly 2D/3D conversion in place of native or driver based stereoscopic 3D support as a console solution. What are your thoughts on this? Can you see iZ3D going this route? What do you think the industry ramifications are?

4. You dropped a bomb in our forums when you announced that iZ3D is going to be reselling your drivers for other solutions. To date, what solutions are you planning support for?

5. Your next driver release is 1.08. What new features are you implementing this time around?

6. Tell us about auto-convergence. What does it mean and how does it work? Can you give some scenarios that this feature will help with?

7. I understand you are going to be implementing a "profile manager". What does the profile manager do and how does it work?

8. Can you name some games you have fixed up since your 1.07 driver release?

9. The main criticism your monitor has received is "ghosting" or "crosstalk" between the eyes. While most have enjoyed the monitor without complaint, this is a challenge iZ3D has acknowledged and is working on. Can you explain how your monitor works and why this problem exists?

10. I understand that you are developing a new class of glasses to go with the monitor to overcome this challenge. Can you elaborate on how they will work and what progress have you made so far?

11. Can you describe the final result you are hoping to achieve? What will the color balancing be like between the eyes?

12. There are rumors stirring around about SLI and Crossfire support. What can you tell us?

13. On your core website, http://www.neurok.com, you ask the question "who is John Galt?" Why are you asking this, and how does the idea of John Galt relate to the stereoscopic 3D industry?

Vadim will answer these questions on Wednesday!

Regards,
Neil

[stee1hed]

For that John Galt line thing, here is a good brief explanation for those (like me) who didn't know who he was.

http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/whoisgalt.html

Awesome questions Niel!

[Welder]

For that John Galt line thing, here is a good brief explanation for those (like me) who didn't know who he was.

http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/whoisgalt.html

Awesome questions Niel!

Ahh thanks

I always wondered what that meant every time I saw Vadim Wearing a shirt that says that (Yes he has one )

[pixel67]

Very good questions, indeed! Can't wait to see some replies.

[CarlKenner]

So it means Vadim is a far right loony?

[Neil]

We will find out on Wednesday!

Regards,
Neil

[CarlKenner]

Wednesday will be too late. I am trying out his political theory. I have to invade Azerbaijan before sharky introduces government regulation to prevent the rich and powerful from abusing their power to brutally oppress the powerless. It sounds like BlackQ isn't a fan of that kind of regulation. So watch out Baku!

[crim3]

For that John Galt line thing, here is a good brief explanation for those (like me) who didn't know who he was.
http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/whoisgalt.html

Thanks! So... "Atlas shrugged"... It seems that unexpectly you have pointed me to a treasure this morning. Thank you.

[BlackQ]

BlackQ is not a fan of any governmental regulation! cu tomorrow!

[BlackQ]

Hi, everybody!

For simplicity I'll put one answer to each post.

1. According to 2007 figures by the NPD Group, PC video game retail sales reached $911 million, and additional revenues earned from digital downloads have not been calculated. The console market earned $18 billion dollars in 2007. Do you think stereoscopic 3D technology is appropriate for today's console market? Why or why not?

I think 3D is not ready for console market today. One of most important console feature is simplicity in everything: installation, manipulation etc etc. 3D is new thing and still require more actions to control 3D - convergence and separation are good example.

Another thing is that consoles are attached to TV in most cases (correct me if I'm wrong). 3D TV based on polarization technology would be very expensive at the moment because of size - thus we need to provide all or almost all console titles in 3D for customers in exchange of higher price. And here we are coming to the point that consoles are close platform under control of console makers and external 3D driver is not a possible things for consoles. To be successful with 3D on consoles we need to have:
1. Ready big size 3D device
2. Most of console titles in 3D ready form
and all of this at the same time....

With good will of any of console makers (Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo) we may have consoles in 3D not earlier than the end of 2009.

[BlackQ]

2. A lot of companies are enamored by the console market and are trying to find ways to interface with it. Does iZ3D have a strategy on this front?

Yes, we need to create firmware for consoles to run existing / future games in 3D (any form of left and right) - to do it we suppose to cooperate with console makers (other ways are impossible). We are going to create iZ3D TV in parallel with appropriate console input - all consoles have their own outputs. Then we can combine them together and send to retail store Firmware is a critical issue, but it is important to mention that console 3D has more requirement because user and user's head position is 100% free - thus 3D device has to be 3D from any point of living room

[BlackQ]

3. Some of the S-3D manufacturers are working on offering on the fly 2D/3D conversion in place of native or driver based stereoscopic 3D support as a console solution. What are your thoughts on this? Can you see iZ3D going this route? What do you think the industry ramifications are?

Even one of most powerful computer in the world - our brain - can not do 2d/3d conversion in thousand cases - universal solution is not possible and it can be proven based on the theory of information. For some specific cases you may have 2d/3d conversion based on some pre-defined data, but this is not about game and movies - we are pessimistic about this way and we are not going to spend our resources for this.

Even more I suppose this way may destroy 3D reputation as the way to make visual experience better...

[BlackQ]

4. You dropped a bomb in our forums when you announced that iZ3D is going to be reselling your drivers for other solutions. To date, what solutions are you planning support for?

As you know we supported three form of anaglyph already. We'll support two new formats in coming 1.08 version:
1. HMD or Projection
2. iZ3D Side-by-Side

First one is just pure left and right from each GPU output to run HMD, some 3D glasses and 3D projection system based on two projectors.

Second one is our "answer" to our customers request for CrossFire/SLI support. As you know problem is that both CrossFire / SLI doesn't support more than one output. ATI made step forward with CrossFireX and iZ3D works now on this configuration. To overcome one input issue iZ3D Side-By-Side mode will send wide frame with Back and Front image side by side and if you will add Matrox DualHeadToGo box to split this image to two stream you can connect your system to iZ3D to see 3D. This is not ideal solution, but we are trying to do our best.

[BlackQ]

5. Your next driver release is 1.08. What new features are you implementing this time around?

We fully changed Control Center interface to make it nice That's it - just kidding

New Control Center has better system to work with Profiles - no more XML editing - just simple interface to set up 3D for your favorite game.

Driver requires less memory now and faster for many games. A lot of bugs are eliminated (will see in ChangeLog)

Updater system is more safe now and can bring not only files / patches, but news also.

We also added OpenGL Quad Buffer mode support as part of corporate development.

I mentioned new outputs in previous post.

And finally one of most important thing: auto-convergence to keep convergence / separation comfortable when user if far or close to the object, including process of aiming.

[BlackQ]

6. Tell us about auto-convergence. What does it mean and how does it work? Can you give some scenarios that this feature will help with?

Feature itself is very simple. You have your enemy in 100 ft from you and 3D is fine - you'll kill him and next will arrive from the left in 10 ft from you - 3D would be worse because of different distance - you can change convergence separation manually, but this is not comfortable - with auto-convergence driver will do it automatically.

Another sample is aiming using optics - object is at far distance, but with optics it is much close - you don't need to change convergence / separation now every time you are aiming now.

But there are a lot of parameters for this feature we may need to tune, including:
1. area of analysis - size of area to check 3D correlation
2. speed of changing convergence / separation
3. acceleration of of changing convergence / separation

We want to have this feature fast enough, but we don't need "shmmering" bcause of user active movement. We need big area for analysis, but it will slow up changes implementation - so, we need your opinion to find balance between all 3 points

[BlackQ]

7. I understand you are going to be implementing a "profile manager". What does the profile manager do and how does it work?

This is our dream and our pain There are thousands games with different levels, guns, objects, textures etc. It is clear that even with hundreds people in R&D and support we have not chance to correct all of them - you need to go through whole game sometimes to correct some artifacts - we can not jump from level 1 to level 40.

There are two scenarios here:

1. ask game developers to write games correctly for 3D - possible, but not simple, long and not possible for old games.
2. give users power to correct artifacts - this is all about Profiler idea.

Imagine you have game with XYZ artifact on level 33 - doubled shadows or wrong minimap - you'll run Profiler and point to "wrong" object and Profiler will propose you some way to cure it. For example, you have double element of interface - number of lives you have - Profiler will propose you to make it mono or render at different Z level.

Sounds simple - but it will require a lot of work to do... - we are thinking how to do it fast and effective way.

[BlackQ]

8. Can you name some games you have fixed up since your 1.07 driver release?

What I remember is:
1. Steam Community works now
2. Hitman Blood Money
3. There
4. EQ 2
5. NWN 2

corrected by Profile:
1. LOTR Online
2. D&D Online
3. Silent Hunter

Full list will be in ChangeLog after release

[BlackQ]

9. The main criticism your monitor has received is "ghosting" or "crosstalk" between the eyes. While most have enjoyed the monitor without complaint, this is a challenge iZ3D has acknowledged and is working on. Can you explain how your monitor works and why this problem exists?

iZ3D consists of two LCD panels: back one to control light intensity, front one - for polarization angle control. We use linear polarization.

Intensity control is fine - no problem there. In theory polarization angle control has to be fine too if LCD panel will follow theory Theory said that polarization has to rotate from 0 to 90 degree for any color and has to be linear. Reality is:

1. not from 0 to 90, but from 0 to to less than 90
2. not the same for R, G and B
3. not linear, bit elliptical after front panel

Thus part of light goes to wrong eye, because of 1-3 reasons and generates "ghosting" or "crosstalk". This is less visible for blue color and more visible for red - thus images with more red components have more ghosting

[BlackQ]

10. I understand that you are developing a new class of glasses to go with the monitor to overcome this challenge. Can you elaborate on how they will work and what progress have you made so far?

11. Can you describe the final result you are hoping to achieve? What will the color balancing be like between the eyes?

I'll make an exception and answer two questions as one. Yes, we are going to make new glasses with compensation layer to:
1. compensate "undertwist" for each color to each 90 degree
2. press ellipse of polarization to convert it back to line

We know two materials which are doing this if layer parameters are correct. We did some modeling with initial samples of these layers and now order new layers sample with, as we think, right parameters. IF new test will be fine then we can go and start discussion in manufacturing process with our glasses supplier.

We modified glasses we suppose to kill two birds by one stone - reach color balance (because polarization rotation for all colors would be the same) and ghosting minimizing because ellipse and undertwist correction

[BlackQ]

12. There are rumors stirring around about SLI and Crossfire support. What can you tell us?

I've partially answered this question already. I think SLI and CrossfFire support are important for 3D industry - we are rendering a lot and we need more power - and I can not see any reason to block GPU outputs. I'm appreciated AMD/ATI step with CrossFireX and I hope nVidia will follow this line

[BlackQ]

13. On your core website, http://www.neurok.com, you ask the question "who is John Galt?" Why are you asking this, and how does the idea of John Galt relate to the stereoscopic 3D industry?

Sense of this question for me is to confirm people intention to build their our life by them self - and this is a reason why I've never answered this question to anybody, but proposed to find the answer. It is also kind of password to recognize libertarians in community So, 3D is new industry and I suppose we need to build our industry ourself and rule it before other people will try to decide what is the best way for 3D and will try to push us to follow this way by laws, standards etc etc

[BlackQ]

I'm going to change my office to my home office now and it will take 1-2 hours to go through wet snow roads here in Moscow. I'll be back then to continue... cu later!

[Neil]

13. On your core website, http://www.neurok.com, you ask the question "who is John Galt?" Why are you asking this, and how does the idea of John Galt relate to the stereoscopic 3D industry?

Sense of this question for me is to confirm people intention to build their our life by them self - and this is a reason why I've never answered this question to anybody, but proposed to find the answer. It is also kind of password to recognize libertarians in community Smile So, 3D is new industry and I suppose we need to build our industry ourself and rule it before other people will try to decide what is the best way for 3D and will try to push us to follow this way by laws, standards etc etc Smile

Hi BlackQ!

Ok, I think I agree with a lot that you are saying here, and I think it's important to differentiate standards from the people who make the standards.

Before I founded MTBS, I took a good look at our industry's biggest problems first before thinking of solutions. We already had a free for all for over ten years! We had no focus, there were multiple products without consistency or shared vision, there was no relationship between the game developers and S-3D manufacturers, and the forums were filled with dissatisfied S-3D fans. Nothing could get accomplished, nothing WAS accomplished. A lot of wasteful unfocused energy that set us back, not forward.

The second issue is S-3D game development had a proprietary nature from the game developers' point of view. Will the game work on all solutions or just one?

NVIDIA played an active role with their stereoscopic 3D programming guide, but this was part of the problem. Their guide was targeted strictly for NVIDIA S-3D drivers, and had limited to no baring on other driver solutions in the market. From a game developer's point of view, even though NVIDIA had an S-3D programming guide, its nature was proprietary. The message was that NVIDIA drivers support multiple solutions, but the drivers are NVIDIA only, and therefore you are only programming for 30% of the market. The image of S-3D is falsely niche market enough, so how is it beneficial for game developers to see our industry as fragmented and proprietary?

Now, who should determine the standards? I think that's where things get interesting. I think that it was appropriate for NVIDIA to determine standards when they were the only player in town, but that is no longer the case. In fact, it's impossible for them to determine standards, even under their "The Way It's Meant to Be Played" tag-line because 100% of their efforts will always be proprietary and focused on their own S-3D fraction of licensed brand-name products.

Microsoft? I hope not. It would be good to see them implement a DirectX S-3D component, but I don't think they possess the passion for S-3D to make the standards stick in a timely manner. NVIDIA had more to gain than Microsoft, and their efforts didn't succeed for whatever reason, so we have to learn from this.

This is why the first thing I did after the website was launched was release the MTBS Stereoscopic 3D Programming Guide. It's non-proprietary in that we recognize multiple driver solutions, and game developers have a somewhat focused rendering structure or ideal that meets the needs of multiple solutions. I suppose the guide represents standards in that it takes into account multiple solutions on the market and finds the common ground for best results. We just got published by SPIE as "Programming Standards For Effective S-3D Game Development" here:

http://spiedigitallibrary.aip.org/dbt/d ... 800+-+6899

We are updating again shortly too.

I see MTBS as the catalyst for the community and diversified industry to establish and encourage programming standards or ideals that will yield the best S-3D results for everyone. I'm sure your driver developers would have an easier time if this was adopted, no? If it takes you a day to correct a single game, how much time would be saved if game developers followed simple rendering ideals?

Regards,
Neil

[MrHugoHugo]

My 2cent:

What Niel is saying about the difference of standards vs. a single proprietary solutions is spot on. A good example I guess is the resently decided difference in HD dvd solutions; blue ray beeing the winner. But you cannot really talk about one unified standard now. Its just that one solution won the battle. On the one hand this might be good because of easier customer choise and cheaper production of hd dvd players, on the other hand you will have to pay for the fact of there beeing one company in charge (beeing a monopolist).

If you wanna talk about standards i guess something like the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a good guideline. Here we have I heterogeneous group who is genuine(ly?) interessted in establishing common ground for futher development for the sake of all partisipating parties (developers, consumers, etc...). If you ask me, MTBS3D comes close to that for the s3d culture (I do not want to you use the word market here, because I like to think about it as more than that; espacially thins mtbs3d.com!). But having said that I of course have to add, that s3d is much more fun than web programming

One technical questions at the end: Will there be a extra drop in framerate in the planed workaround for sli/crossfire solutions with iz3d? Or is the dual output vs. one single split images the same?

Thx Antony

[BlackQ]

Hi, Neil!

The best standards always will come from free and open competition. Ruling industry is good for companies and bad for customers - I'm not a big fan of Blu-Ray or HD DVD, but I have no choice Do you think it is good? What is about 200-300 thousands people he decided in favor of one which canceled now But this is not a worst case - market made his choice - fine for me. But if XYZ government will decide to allows Blu-Ray only - then we have bad situation.

Even more - do you think that it is a good situation to say that only polarization based 3D is standard - others have to be eliminated??? We. you, me, our friends from MTBS community can decide ourself what is the best for us - this is my point - we don't need anybody's help

[BlackQ]

Hi, MrHugoHugo!

Yes, agree with you 100%

No difference in fps!! for two output and single wide, BUT!

1. single wide need 2*1680*1050*32bits*60Hz ... you need Dual Link DVI to keep this stream (most of modern cards have it)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVI

2. this stream (wide single) goes to Matrox box - no frame rate drop in theory, but ..
"All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green"

[Neil]

The best standards always will come from free and open competition. Ruling industry is good for companies and bad for customers - I'm not a big fan of Blu-Ray or HD DVD, but I have no choice Smile Do you think it is good? What is about 200-300 thousands people he decided in favor of one which canceled now Smile But this is not a worst case - market made his choice - fine for me. But if XYZ government will decide to allows Blu-Ray only - then we have bad situation.

Even more - do you think that it is a good situation to say that only polarization based 3D is standard - others have to be eliminated??? Smile We. you, me, our friends from MTBS community can decide ourself what is the best for us - this is my point - we don't need anybody's help Smile

100%! You have hit the nail on the head for me. This isn't about standards or the way things are done - that's just the result of the core issue. The real core issue up for discussion is empowerment.

In your opinion, what are the best ways for MTBS members to demonstrate empowerment, and what actions take that empowerment away? Why?

MTBS members can answer this too - there are no right and wrong answers here.

Regards,
Neil

[CarlKenner]

There are always right and wrong answers. We just don't necessarily know which is which.

I think Neil is wrong. The standard MUST come from Microsoft. At least as far as Direct3D is concerned. The ONLY way you are supposed to talk to the graphics hardware is through Direct3D, OpenGL, and the old Windows GDI functions. And it is Microsoft who controls most of those interfaces, and the device driver interface. Microsoft needs to develop a standard API and driver interface for stereoscopic hardware, just like they do for every other kind of hardware.

And it is up to MTBS3D.com to be the force pressuring Microsoft to do that, and explaining how best to do that.

BlackQ is totally wrong about his extremist politics. Some of it may make a tiny amount of sense in the former soviet republics, where governments were and are unbelievably corrupt and incompetent, but it makes absolutely no sense in the rest of the world. It is just a lunatic ideology he has been indoctrinated with, an ideology that should be treated with the exact same utter contempt that it urges us to treat society with. His ideology makes racism and sexism look progressive in comparison.

It would have been excellent if governments had ruled that BlueRay should be the standard. People have wasted massive amounts of money on HD DVD because nobody knew what the standard was going to be. We still ended up with the same result, but flushed tons of money down the toilet in the process, and left some customers with worthless pieces of junk.

By the way... currently I can make software to natively support all stereoscopic output formats except three:
* DDC VGA Glasses (because only the graphics card driver has control over the DDC pin and which frame is presented when)
* Frame sequential (same problem as above)
* iZ3D (because they insist on controlling who can write software for their devices)

Is there any chance of iZ3D providing some way for everyone to write software for the iZ3D?

[zebrastealer]

The Cold War is over Carl. Chill out.

[Neil]

Holy cow, Carl! That's a bit personal, no?

What is it about empowerment that strikes you as being extremist?

I think you are half right. I don't like the idea of creating pressure. Pressure means you are making someone do something without them wanting it to happen. How good a job would Microsoft do under those circumstances? Where would this appear on their priority list? No. It has to be a positive working relationship where it is THEM that has a eureka moment. We tried an MTBS advocacy program before, and the difference between what we did and what you are describing is our efforts were focused on positive energy. I'm hearing torches and pitchforks from you, and I just don't see how that's the way to go.

I don't think anyone likes being told what to do. I think the first response to being told what to do is to dismiss and deflect. Microsoft is no different. Asking, prodding, encouraging - these are the words that will drive industry growth.

Now, if our efforts demonstrate the demand and benefits of S-3D and the benefits of supporting S-3D, then that is what will make S-3D a success. Then Microsoft will say "Hey, MTBS! What do you need?" That's the relationship we want.

Finally, don't be so quick to hand the industry's family jewels over to Microsoft. I have to find the interview, but even the developers of Unreal 3 are questioning the long term relevance of DirectX in PC gaming. I think it was on tomshardware.com, so if someone could find it, I'd be appreciative.

As for the iZ3D bit, I'll leave that to BlackQ.

Regards,
Neil

[CarlKenner]

It is not personal. There are probably a million loony Ayn Rand followers, and the criticism applies to their ideology as a whole, not just to BlackQ.

The obvious problem with "empowerment" in the far right sense is that it never includes the main source and kind of power, which is money. That kind of power is considered seperate and some kind of natural reward for virtuousness. Their aim is to remove the restrictions on what the rich and already far too powerful people can do to affect the lives of others, without removing the restrictions on what the poor can do with their own lives. The other problem is that it is simply an outright lie, and they only plan on empowering people to do what they tell them they can do. It might not seem so extreme in the USA, which encourages that kind of nonsense, but in many other countries that kind of libertarian philosophy is quite rare, even among hardcore anarchists.

Whether you like creating pressure or not, that is your job. And it is what you already do. You don't need torches and pitchforks to pressure companies to support stereoscopic 3D hardware. (Although if you want to try the torches and pitchforks technique I am open to giving it a go, especially with Microsoft). You just have to get a bunch of hardware vendors together along with mtbs3d, and put forward joint letters to Microsoft explaining the need for supporting their hardware, and explaining how important and popular it is with gamers and other consumers. It has been done successfully before in an earlier version of DirectDraw.

If you look at the stereoscopic 3D support in OpenGL, it is only a single function... glDrawBuffer. You pass in a single parameter saying whether to draw to the left buffer, the right buffer, or both.

The only problem with OpenGL's stereoscopic 3D support is that it has been traditionally used for business and professional applications, where stereoscopic 3D is a vital requirement for things like viewing the shapes of molecules, visualising multi-dimensional data, engineering, etc. These people will pay through the nose for stereoscopic 3D. So graphics card makers decided to only support this API on their expensive professional graphics cards (Quadro in the case of nvidia). There is no technical reason for this, as you know any nvidia card can do 3D, but they only wanted to add that API to their driver on professional cards to make more money. Then of course because you needed an expensive professional card for that API to work, games weren't written to take advantage of that API. And because games didn't take advantage of it, it continued to be seen as a professional feature and made only available on professional cards.

That is not an issue for Direct3D. Partly because it is primarily a gaming API, but mostly because it is compulsory for hardware vendors to support the entire Direct3D feature set for all versions from 10 upwards. It isn't compulsory for games to use the features unfortunately, but they would be there for any game developer that wants to use them.

[Neil]

It is not personal. There are probably a million loony Ayn Rand followers, and the criticism applies to their ideology as a whole, not just to BlackQ.

The obvious problem with "empowerment" in the far right sense is that it never includes the main source and kind of power, which is money. That kind of power is considered seperate and some kind of natural reward for virtuousness. Their aim is to remove the restrictions on what the rich and already far too powerful people can do to affect the lives of others, without removing the restrictions on what the poor can do with their own lives. The other problem is that it is simply an outright lie, and they only plan on empowering people to do what they tell them they can do. It might not seem so extreme in the USA, which encourages that kind of nonsense, but in many other countries that kind of libertarian philosophy is quite rare, even among hardcore anarchists.

In the stereoscopic 3D industry, do you see yourself as the poor? Do you see yourself as the victim? If these are the thoughts you have, it's only from the point of view that it is your stereoscopic 3D experience that is impacted in the end. The lie is that you can't do anything about it. Seeking Microsoft as the holy grail solution is part of that lie.

The path you describe is too direct to work. Microsoft doesn't answer to us because we aren't their customers (from a DirectX point of view). Microsoft will, however, respond to the game developers. In turn, the game developers will respond to us given the right motivation. If we get a few key game developers to take a direct interest in S-3D from us demonstrating a large community of S-3D enthusiasts or people interested in S-3D in gaming, then the dominoes will fall where needed.

It's important that the S-3D manufacturers join forces with MTBS to get a strong positive message out to the industry and provide the resources needed to give us the tools needed to grow, because it's the members that are the measuring stick of how important S-3D is in the consumer markets, and THAT is what will move things forward.

Regards,
Neil

[warface]

Hi CarlKenner,

I find that your argument holds some very strong feelings to it.

I will be honest.....I have to disagree with your thoughts on there always being some kind of standard. If governments made a choice of what "the standard" should be, our economy would fail. If there is a standard for something, then there is no competition which turns into a monopoly type of economy. There should always be some kind of chance to business. If business and consumers don't take chances in their spending, then the economy becomes stale. New ideas or new variations of the same product are the lifeblood of a buyer. It empowers the buyer to make a choice....not the government or the business.

iZ3D is not controlling who can write software for their drivers. iZ3D is not letting anyone write software for their drivers. Their drivers are very secure because their the one's that are putting the money into making them. There are too many other companies that are trying to leach. You should have no problem with companies being secure with their assets. This is a clear lack of understanding, on your part, of good business.

As a last note, who says that iZ3D controls who can write software for their devices? Where was this written? When was this said?

I believe iZ3D has a pretty open relationship with their users or potential users. I'm sure that if you sent them an email or letter with your intentions, they would probably reply with some common ground both of you could stand on. Either through NDA or otherwise.

Don't assume that any company is as closed off as Microsoft. That's a pretty hefty assumption on your part.

[MrHugoHugo]

Hi warface,

I can agree. But I think it actually goes far beyond what your were saing.
The change your are referring to affects governments too, or at least should affect them too. Because a standard is nothing more than common ground. And governments are charged with the duty of making sure that this common ground is respect by everyone (living in this region of earth; the boundaris of that nation state). For that the government - elected by the people - centralizes all physical power to - if necessary - control this common ground (called laws). But those common grounds are man made, based on the belives, norms and ethics of the people. If those change the government will change, if it does not, or if it does on its own against the will of the people - in an ideal world - it will be overthrown.
What I am trying to say is that standards can not be made but only be agreed upon. They are not god given and people will not follow them willingly if you can not assure their affection towards you ideas by setting strong incentives.

So I agree with Niel when he is saying that our way should be by setting those incentives with game developers in the form of beeing a hugh (open minded, active, cheerful ) cash Piñata waiting to be whacked open
I guess in a way that is what CarlKerner was referring to by the power of money?! But I have to strongly disagree with his notion of BlackQ opinion beeing worse than racism or sexism ?!?! Sorry but that statement really has taken me aback... and I can only hope that Vadim is not taken this personally!

Cheers Antony

[BlackQ]

wow! such an interesting discussion

Yes, I'm from former Soviet union but I'm spending my time 90% worldwide - in US, Europe and Asia - no big difference for me what kind of government we are talking about - they are the same give the finger, they'll eat whole hand

And I'm totally agree the economy need to waste and spend resources to try different things - yes, it is not effective in term of one choice, but it is very stable in term of preventing potential error which can be easily made by government and were made many times in many countries. Please raise hands who want to be in a group of "guy who choice standard which was rejected"?

And Ayn Rand idea was about this - you like standardizations - do it, but live me alone or explain me and push be to believe in your standard. but don't use governmental power monopoly against me.

And finally about iZ3D driver - believe you or not - but we even discussion open source driver model - but it is not so simple - you need to have critical mass of developers and user to do it. And, of course, warface is right, for small company on new market this way is financially very hard. Small company on established market or big company on new market can do this. If need follow warfrace we are open to cooperate with everybody in software development - sView, MyAlbum are few know sample - some more will come for general public soon. And we have dozens corporate developers doing medical, modeling, mapping and other software too. If you like to go - contact me and I'll send you our algorithm under NDA for free with no charge for any license. Yes, it is only thing we can do at the moment - but feel free to give me more ideas about this - would like to try

[stee1hed]

Yes, quite a discussion indeed! Turning away from it for a moment I wanted to send my support for the following question/answer...

9. The main criticism your monitor has received is "ghosting" or "crosstalk" between the eyes. While most have enjoyed the monitor without complaint, this is a challenge iZ3D has acknowledged and is working on. Can you explain how your monitor works and why this problem exists?

iZ3D consists of two LCD panels: back one to control light intensity, front one - for polarization angle control. We use linear polarization.

Intensity control is fine - no problem there. In theory polarization angle control has to be fine too if LCD panel will follow theory Theory said that polarization has to rotate from 0 to 90 degree for any color and has to be linear. Reality is:

1. not from 0 to 90, but from 0 to to less than 90
2. not the same for R, G and B
3. not linear, bit elliptical after front panel

Thus part of light goes to wrong eye, because of 1-3 reasons and generates "ghosting" or "crosstalk". This is less visible for blue color and more visible for red - thus images with more red components have more ghosting

It is so exciting for me to hear the technical details behind the issue. That just reassures me that it can be improved upon since the cause is known.

I can't wait!!!