My take on stereo 3d and the Gaming Experience

[fsp48]

I bought into nvidia with the 6800gt just for the fact it did a few things better that I wanted...stereo 3d was the main thing along with the option of dual screen gaming at least to experiment with.since the bezel is in the way. I had tried 3d back in the day when they gave LCD shutter glasses with some Nvidia cards. It was cool but my system back then was ATI and I never really got the stereo bug yet.

A few months ago I found I had some anaglyph red blue paper glasses laying around (good old swimsuit issue from who knows when) so I decided to try out the newest drivers with my triple head to go screens. Pretty much a racing/flying/fps gaming set up. PCs are 95% play with 5% work to justify needing them...at least for me. Anyway this test gave me a new WOW factor. Not since making a Fresnel boxed single screen had gaming looked so much more immersive.

Now it's almost 10 years since my first try of stereo 3d and since my anaglyph test was so cool to race and shoot with I built a new pretty fast system. I wanted the stereo to work faster and not chug down my new system. I picked a moderate budget with a Core2 duo e6750 OC'd it on stock air to 3.6 GHz with two 2 gig sticks of OCZ vu 800 OC'd to 900 and I went with the new G92 chip 8800gt. I even thought I'd move ahead and bought the LCD glasses to get some better effects and color. With this rig I could pick up with stereo 3d where I left off with the 6800gt....well wrong no drivers yet..so I thought till today.

After talking to Neil I started playing with the IZ3d drivers and had some decent results in anaglyph again...with the 8800gt no less while running a triple head to go set up. 1920x 480 up to 3840 x 1024. Depending on the game I may drop down to the lower res triple screen settings but set the game graphics on high to help keep the frame rate better and still looks crisp on my smaller 17" CRTs.

I really missed racing in stereo 3d and had a hard time going back to flat screen racing even with TrackIR and triple head to go. On my old system, as far as FPS goes, it was very cool with stereo in Fear although the cross hair was not right and ArmA ran at an unplayable to my specs framrate. I had high hopes with the new system to play in stereo with real glasses. Well the shutter glasses look useless at this time so I think they are going back for now.

I feel true 3d is the next step for graphics and gaming not to mention regular video media. The 3d in Beowulf was amazing. I have some points and questions that can hopefully get us moving along to the best gaming and hopefully least cost possible.

!. I think these new style screens look awesome but the cost keeps it a niche market for most and until you actually try it and catch the 3d bug to want it enough that can hold people back.

2. Does it seem that the majority of PC gamers are stubborn and tend to stick to what they are familiar with and or don't embrace drastic change or is it more that they just can't afford to spend any more on gaming.hardware? The latter seems to be the case for my brother who made the comment to me when he got an xbox 360..."I can't afford to PC game until I'm done with school because I don't want to have to turn down settings to play without all the eye candy, which would mean building a new system for 2000+ or a get a console for 400 now"

I love the latest tech toys & gadgets that are innovative and make a game/sim more fun and immersive. I really like my ultra wide screen of triple head to go but I like it best in stereo 3d. Better yet, if there were no bezels to adjust around also. I like the whole natural way of looking with a head tracker and aiming with the mouse which is slow to catch on in fps with the twitch players it seems. I would love to be able to have an accurate way to enjoy fps in a less sedentary way... more like VR at home without an HMD. How about a gyro mouse gun with a nostromo n52 on the side for the left hand and/or a dance mat to move around with? I think that's why the wii got so big. Even with bad graphics it can be to play because of the new approach to interaction. Add stereo 3d to the mix and how much better could it get?

Stereo 3d is the next big step but what can bring the cost of this new high end viewing down to mainstream prices?

With LCD's the norm other than rear projection 3d ready DLP HDTV's shutter glasses are done it seems.

Could there be a way to make an add-on LCD overlay panel for standard sized regular LCD's? Much like the touch screen overlay lets anyone make their monitor a touch screen?

I'm really looking into getting the IZ3d 22" but could a single ultrawide passive stereo 3d screen be made cost effective because the triple head to go does look really good and hard to give up?

[BlackQ]

Hi, fsp48!

Thank you for your detailed comments.

Yes, we understand the 3D is new and a bit "niche" at the moment, but we want to find the way to do gamers 2d-3d conversion. We know some similar stories like CRT to LCD conversion and b/w TV to color TV. And for these and many other similar stories chicken and egg problem was an issue. Risk prevented investments into scale manufacturing, small manufacturing gave high price, high price increased the risk of sales because of high prices.

So, answering your question about how better is 3D I can say that it is of course depends on your goals. If visuals are important for you I can suggest that 3D may make you experience better.

Q: Stereo 3d is the next big step but what can bring the cost of this new high end viewing down to mainstream prices?

Volume, volume and volume again. LCD started at 3x-4x from CRT price and caught 1% of market, then price wt down to 2.5x and it was 10% of market etc etc. 60-80 mln. LCD unit per year - this is industry volume today. To have 1% (ven counting 22" only) we need to sell about 10-20 thousands.

Q: With LCD's the norm other than rear projection 3d ready DLP HDTV's shutter glasses are done it seems.
Could there be a way to make an add-on LCD overlay panel for standard sized regular LCD's? Much like the touch screen overlay lets anyone make their monitor a touch screen?

Yes, we think about this idea, but there are three issues:
1. Touch screen has electronics much simple than common LCD and connection of add-on panel will be very complicated issue
2. Alignment is an issue - we need pixel to pixel alignment
3. We have diffuser between panels to prevent moire effect

I'm really looking into getting the IZ3d 22" but could a single ultrawide passive stereo 3d screen be made cost effective because the triple head to go does look really good and hard to give up?

It is hard to predict - if you are flight sim gamer or may be for racing three monitors around may be better than one even in 3D, but for most other games and apps my choice is 3D