IZ3D laser sight?

Post by **BlackShark** » Thu May 15, 2008 3:01 pm

I just see like lawndart and LCountach. The crossair on the non-aiming eye disturbs my aiming.
As long as i stay concentrated on the correct crossair, it's fine, but when i look at something else (like the scenery, etc...), at some point i just end up looking at the wrong crossair and for just a second my aiming eye and non-aiming eye switch roles and that hurts. You see crossair that shouldn't be there, and which you know isn't there, but you can't get rid of it. It's the same kind of feeling as when you have some pop-out effect very close to the edge of the screen.

But i don't really like the laser pointer thing, i believe the constant movement of the laser depth would distract me. I like the iZ3D way. I just wish i could have that crossair completely switched off on the non-aiming eye. since it's not accurate, it shouldn't be displayed.

Post by **crim3** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:21 am

BlackShark wrote:I just wish i could have that crossair completely switched off on the non-aiming eye. since it's not accurate, it shouldn't be displayed.

They can't hide the inaccurate crosshair 'cos there is only one crosshair!

Post by **yuriythebest** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:59 am

crim3 wrote:
BlackShark wrote:I just wish i could have that crossair completely switched off on the non-aiming eye. since it's not accurate, it shouldn't be displayed.
They can't hide the inaccurate crosshair 'cos there is only one crosshair!

yup- put your index finger in front of your eyes, focus on something far away and ask to hide your doublefinger

Post by **LukePC1** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:54 am

yuriythebest1 wrote:
crim3 wrote:
BlackShark wrote:I just wish i could have that crossair completely switched off on the non-aiming eye. since it's not accurate, it shouldn't be displayed.
They can't hide the inaccurate crosshair 'cos there is only one crosshair!
yup- put your index finger in front of your eyes, focus on something far away and ask to hide your doublefinger

it would be possible, if they show the crosshair (and maybe allt he hud) to ONE eye only. It wouldn't have any depth, but it wouldn't distract anymore, would it?

Post by **crim3** » Fri May 16, 2008 10:08 am

But it's the game what is rendering the crosshair. You would need to hack it.

Post by **yuriythebest** » Fri May 16, 2008 10:11 am

crim3 wrote:But it's the game which is rendering the crosshair. You would need to hack it.

yup. and that would lead to iz3d-ready modded games which is a very ineffective - and that will lead you down the novint falcon road.

Post by **Welder** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:45 pm

Hello,

There are settings for how to draw the crosshair in our config file

Either left, right, or both.

It was mentioned in Page 2 of this thread.

Did that make any difference to you?

Post by **BlackShark** » Fri May 16, 2008 1:24 pm

Welder wrote:Hello,
There are settings for how to draw the crosshair in our config file
Either left, right, or both.
It was mentioned in Page 2 of this thread.
Did that make any difference to you?

On page two it's eye displacement to get the crosshair accurate on one eye by "not-moving" one eye from it's original location.

What i'm asking now it to "not-draw" the innacurate crosshair.

Last time i used the nvidia driver and the lasersight feature it was long ago on ut99. And i remember that the original crossair from the game was removed and the laser displayed instead.
iZ3D is able to intercept draw calls from any element in the game, it's also able to identify them and either display them in 2d or 3d or do some other stuff with it.

What i would like iZ3D to do is to identify the crosshair draw call (and save it in the game profile), and only draw it on the accurate eye and not on the other one. Of if it's not possible to isolate just the crosshair, then isolate the whole hud.

Post by **Nobsi** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:32 pm

What i would like iZ3D to do is to identify the crosshair draw call (and save it in the game profile), and only draw it on the accurate eye and not on the other one. Of if it's not possible to isolate just the crosshair, then isolate the whole hud.

It is my understanding that the iZ3D wrapper would exactly be able to do that, as they are able to identify screen elements by used shader etc. In UT3 some scene elements were initially drawn in mono instead of stereo because of double use of a shader for the HUD and some objecs, and they could simply fix that with a profile update.

So I think that would be the next best solution after the laser sight, which I still prefer!

And i remember that the original crossair from the game was removed and the laser displayed instead.

The nvidia driver was not able to remove the original crosshair, but you could actually disable it in the game settings. That was a main problem with the laser sight: Many games did not allow to switch of the original cross hair, which was then irritating. I think iZ3D could do this better.

Post by **Welder** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:39 pm

Not sure if it's possible, and if it is, the only option would be to draw the crosshair on the back panel only.

Because, the front panel has no color at all, so a crosshair drawn only there would not be possible.

I'll let BlackQ(Vadim) know about this post.

Post by **LukePC1** » Fri May 16, 2008 3:41 pm

Welder wrote:Not sure if it's possible, and if it is, the only option would be to draw the crosshair on the back panel only.

Because, the front panel has no color at all, so a crosshair drawn only there would not be possible.

I'll let BlackQ(Vadim) know about this post.

could you modify the front panel so, that it is only displayed to one eye? Then that's the solution, if you can't change the depth...

Post by **BlackQ** » Fri May 16, 2008 4:19 pm

Hi, guys!

Crosshair can be drawn by hundreds different way - it is a part of the game - do you want to have both eyes open and see crosshair in one only? reason? do you want to have bullets go to the center of crosshair or just to somewhere? First we need to have an agreement about key elements:
1. aiming: one eye open or two eyes open
2. shooting: to one eye direction, to the center of crosshair, between left and right
3. crosshair positioning: in the center, shifted left, shifted right, only left, only right

Depends on 1-3 answer combination it may or may not be possible. Let's go make a poll? Neil, you are the boss here - make a poll - pls, pls, pls

Post by **Nobsi** » Fri May 16, 2008 6:14 pm

Hello Vadim, I think the correct solution is obvious:

From interest here are only the two modes, where one eyes view is unshifted and therefor the ingame cross hair is exactly over the aim in this view.
Then, the cross hair should only be rendered in that view, since the one in the other view leads to the irritating doubled cross hair when looking to a target in the distance.

Since many people have either a leading right or left eye, both modes (shifted left and shifted right) should be supported, so that the cross hair can be drawn in the (unshifted) view which corresponds to a persons leading eye.

This really is totally clear to me . If I find the time at the weekend I will manipulate a 3D screenshot and remove the cross hair in the shifted view. Then everybody can see what we are talking about.

One simple first solution would be an option to simply draw a good visible solid cross hair in the middle of the screen on the unshifted view as an overlay (like you do with the convergence/separartion/framerate info). Since it is only drawn in one view, it gets automatically translucent. For games where the original cross hair can be switched off (set to low contrast/litte size) this may already do the trick. Maybe an X,Y offset in the profile for this overlayed cross hair would be fine, if the aiming zone is not exactly in the center of the screen for a specific game.

Post by **LukePC1** » Sat May 17, 2008 4:44 am

1)
I absolutly agree to nobsi! That is what I wanted to express, but I think I didn't make it clear enough.

2)
Please let the option with both eyes shiftet in the driver for Racing games. They don't need a crosshair, but it looks ... wrong, if only one eye is shifted!!!

I tried to drive like that, but it looked like the track was going to the upper right or left corner of the screen instead of right into the screen...

Post by **BlackShark** » Sat May 17, 2008 5:03 am

in fact there are 2 different requests :

Lcountach's laser sight :
1. aiming : 2 eyes
2. shooting to the center of the crosshair
3. projected at target's depth (so it's shifting slightly on both eyes depending on the depth of the aimed object), displayed on both eyes
useable in all modes (both eyes shifted and one eye shifted)
advantage : able to use both eyes shifted mode
drawback : constantly moving crosshair, difficult to get instant aiming like in 2D

My one-eyed crosshair :
1. aiming : 1 eye
2. shooting to the center of the crosshair
3. crosshair in the center
only useable in one-eye-shifted mode, crosshair only displayed on the not-shifted-eye
advantage : crosshair is displayed exactly like in the 2D game, more realistic aiming
drawback : requires one eye shifted mode (difficult to use with very high separation)

Post by **LukePC1** » Sat May 17, 2008 8:18 am

I thought the 'problem' was how to get stuff in the games... or am I wrong there...

And I think many people would be satisfied with one of the solutions mentioned by BlackShark

Post by **Nobsi** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:33 am

So here are the promissed cross eyed 3D pics to demonstrate the different cross hair modes. I reused the picture posted previously by LCountach.

This is the original iZ3D screenshot with one unshifted and one shifted view. Though the cross hair (like the whole HUD) is rendered at axactly the same screen position for both views, already in 2D you can see that the cross hair appears on two different postions regarding the scene (to the left and to the right side of the couch), because one view is shifted. When viewed cross eyed, you also see two cross hairs, that rendered in the unshifted view will be exactly where you shoot to and the second one only causes irritation.

Now I manipulated the picture with a paint program and removed the cross hair from the left picture. If you look at this picture cross eyed you will see only one cross hair with no 3D effect (since it is only visible for one eye) but exactly over the target postion. The second irritating one is'nt present any more. This would be the second best choice to me.

And finally I manipulated the picture to show how a laser sight (3D cross hair) would look like. The cross hair is drawn in both views, but with the same separation (horicontal distance) like the object (the couch) at the aiming position. When viewed cross eyed the cross hair seems to float before the couch in 3D space. This is the mode I personally would prefer.

Post by **BlackQ** » Sun May 18, 2008 2:45 pm

Hi, guys!

thank you for your comments and discussion - we'll discuss it inside our development team tomorrow.

One thing I need to mention - keeping laser sight on object is almost the same problem like auto-convergence - you need to know where object is, but in modern game you can not find an information about object - there five different shader and some other elements can be used to draw one specific object you want to aim. Game 3D structure is 100% different from what you can see in 3D room, for example. There are not any chairs, tables or something else - there are shader, triangles, meshes etc without clear position or correspondence wiht any specific objects

Post by **DickDastardly** » Sun May 18, 2008 5:21 pm

I vote for the addition of an option for a true 3D crosshair (as shown in Nobsi's third picture). As for the technical challenges in coding it this way, all I can say is that nVidia seemed to manage it okay so I'm confident that IZ3D (who seem to have more talented and harder working developers) can too. In fact, I'd be surprised if they don't manage to improve on nVidia's implementation.

One area in which improvement would be very welcome would be when the crosshair is aiming at the sky. As has been mentioned, in this situation the nVidia driver fails to draw a crosshair at all (which can make it tricky to aim at a flying target surrounded by sky as the crosshair won't appear until you have the target lined up). It would be preferable if the crosshair was instead drawn at the maximum depth of the scene when aiming at the sky i.e. at the same depth the sky is drawn at. (Obviously when you line up a flying target the depth of the crosshair should then shift to the target's depth).
Cheers,
DD

Post by **crim3** » Mon May 19, 2008 2:18 am

DickDastardly wrote:As for the technical challenges in coding it this way, all I can say is that nVidia seemed to manage it okay so I'm confident that IZ3D (who seem to have more talented and harder working developers) can too. In fact, I'd be surprised if they don't manage to improve on nVidia's implementation.

The nvidia's stereo driver draws a crosshair (the laser sight) meanwhile the game crosshair is untouched. It's very different.
I don't think that the nvidia stereo driver has to intercept any directx call or something. It's from nvidia, it can talk to the driver and hardware directly 'cos everything is nvidia. So, it works with privileged data and posibilities to control things and can do the laser sight easily. It's just a guess anyway, I have no information to support it.

And yes, I also hate when the lasersight dissapears

but when it doesn't it's the most natural way to aim. At the same time you look at the object you are looking at the sight without an additional effort. If you have problems looking at the lasersight then you have problems looking at objects in 3D, and all about stereo 3D would be working bad for you.

Post by **DickDastardly** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:15 am

crim3 wrote:I don't think that the nvidia stereo driver has to intercept any directx call or something. It's from nvidia, it can talk to the driver and hardware directly 'cos everything is nvidia. So, it works with privileged data and posibilities to control things and can do the laser sight easily. It's just a guess anyway, I have no information to support it.

Whilst I agree that nVidia's privileged access would seem to make things easier for them, their recent track record suggests their developers don't have the talent to capitalize on it - it took them 2 years to create a driver which only works on one OS and one hardware solution (+ anaglyph) and it STILL doesn't support any post processing effects. IZ3D have already managed to improve on the nVidia driver in some respects so hopefully they can here too. (If not, the lack of a true 3D crosshair is likely to be a significant barrier to adoption of IZ3D by any serious fps players).

crim3 wrote:And yes, I also hate when the lasersight dissapears but when it doesn't it's the most natural way to aim. At the same time you look at the object you are looking at the sight without an additional effort. If you have problems looking at the lasersight then you have problems looking at objects in 3D, and all about stereo 3D would be working bad for you.

Agree 100%.
Cheers,
DD

Post by **crim3** » Mon May 19, 2008 11:15 am

Maybe that's also its weakness. For what I see, "drivers" like the iz3d works essentially changing the camera position and look at vector according to stereo paremeters before the scene is rendered and the backbuffer flipped. On the other hand, the nvidia stereo driver does its things as the scene is rendered shifting vectors accordingly to the z value to fit the stereo parameters. Hence, when something has no z value or loses it due to performance optimizations of the graphical engine, it is displayed at screen depth, that is, without separation.
I insist, I have no idea of how it is in reality. I'm just doing deductions from the behavior of the driver. It would be good that someone comes here to say how it works. Carl Kenner, for example.... where is him? finishing the next glovepie version?

Post by **da_giz** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:13 am

I can only confirm the problem. When using separationmode 0 then I get 3 crosshairs (2 ghost images and a third where I actually shoot at in the middle)
Using separationmode 1 or 2 I only get 2 crosshairs but I have to close one eye to be able to aim well.

I understand how it should work with using the dominant eye and so on, but I still see the second crosshair and that irritates me a lot.

I already asked at iz3D at the end of this thread here: http://forum.iz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=169&start=30
But I didn't get any feedback.
Reading this thread here I got the feeling that iz3d thought it was just not an issue because for some reason everyone seems to only see one crosshair.

I would love to have either a 3D crosshair as it was in the nvidia driver,
or and I think that would be the best way: rendering the crosshair in only one eye, either right or left. ( I guess it doesn't matter if it is shifted or not, the crosshair would be accurate, right?)
Why I think it would be better? Because you wouldn't need to turn off the ingame crosshair, which is not possible in all games.
And you could play the games with their meant to be crosshairs.
E.g. the sniper crosshair where you have a black area around the crosshair like in CS.
It would work like a Red Dot Scope which you can find on real rifles, there only one eye sees the dot and with the other eye you only see where you shoot at but not the dot.
The brain combines the 2 images to one and you have a nice red dot on your target (always the same size, doesn't matter how far away)

So best way would be if you add to the existing seperationmode another mode that can toggle crosshair on and off in the shifted eye.
If that is possible, I don't know if you can do that, that would be really something I would love to see!

@BlackQ:
Any news on what you guys discussed in your team?

As for your question I would like
1. two eyes open
2. shooting to one eye direction
3. only left or right
if you have any information, could you tell us if it is possible and if you would include it in new driver?

Post by **BlackQ** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:45 am

Hi, guys!

After long discussions and thinking about combining things which can not be combined

we decide to make lasersight additionally to crosshair system we have - lasersight will automatically aim to object depend on distance to the object. Then we can decide what is the best

It will come in next 1.09 version as many other changes

Post by **BlackQ** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:50 am

We can not make game's crosshair "left eye only" - we have no idea where crosshair is (as well as any other objects in the game) - we are shifting camera only

again no such things like znear, z coordinate, gun, car etc etc are available in the game - sorry about this - we are trying to do our best.

Post by **Likay** » Fri May 30, 2008 10:07 am

We know you do!

The appearance of a crosshair@nvidiastyle appeals to me to. Would be great if you can solve it. Some games have options to turn of the standard crosshair so that doesn't bother anymore (for example the hl2-series). Looking forward to it!

cheers

Post by **da_giz** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:58 pm

We know you are doing your best, otherwise we wouldn't ask for so much

Lasersight would be awesome!

Thank you for unmatched support and for listening to your customers!

Post by **DickDastardly** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 8:38 am

BlackQ wrote:After long discussions and thinking about combining things which can not be combined we decide to make lasersight additionally to crosshair system we have - lasersight will automatically aim to object depend on distance to the object. Then we can decide what is the best

It will come in next 1.09 version as many other changes

That's wonderful news -thanks very much indeed m8! It's great to have a company in the 3D market which is so responsive to it's customers -an absolute breath of fresh air compared to nVidia. If you guys manage to get this and shutterglass support added successfully then I'll definitely be buying your drivers.
Cheers,
DD

Post by **BlackShark** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:02 am

BlackQ wrote:We can not make game's crosshair "left eye only" - we have no idea where crosshair is (as well as any other objects in the game) - we are shifting camera only
again no such things like znear, z coordinate, gun, car etc etc are available in the game - sorry about this - we are trying to do our best.

Since i saw in the profile that you were able to identify shaders and either make them draw in mono or stereo, i was very impressed by the CRC stuff (although i have no idea about how it works exactly) i thought you were able to identify textures and shaders in memory when the game generates them and/or wants to call them.
So I was more thinking of indentifying a call to the crosshair texture through profiling for each game, and prevent it from being drawn.
Maybe i was too optimistic about what's possible and what's not.

Post by **BlackQ** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:18 am

it is possible, but depends on game it may take few days of manual work for each game...

Post by **LawnDart** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:41 pm

So is there now a properly working laser sight in v1.09 of the IZ3D driver? One that actually really does work in depth of the objects it's in front of?

Post by **Tril** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:57 pm

LawnDart wrote:So is there now a properly working laser sight in v1.09 of the IZ3D driver? One that actually really does work in depth of the objects it's in front of?

There is one. It's a rotating crosshair that changes depth depending on what you target. The detection of depth is not totally perfect so the crosshair sometimes float in front of the target instead of being on it but it much better than not having one at all. For now there's only one model of crosshair and it rotates.

Post by **LawnDart** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 9:17 pm

Cool... Thanks for the reply.

I'm glad they didn't listen to some and did it the correct way.