What will it take for S3D to go mainstream?

[cybereality]

It seems like Stereo3D has been "the next big thing" for decades and it never takes off. Most people seem totally amazed when they see a good stereo 3d presentation (like IMAX 3D) but few seem to be willing to pursue it further. What do you think it will take for stereo 3d (both gaming and movies) to be standard, or at least a mainstream niche?

My initial theory is that current S3D solution still have the stigma of "nerdiness" due to traditional S3D with dorky glasses or bulky headgear. So maybe we need to wait for quality auto-S3D tvs to hit the mass-market. But again, economies of scale won't kick in unless people are buying the 3dtvs and that won't happen until there's mainstream content that supports it. Will James Cameron's Avatar be successful enough? If Lucus releases the Star Wars 3D on say BluRay, and assuming that Samsung 120Hz sets are out by then, will that do it? I'd consider "mainstream" the day the SuperBowl is broadcast in 3d. Is that really what we need?

One other avenue is the hardcore PC gamers. This demographic is known for wasting tons of money of crazy stuff like 4-way SLI and I'm sure they would buy 3d monitors if they were marketed right. What is necessary to convince these people that 3d is "the way its meant to be played"? Do we need a respected developer, like John Carmack or Mark Rein to throw their support behind a product? Surely these guys have to know about it. What big franchise could convince 2D gamers to switch to 3D? Would this need to be a new console, like the Nintendo TriiDii or something? Assuming there was some method of S3D that was cheap enough to pack into a console (like advanced shutter-glasses or some portable headset) do you think the market would accept it?

There seems to be this market aversion to 3d. Just reading some of the comments on big sites when they do S3D articles is depressing. People that have *no* idea what they are talking about seem very enthusiastic about bashing it. Is it just an issue of public perception? Are S3D solutions just too complex for the average Joe? I don't know. It just seems weird because I doubt there was this amount of backlash against things like color tv or stereo/surround sound. Will stereo 3d ever go mainstream?

[chrisdfw]

It's pretty simple really.

What it will take is:

1) Ease of use - most people don't want to mess with settings and which drivers work with which game
2) Affordable - shutter glasses and a CRT were affordable but most modern solutions are a bit expensive
3) Marketing - There needs to be a way to experience it at major retailers or nobody will believe how cool it is
4) Support - We need ongoing support by both the game companies and hardware manufacturers

[The_Nephilim]

Well that would be GREAT if it went mainstream and Hollywood is betting on it. Releases Like Beowulf have definetely got some attention and HollyWood has seen the Dollar signs on releasing BeoWulf in 3D as they charged a Premium, ie 3-4 extra bucks for a Ticket vs the regular price for the 2D version. They made a killing.

Now they have released 3D HDTV's If they could market that to the Console Gameers, but heck most stores they don't even have any Displays setup for 3D. Most People Don't know about the capability?? I think a Company should set up and Promote 3D. I mean there is alot of Hardware for 3D, ie.. TV's, Glasses , HMD;s and such but not much Software.

I recently got into getting 3D since I bought my Virtual Simulator in 3D to Watch Movies in 3D but the Downside is there is NOT much 3D DVD's in Field Sequential or even Anaglyph DVD's. Now there are a TON of 3D releases throughout the years just NOONE is releasing this 3D content. I mean IMAX has a TON of 3D Stuff But Very Little Released to the Masses.


http://www.3dflightsim.com/links.htm


http://www.3dmovielist.com/list.html

check out those links alot of Good stuff there. especially the 3D movie list look at all those 3D Movies and such even the future releases

Alot of People are Not getting into 3D gaming Probally alot have tried it but thought it a Gimmick?? Myself I cant Fly a Sim or Play a FPS or Driving game without 3D I hate a FLAT screen!! But hey WE are the Minority. But If HollyWood and like you say even if Star Wars Gets Releases in 3D that would be a Major Advance for the 3D Market and myabe More People will get involved and we can then get support for 3D??

I have been a BIG Fan of 3D since going to Florida in 1991 and seeing it there in 3D on the BIG screen. but the memory faded and I didnt get back into 3D for games this time By Chance I saw a EDimensional Click Linky thingy back in '01 at a Forum.
I have been into it ever since but nVidia is really Dropping the Ball but I comprimised and bought an older Sysytem to Game in 3D but I am able to play some newer titles as well. But heck nVidia should have more support so we can get better Frames able to use Quad and Dual cores even SLI'd setup in STEREO.

WE need to Advertise 3D, Get the word out more and we also need more Support for Stereo Gaming and Movies. Heck I saw Beowulf in 3D but it will Probally never be released on DVD in a 3D FS version But maybe this will change.

Journey to the center of the Earth is coming out in June and IMAX is having a Bunch of stuff this Summer. I have read this is the Second Golden Age of 3D and we need to make the best of it as in the Digital Age has made 3D Better!!

Well I could go on & on but I'll leave it at that and Hope we get more 3D in the Future. I am Hopefull!!

[android78]

It's pretty simple really.

What it will take is:

1) Ease of use - most people don't want to mess with settings and which drivers work with which game
2) Affordable - shutter glasses and a CRT were affordable but most modern solutions are a bit expensive
3) Marketing - There needs to be a way to experience it at major retailers or nobody will believe how cool it is
4) Support - We need ongoing support by both the game companies and hardware manufacturers

I think Chris is right. Especially with the #1 point. People want to be able to buy their computer that is S3D enabled, put in a game, maybe put on their glasses or HMD or turn on their auto stereoscopic display and play. I like the idea that a console manufacturer, somtime in the near future, will recognize the scope of support for a mainstreem solution (as proven already by the popularity of imax, dolby3d, etc) and implement native S3D support as a system setting that will work for every game... I'm a dreamer. There is, however, another technical issue that is preventing this... what S3D signal format would they use? Dual VGA? I think not, it won't be HDMI compatible (which everyone is asking for now). How about frame sequential? At 30 FPS (25 FPS for PAL), this will give many sensative people a headache, turning them off S3D for another 10 years. Or field sequential? hmmm... doesn't work with progressive scan... halves the vertical resolution.

Soooo..... it is my belief that for this to work, we need some major players (maybe samsung will be/has been able to do it) to create a single standard for hi-def S3D interface. In a similar way to how the big companies have , in a way, decided on a single Hi-def video format (Blueray) so you can buy a blueray disk and stick it in a blueray player and it will play. Does anyone here know what interface the new samsung displays will use?

I think all this will come, but it'll just take longer then I'd like.

[cybereality]

Soooo..... it is my belief that for this to work, we need some major players (maybe samsung will be/has been able to do it) to create a single standard for hi-def S3D interface. In a similar way to how the big companies have , in a way, decided on a single Hi-def video format (Blueray) so you can buy a blueray disk and stick it in a blueray player and it will play.

Yeah, you are probably right. There really isn't any S3D method that is affordable and produces the quality mainstream audiences will expect. Projectors are cheap enough, but you need a lot of space and still need active shutter glasses. LCD monitors (at current) are a no go. DLP plasmas are the best bet, but not enough software support at the moment. HMDs will likely never be mainstream, too nerdy. Anaglyph is even nerdier and the quality is too low. Auto-stereo displays are mega-$$$ and have a narrow view distance so only one person can see at a time. Nothing really works the way it should, so I guess we must wait until some more advanced screens hit the market.

[Tril]

Right now, if game developers for the Xbox360 decided to add S3D support to the games they are developing, it would be relatively easy to support the Samsung and Mitsubishi 3DReady DLP (and now plasma) HDTV. I'm almost sure that the 3DReady feature of the DLP HDTV only works on the digital input of the HDTV which is HDMI. I know my Xbox360 has a HDMI port on the back (it's the regular Xbox360 model, not Arcade and not Elite).

The format specifications for these HDTV in S3D mode is known and easy to use and the Xbox360 supports both 720p and 1080p. The game developers would have to be careful with the values of separation and convergence chosen by default and give some reasonable range of adjustment.

To me, this is about the closest to a no hassle solution. Fire up your favorite Xbox360 game that support 3DReady, go to the options of the game and activate the 3Dready mode, set the separation and convergence settings to your liking with a 3D test screen and you're set.

I would buy a Samsung DLP HDTV right now if S3D Xbox360 games were released. It's expensive but not more than any other 720p or 1080p HDTV.

The news about James Cameron saying that a game already runs on the Xbox360 with 3D glasses is really interesting. I hope it's not just some tech demo but actually a game that's bound to be released soon.

Also, with Xbox Live, it could maybe be possible for game developers to offer downloadable content to add S3D support for games they previously released for free or at a small cost.

[cybereality]

I would buy a Samsung DLP HDTV right now if S3D Xbox360 games were released. It's expensive but not more than any other 720p or 1080p HDTV.

The news about James Cameron saying that a game already runs on the Xbox360 with 3D glasses is really interesting. I hope it's not just some tech demo but actually a game that's bound to be released soon.

Also, with Xbox Live, it could maybe be possible for game developers to offer downloadable content to add S3D support for games they previously released for free or at a small cost.

Yeah, I would too. I'm looking at the iz3d or the Zalman for for a bit more one of those Samsung's can be had. If they could do stereo3d on the consoles that would be great. However, ATI makes the video card for the xbox and the PS3 is running nvidia. ATI has never shown an interest in stereo3d as far as I know of. Cameron's comments do give me some hope that its a possibility. It would also require the effort of various development teams, its unlikely they would launch something like that for just one game. Maybe for the Xbox720 they could do it built-in. By that time there should be enough 3d-ready tv sets on the market.

[android78]

I didn't realise the '3D Ready' was an actual standard specification and not just a description. Does anyone have any technical information on this, if it is a standard? Tril has indicated that this maybe using standard HDMI in 3D mode, does anyone have specifications on HDMI use in 3D mode? Does it use double refresh rate and frame sequential, or field sequential at half vertical resolution, anyone???
I did a google search on it and the information is scant and a little on the simple side (eg. with the Samsung 3D ready plasmas you will see the characters jump out of the screen) and no technical details about what technology it uses. One thing I did notice is that TD vision are supporting the '3D Ready' interface:

As if this was not impressive enough, we have enabled our 3D platform to be display agnostic, so our platform can drive the new Samsung 3D Ready (tm) and the Mitsubishi 3D Ready (tm) monitors using the Texas Instruments DLP 3D technology as well as any other 3D monitor or stereo projection system without any hardware changes, just add our software or our firmware update.

I'm just not sure what this is in relation to. Is it talking about a hardware decoder?
Since the Xbox 360 uses an emulator for backward compatability with the standard xbox games, I'd be happy to see an upgrade to this that enabled stereo for the original xbox games only. Surely that wouldn't be too hard. Maybe by the time the next xbox (or PS4) comes out there will be enough awareness for them to include native S3D support for all games. Have it as a system setting.

[android78]

I've done a little research on the way the 3D ready TI DLPs work and the best I found is:
http://www.dlp.com/downloads/DLP%203D%2 ... nology.pdf
It appears that the each eye will have only half the resolution, which makes sence since HDMI only supports bandwidth for up to 1080p at 60 Hz so halving the number of pixels transmitted and doubling the number of frames will keep the same bandwidth requirement. I do like the way that, rather then just halving the vertical resolution (as per field sequential) then are decimating every second pixel. I imagine with good up conversion software at the display end, this should be better.
This site mentions a 'HDTV VESA sync port':
http://stage.tru3d.com/technology/3d_di ... DLP%20Info
Doing a search on the provided little of use so I found a manual which seems (looking at page 8) to have a 3 pin connecter for sync which would appear the same as some older shutter glasses solutions supported (I believe there were graphics cards with these about 10 years ago):
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downl ... =HL-T6189S

From the technology description on www.dlp.com, it looks like the image is sent as a single frame, just with alternating pixels for the right and left eye which would seem a little inefficient as it will require buffering of both left and right images for playing, maybe that's just me though. As Samsung would appear to be the largest display manufacturer to be working on S3D, I assume this will be the interface of the future (for now), so I wonder if the smaller manufacturers (visix, TDVision, etc) are planning on implementing changes/adaptions of their products to support this? (I may post this in the TDvision part of the foum)

[cybereality]

Since the Xbox 360 uses an emulator for backward compatability with the standard xbox games, I'd be happy to see an upgrade to this that enabled stereo for the original xbox games only. Surely that wouldn't be too hard. Maybe by the time the next xbox (or PS4) comes out there will be enough awareness for them to include native S3D support for all games. Have it as a system setting.

I'm sure if Microsoft wanted to, they could release a patch that would worked like that for xbox1 titles. They could even maybe make some xbox360 games in stereo3d. Its not like Halo3 is really maxing out the power of the 360. They could do it if they really wanted. But where is the hardware to go with it? It needs to come packed in the box. Its not going to fly with the mainstream if they have to have a particular model of a particular brand of tv and special glasses that aren't widely available. Hopefully some company can make this happen. I know Vuzix has been talking about the VR920-X which is supposed to enable S3D on the Xbox360. I'm not sure if this product is vaporware or not, but I really hope they follow through.