[Solved!] 3D Vision working with Samsung Odyssey G7 & 32" IPS monitors, but help needed!
Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 6:34 am
TLDR: the Samsung Odyssey G7 is capable of bright, near-perfect crosstalk-free 3D without MBR, but I can't get it to work full-time yet because of a sync issue. New 165Hz+ IPS panels can do effective 3D with strobing but at low brightness and with severe IR issues.
Update Jan 5, 2021: In the NvTimingsEd tool, setting "Z (frameTime)" to 8350 μs seems to stabilize the crosstalk: I didn't see ghosting get better or worse over the course of 20+ minutes, and it was definitely playable. (It was good enough that with both eyes open, I saw ghosting only with my dominant eye.) Now I have to figure out how to adjust the offset/phase of the timing.
Update Jan 6, 2021: Got it! Eliminated most ghosting with the following settings in NvTimingsEd:
Z: 8350.00 μs
W: 3975.00 μs
X: 0.50 (unknown unit)
Y: 7700 μs
Once I got things stabilized with Z due to a mismatch between shutter frame times and video frame times, it was W that was responsible for adjusting the "phase" and eliminating ghosting. There might still be more tweaking possible, but for now I want to enjoy my games!
Background
I'm a long-time CRT user; my Sony GDM-FW900 is doing fine, but it's not big enough for an immersive gaming experience, contrast is poor except in complete darkness, and it's not high-res enough to get the most out of today's games. I haven't been a huge gamer, but I enjoy fast-paced FPS like Quake Live and Doom Eternal, as well as racing games. Reading reviews about the latest gaming monitors, I decided maybe it was time for one. CRTs are king for input lag and motion blur, so my standards are very high when it comes to those. My current setup is an Intel NUC8 i5 with a Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Gaming Box Thunderbolt eGPU. It's enough to run Doom Eternal at ~90 FPS and eSports titles like Quake Live at 200+FPS at 1440p. For gaming, I run my FW900 at 1536x960 at 120Hz (it maxes out at 160Hz at lower resolutions). I'm planning on building a gaming rig, but new parts are scarce, and I'm gonna wait for the RTX 3080 Ti.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying out a few 32" 1440p gaming monitors, namely the Samsung Odyssey G7 (240Hz VA), Asus ROG Swift* PG329Q (175Hz overclocked IPS), and MSI PS321QR (165Hz IPS). The Asus and MSI use the same AUO panel but offer slightly different feature sets. I previously checked out the 27" Acer Nitro VX272 X (240 Hz IPS), but I had problems with flickering and random image retention. I figured a 32" gaming monitor would be more immersive. Boy, was I right. I can't go back to 27" now.
The 1000R curve on the Samsung G7 is controversial, but I love it. I find it more immersive than the flat screens on the other monitors I've been evaluating. The G7 reminds me of an IMAX screen, and I thought that 3D on this monitor would be pretty cool. I had a shutter-based 3D system with an ATI Radeon way back when (early 2000s), and I was vaguely aware of Nvidia 3D Vision. I figured that with an Nvidia GPU, I could just track down the appropriate hardware, plug it in, and fire it up. (Har har.) Of course, that led me here.
After finally getting the drivers working with anaglyph 3D (a big shout-out to Losti and this entire community), I ordered a knock-off 3D Vision kit from Amazon. The emitter has two buttons on the back. One toggles 3D vision on and off. I have no idea what the other one does, if anything. It didn't come with a manual.
Of course, the 3D Setup Wizard wouldn't let me continue without an appropriate gaming monitor. I disabled driver signature verification and was able to load the .inf file for the Asus PG278Q as the driver for the Samsung Odyssey G7. The 3D Setup Wizard recognized it! So far, so good. Then the custom .inf installed successfully for both the MSI PS321QR and the Asus PG329Q, but getting them recognized as 3D Vision-capable was a little more complicated (oddly, the Asus needed to have adaptive sync enabled, while the MSI needed to have it disabled). Once I got that sorted out, it was off to the races! (Literally; my preferred test games were Assetto Corsa Competizione and GRID 2.)
The monitors all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'll go over what's relevant for 3D.
MSI PS321QR
The MSI PS321QR is probably the best overall monitor of the three I'm trying now (color accuracy, uniformity, build quality, etc.), but its gaming features are more limited. Both IPS monitors require enabling MBR for effective 3D. The MSI has only one MBR setting, which cranks up the response time overdrive so much that inversion artifacts are prevalent in 3D mode. So even though the strobing is well synced to the shutter glasses and crosstalk is negligible, there's ghosting from the overdrive. Also, it's quite dim using MBR (dimmer than my Sony CRT!). Plus, there's significant image retention when using 3D Vision, which I'll get to shortly.
Asus PG329Q
*Asus markets this an ROG Swift, but the OSD calls it the ROG Strix. Even they can't get their naming conventions straight.
The PG329Q was attractive to me because of its "ELMB Sync" feature, which allows backlight strobing while using adaptive sync. It offers five levels of backlight strobing, but even the highest setting is not quite as good as some other implementations I've seen, like the Acer XB271H. To compensate, Asus included a feature called "Clarity Position" that lets you choose where to target the most effective backlight strobing: top, middle, or bottom. So, what does that mean for 3D?
First off, 3D without MBR is unplayable; way too much crosstalk. But ELMB makes 3D possible. Here are screenshots from GRID 2 showing the different ELMB "Clarity" levels: Pictures were taken with autoexposure, so brightness levels are not apparent, but the higher the setting, the dimmer. The lowest MBR setting (Clarity Level 1) reduces crosstalk significantly, and the next three levels are progressively better (and dimmer). The highest level is the only one that mostly eliminates crosstalk, but it still allows some outside the "target zone." I find it playable and fairly immersive, but again, it's pretty dim (about Sony CRT level and slightly brighter than the MSI).
Here's what the different Clarity Position settings look like: These were taken with the ELMB strength set to 5, the highest. With the position set to the top, there's minimal crosstalk from the rock face and none at all from the power lines, but it starts creeping in when you get to the chevrons. At the middle setting, the crosstalk from the chevrons is much fainter, but ghost images of the rocks and power lines are quite prominent. Notice how the crosstalk from the rocks fades towards the middle of the image. At the bottom Clarity Position setting, there's crosstalk everywhere else. In racing games, crosstalk is most distracting in high-contrast areas like the sky, so the topmost setting seems to work the best.
A huge issue with the MSI PS321QR and Asus PG329Q is image retention during 3D use. I haven't had any IR issues in 2D (these high-refresh-rate panels seem to be prone to IR), but it's very distracting in 3D. (Oddly, the IR is usually visible only with 3D glasses. Maybe someone can explain the physics of that to me with polarization or whatever.)
This is a shot showing IR from multiple scenes, including the Nvidia 3D test: The picture was taken through the 3D shutter glasses, and I enhanced it a bit to show the artifacts. Crosstalk is minimal, but there are very distracting ghost images from IR. The only way to avoid this distracting IR is to not pause the game or stay on one scene for more than a few seconds. Even then, the HUD and UI elements will keep showing up long after. I don't think permanent burn-in is an issue, but I'm not really ready to risk it.
Samsung Odyssey G7
Yes, this monitor has its issues. There's backlight bleed and glow, uniformity is meh, and contrast is not best in class. But man, is it fun to use. Most importantly for us here, the Samsung G7 is capable of near-perfect, cross-talk free 3D with Nvidia 3D Vision. It does this at a brightness level far above what the IPS panels can do.
The best setting for 3D seems to be Adaptive Sync. With Adaptive Sync off, though, there's a good deal of cross-talk. The monitor has MBR, but it's not very effective. It actually makes crosstalk worse in some cases. With Adaptive Sync on, things get interesting. At first, 3D showed a fair amount of crosstalk. It was playable but not great. After a few minutes of playing, I noticed the crosstalk was gone. Nothing. It was bright, smooth, and immersive.
But then the crosstalk came back, and started getting worse until it was unplayable, with equal-brightness double images everywhere. Then, suddenly, the glasses seemed to sync up, and crosstalk was gone again in an instant! Playing for a while, I noticed it was cyclical, with a period of about nine-and-a-half minutes. Here's one cycle: There's severe crosstalk, but then 20 seconds later, it's all but disappeared. Then it comes back and gets worse.
There's obviously a sync issue. I measured a cycle of 9 minutes 21.4 seconds +/-0.7s. (I captured the video at 30FPS; hence the margin of error on both ends.) There are I'm not 100% sure of my math, but there are approximately 67,477 frames with the reported framerate of 119.98 Hz. If that reflects the amount of time to shift the phase by one frame, that means sync is off by one part in 67,477, or about .00148%. (I might not be calculating that right, so feel free to correct me, but whatever the factor is, it's very small). I measured another cycle at around 9 minutes 11 seconds.
This is obviously very frustrating. I don't know if the issue is in the drivers, the hardware, or the way the monitor is handling the timings from the GPU. But a solution would be awesome, and I'd love to get community input. If we're able to figure this out and fix it, the Odyssey G7 could be the monitor for 3D gaming.
Update Jan 5, 2021: In the NvTimingsEd tool, setting "Z (frameTime)" to 8350 μs seems to stabilize the crosstalk: I didn't see ghosting get better or worse over the course of 20+ minutes, and it was definitely playable. (It was good enough that with both eyes open, I saw ghosting only with my dominant eye.) Now I have to figure out how to adjust the offset/phase of the timing.
Update Jan 6, 2021: Got it! Eliminated most ghosting with the following settings in NvTimingsEd:
Z: 8350.00 μs
W: 3975.00 μs
X: 0.50 (unknown unit)
Y: 7700 μs
Once I got things stabilized with Z due to a mismatch between shutter frame times and video frame times, it was W that was responsible for adjusting the "phase" and eliminating ghosting. There might still be more tweaking possible, but for now I want to enjoy my games!
Background
I'm a long-time CRT user; my Sony GDM-FW900 is doing fine, but it's not big enough for an immersive gaming experience, contrast is poor except in complete darkness, and it's not high-res enough to get the most out of today's games. I haven't been a huge gamer, but I enjoy fast-paced FPS like Quake Live and Doom Eternal, as well as racing games. Reading reviews about the latest gaming monitors, I decided maybe it was time for one. CRTs are king for input lag and motion blur, so my standards are very high when it comes to those. My current setup is an Intel NUC8 i5 with a Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Gaming Box Thunderbolt eGPU. It's enough to run Doom Eternal at ~90 FPS and eSports titles like Quake Live at 200+FPS at 1440p. For gaming, I run my FW900 at 1536x960 at 120Hz (it maxes out at 160Hz at lower resolutions). I'm planning on building a gaming rig, but new parts are scarce, and I'm gonna wait for the RTX 3080 Ti.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying out a few 32" 1440p gaming monitors, namely the Samsung Odyssey G7 (240Hz VA), Asus ROG Swift* PG329Q (175Hz overclocked IPS), and MSI PS321QR (165Hz IPS). The Asus and MSI use the same AUO panel but offer slightly different feature sets. I previously checked out the 27" Acer Nitro VX272 X (240 Hz IPS), but I had problems with flickering and random image retention. I figured a 32" gaming monitor would be more immersive. Boy, was I right. I can't go back to 27" now.
The 1000R curve on the Samsung G7 is controversial, but I love it. I find it more immersive than the flat screens on the other monitors I've been evaluating. The G7 reminds me of an IMAX screen, and I thought that 3D on this monitor would be pretty cool. I had a shutter-based 3D system with an ATI Radeon way back when (early 2000s), and I was vaguely aware of Nvidia 3D Vision. I figured that with an Nvidia GPU, I could just track down the appropriate hardware, plug it in, and fire it up. (Har har.) Of course, that led me here.
After finally getting the drivers working with anaglyph 3D (a big shout-out to Losti and this entire community), I ordered a knock-off 3D Vision kit from Amazon. The emitter has two buttons on the back. One toggles 3D vision on and off. I have no idea what the other one does, if anything. It didn't come with a manual.
Of course, the 3D Setup Wizard wouldn't let me continue without an appropriate gaming monitor. I disabled driver signature verification and was able to load the .inf file for the Asus PG278Q as the driver for the Samsung Odyssey G7. The 3D Setup Wizard recognized it! So far, so good. Then the custom .inf installed successfully for both the MSI PS321QR and the Asus PG329Q, but getting them recognized as 3D Vision-capable was a little more complicated (oddly, the Asus needed to have adaptive sync enabled, while the MSI needed to have it disabled). Once I got that sorted out, it was off to the races! (Literally; my preferred test games were Assetto Corsa Competizione and GRID 2.)
The monitors all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'll go over what's relevant for 3D.
MSI PS321QR
The MSI PS321QR is probably the best overall monitor of the three I'm trying now (color accuracy, uniformity, build quality, etc.), but its gaming features are more limited. Both IPS monitors require enabling MBR for effective 3D. The MSI has only one MBR setting, which cranks up the response time overdrive so much that inversion artifacts are prevalent in 3D mode. So even though the strobing is well synced to the shutter glasses and crosstalk is negligible, there's ghosting from the overdrive. Also, it's quite dim using MBR (dimmer than my Sony CRT!). Plus, there's significant image retention when using 3D Vision, which I'll get to shortly.
Asus PG329Q
*Asus markets this an ROG Swift, but the OSD calls it the ROG Strix. Even they can't get their naming conventions straight.
The PG329Q was attractive to me because of its "ELMB Sync" feature, which allows backlight strobing while using adaptive sync. It offers five levels of backlight strobing, but even the highest setting is not quite as good as some other implementations I've seen, like the Acer XB271H. To compensate, Asus included a feature called "Clarity Position" that lets you choose where to target the most effective backlight strobing: top, middle, or bottom. So, what does that mean for 3D?
First off, 3D without MBR is unplayable; way too much crosstalk. But ELMB makes 3D possible. Here are screenshots from GRID 2 showing the different ELMB "Clarity" levels: Pictures were taken with autoexposure, so brightness levels are not apparent, but the higher the setting, the dimmer. The lowest MBR setting (Clarity Level 1) reduces crosstalk significantly, and the next three levels are progressively better (and dimmer). The highest level is the only one that mostly eliminates crosstalk, but it still allows some outside the "target zone." I find it playable and fairly immersive, but again, it's pretty dim (about Sony CRT level and slightly brighter than the MSI).
Here's what the different Clarity Position settings look like: These were taken with the ELMB strength set to 5, the highest. With the position set to the top, there's minimal crosstalk from the rock face and none at all from the power lines, but it starts creeping in when you get to the chevrons. At the middle setting, the crosstalk from the chevrons is much fainter, but ghost images of the rocks and power lines are quite prominent. Notice how the crosstalk from the rocks fades towards the middle of the image. At the bottom Clarity Position setting, there's crosstalk everywhere else. In racing games, crosstalk is most distracting in high-contrast areas like the sky, so the topmost setting seems to work the best.
A huge issue with the MSI PS321QR and Asus PG329Q is image retention during 3D use. I haven't had any IR issues in 2D (these high-refresh-rate panels seem to be prone to IR), but it's very distracting in 3D. (Oddly, the IR is usually visible only with 3D glasses. Maybe someone can explain the physics of that to me with polarization or whatever.)
This is a shot showing IR from multiple scenes, including the Nvidia 3D test: The picture was taken through the 3D shutter glasses, and I enhanced it a bit to show the artifacts. Crosstalk is minimal, but there are very distracting ghost images from IR. The only way to avoid this distracting IR is to not pause the game or stay on one scene for more than a few seconds. Even then, the HUD and UI elements will keep showing up long after. I don't think permanent burn-in is an issue, but I'm not really ready to risk it.
Samsung Odyssey G7
Yes, this monitor has its issues. There's backlight bleed and glow, uniformity is meh, and contrast is not best in class. But man, is it fun to use. Most importantly for us here, the Samsung G7 is capable of near-perfect, cross-talk free 3D with Nvidia 3D Vision. It does this at a brightness level far above what the IPS panels can do.
The best setting for 3D seems to be Adaptive Sync. With Adaptive Sync off, though, there's a good deal of cross-talk. The monitor has MBR, but it's not very effective. It actually makes crosstalk worse in some cases. With Adaptive Sync on, things get interesting. At first, 3D showed a fair amount of crosstalk. It was playable but not great. After a few minutes of playing, I noticed the crosstalk was gone. Nothing. It was bright, smooth, and immersive.
But then the crosstalk came back, and started getting worse until it was unplayable, with equal-brightness double images everywhere. Then, suddenly, the glasses seemed to sync up, and crosstalk was gone again in an instant! Playing for a while, I noticed it was cyclical, with a period of about nine-and-a-half minutes. Here's one cycle: There's severe crosstalk, but then 20 seconds later, it's all but disappeared. Then it comes back and gets worse.
There's obviously a sync issue. I measured a cycle of 9 minutes 21.4 seconds +/-0.7s. (I captured the video at 30FPS; hence the margin of error on both ends.) There are I'm not 100% sure of my math, but there are approximately 67,477 frames with the reported framerate of 119.98 Hz. If that reflects the amount of time to shift the phase by one frame, that means sync is off by one part in 67,477, or about .00148%. (I might not be calculating that right, so feel free to correct me, but whatever the factor is, it's very small). I measured another cycle at around 9 minutes 11 seconds.
This is obviously very frustrating. I don't know if the issue is in the drivers, the hardware, or the way the monitor is handling the timings from the GPU. But a solution would be awesome, and I'd love to get community input. If we're able to figure this out and fix it, the Odyssey G7 could be the monitor for 3D gaming.