3D Vision works on Windows 11
Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2021 10:13 pm
I'm one of a very few people who still uses Windows 7. I don't even have Windows 10 installed. I tried it many years ago, but got rid of it after a few months. I'm still happy with Windows 7, but one thing that doesn't work with it is Vk3DVision. Unfortunately Helifax only supports Windows 10 and doesn't plan to add support for Windows 7. So I was planning to install Windows 10 as my second OS in addition to 7 for some time. But now that Windows 11 is coming, I thought why not skip 10 and go straight to 11 
I decided to do this experiment on my old PC for now. The old PC is Corei7-6700K + GTX 1080. As I don't have Win 10, I had to download Win 11 iso and install it via a USB flash drive. Initially it didn't want to install because Win 11 requires TPM 2.0 and my old motherboard didn't have an option to enable it in BIOS. But once it was resolved (there's a registry trick that can be used to bypass the requirement), installation went smoothly. I installed it on a separate partition. It recognized that I have Win 7 and created a boot menu where I can select if I want to start 7 or 11. It's nice that Microsoft understands that not everyone migrated to 10
By default it didn't come with any Nvidia driver and used the standard Microsoft video driver. When I ran Windows Update, it downloaded the 456.71 driver. I was able to uninstall it and try other drivers, both newer and older. If you search for Win 11 drivers on the Nvidia website, the only driver version that they offer for now is 471.41. But you can see that they use the same driver package for both Win 10 and 11, so the driver architecture didn't change that much. It means that even older drivers that don't officially support Win 11 work. To my surprise, even 425.31 worked just fine! I mostly tested with 452.06 + 3D Vision package from this post + manually modified nvwgf2um.dll and nvwgf2umx.dll per schwing's instructions (didn't want to use any automated tools in case of a possible win 11 incompatibility).
I only tried 4 DirectX games because I didn't have patience to install more on that test system. The games were 1 DX9: Batman Arkham Asylum, and 3 DX11: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge Catalyst and Hitman 2. I'm happy to report that all 4 worked fine. What's interesting is 3 of them worked even without applying the schwing's driver hack. The only one that didn't work without it was Mirrors Edge. I've never tried these games on win 10, so not sure if they would've also worked without the hack there or it's some kind of a win 11 improvement
I also tried 3D videos in PowerDVD 18. It worked, but there's some strange thing that every time when I move the mouse to show the controls during Blu-ray 3D playback, the image flashes and resizes a bit. Also when playing a regular non-3D Blu-ray, for some reason the monitor enters 3D mode after I set the player to full screen. I've never had these problems in Windows 7. Can anyone tell if that's how PowerDVD behaves in win 10 as well?
Finally, I tried Vk3DVision, one of my main reasons for doing the whole thing (the second reason being just curiosity about the OS itself
). This time I tried it with a newer driver, 461.09. As expected, all DX11 games didn't work with that driver, but Batman, which is DX9, still worked fine. Strangely the Nvidia control panel test also didn't work (was in 2D), even though I heard it's only DX8. Anyway, I tried Detroit with Vk3DVision and it worked without any problems in DX9 mode.
Other than that, I can say that I like Win 11 more than 10 so far. They improved a few things that I didn't like in 10. And overall I was pleasantly surprised that 3D Vision mostly worked fine! Of course it's not the final version yet (the current latest build that I tried is 22000.120), but considering that they plan the release for this year, I don't expect that many changes that would create any problems with the driver.
I decided to do this experiment on my old PC for now. The old PC is Corei7-6700K + GTX 1080. As I don't have Win 10, I had to download Win 11 iso and install it via a USB flash drive. Initially it didn't want to install because Win 11 requires TPM 2.0 and my old motherboard didn't have an option to enable it in BIOS. But once it was resolved (there's a registry trick that can be used to bypass the requirement), installation went smoothly. I installed it on a separate partition. It recognized that I have Win 7 and created a boot menu where I can select if I want to start 7 or 11. It's nice that Microsoft understands that not everyone migrated to 10
By default it didn't come with any Nvidia driver and used the standard Microsoft video driver. When I ran Windows Update, it downloaded the 456.71 driver. I was able to uninstall it and try other drivers, both newer and older. If you search for Win 11 drivers on the Nvidia website, the only driver version that they offer for now is 471.41. But you can see that they use the same driver package for both Win 10 and 11, so the driver architecture didn't change that much. It means that even older drivers that don't officially support Win 11 work. To my surprise, even 425.31 worked just fine! I mostly tested with 452.06 + 3D Vision package from this post + manually modified nvwgf2um.dll and nvwgf2umx.dll per schwing's instructions (didn't want to use any automated tools in case of a possible win 11 incompatibility).
I only tried 4 DirectX games because I didn't have patience to install more on that test system. The games were 1 DX9: Batman Arkham Asylum, and 3 DX11: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge Catalyst and Hitman 2. I'm happy to report that all 4 worked fine. What's interesting is 3 of them worked even without applying the schwing's driver hack. The only one that didn't work without it was Mirrors Edge. I've never tried these games on win 10, so not sure if they would've also worked without the hack there or it's some kind of a win 11 improvement
I also tried 3D videos in PowerDVD 18. It worked, but there's some strange thing that every time when I move the mouse to show the controls during Blu-ray 3D playback, the image flashes and resizes a bit. Also when playing a regular non-3D Blu-ray, for some reason the monitor enters 3D mode after I set the player to full screen. I've never had these problems in Windows 7. Can anyone tell if that's how PowerDVD behaves in win 10 as well?
Finally, I tried Vk3DVision, one of my main reasons for doing the whole thing (the second reason being just curiosity about the OS itself
). This time I tried it with a newer driver, 461.09. As expected, all DX11 games didn't work with that driver, but Batman, which is DX9, still worked fine. Strangely the Nvidia control panel test also didn't work (was in 2D), even though I heard it's only DX8. Anyway, I tried Detroit with Vk3DVision and it worked without any problems in DX9 mode.Other than that, I can say that I like Win 11 more than 10 so far. They improved a few things that I didn't like in 10. And overall I was pleasantly surprised that 3D Vision mostly worked fine! Of course it's not the final version yet (the current latest build that I tried is 22000.120), but considering that they plan the release for this year, I don't expect that many changes that would create any problems with the driver.