Meant to be Seen

I had a bit of brainache today after a four hour session of descent 3 last night..with 3d turned to max. I was about a foot away from the projection screen. It really was like being right inside the game. Pity the games does not project anything outside the screen like the Nvidia test logo.

My eyes were straining like hell sometimes to get to grips with depth focus..or maybe the problem is that everything is clearly in focus..

I am new to this, so was wondering if the brain gets used to the 3d eventually ?

On the plus side i felt like my daytime vision was better than usual. Kind of like when you come out the cinema and everything lools clearer for a while.

This can be caused by improper stereosettings. Sometimes the setting that looks best might not be the most comfortable. In practic a balance between convergence and separation is needed to reduce and (as now totally defeat eyestrain. I don't know a formula to get a good view without eyestrain, my eyes tells me and i can feel how it works while adjusting settings. However: if i want more stereo and have a decent balance i seem to increase separation more on close objects while farther objects almost remains with the same separation. That way i use to have a decent for the eyes setting as well.

check your eyes do not diverge (outwards crosseye) : rule of maximum separation says :
-Take off your glasses to look at the two images on your screen
-choose an object supposed to be far away
-the maximum separation of this object should be the distance between your eyes
-if separation is higher than this you have divergine eyes (very uncomfortable)
-it is usually best to have a safety margin from this maximum.

All current Stereo3D solutions have a small limitation : the image is displayed on a flat screen, so your eyes focus on the screen plane (the whole frame is sharp, no object is out of focus) but your eyes are converging at objects which are virtually outside of the screen plane.
This is not natural viewing, you brain needs to get used to this.
But on a projection screen this difference is very low since most objects in a scene are usually far away (more than a few feet away) so you shouldn't suffer much from the difference between your eyes converging and focusing difference (except for stuff poping-out a lot)

EDIT :
last is the shuttering :
i think you are using a single projector with shutter glasses don't you ? (not sure)
if you do, the refresh frequency plays a huge role in eyestrain over time. 120Hz refresh frequency is the gold value starting from which eyestrain is considered as near zero.

thanks for tips..

Its probably my own fault for demanding ultimate immersion, getting too close and increasing seperation to max.
.

i added a paragraph while you answered, not sure if you read it...

EDIT :
last is the shuttering :
i think you are using a single projector with shutter glasses don't you ? (not sure)
if you do, the refresh frequency plays a huge role in eyestrain over time. 120Hz refresh frequency is the gold value starting from which eyestrain is considered as near zero.

BlackShark wrote:i added a paragraph while you answered, not sure if you read it...

EDIT :
last is the shuttering :
i think you are using a single projector with shutter glasses don't you ? (not sure)
if you do, the refresh frequency plays a huge role in eyestrain over time. 120Hz refresh frequency is the gold value starting from which eyestrain is considered as near zero.

Was wondering if that was it. The optoma 719 refresh is at 85hz

You got it, 85Hz shutter may looks nice on a projector at first glance but it's a low frequency so you will feel eyestrain after long use.
You can improve it a little by playing in the dark but you won't get perfect results at this frequency.

Getting 120Hz is like the holy Grail for shutter systems.
You can still enjoy stereo3d with your 85Hz setup (of course you do) for short sessions though.

Hi, I think the Refresh Rate is subjective to the End User AS I game @75Hz and can play for hours NON stop without any problems.. 85 is golden for a DLP Projector it is NOT a Direct View so it need not be as high as a CRT..

ambeerli wrote:How do I use downloaded materials in 3ds max? I recently downloaded a material library pack for 3ds max, but whenever i try to open it all it says is missing material, the filetypes are the same as the ones preloaded though. Does anyone know how to make them work?

in the dialog where it says the materials are missing there should be a button to browse and add the directory with the materials

rogerharris wrote:I had a bit of brainache today after a four hour session of descent 3 last night..with 3d turned to max. I was about a foot away from the projection screen.

That's a pretty long time, my eyes would have a problem with that even non-3D. I used to get blinding headaches
from playing in 3D ... solution: shorter sessions, plus I play after dark (harder 'cos I don't think so well then) since
there is less ambient light to confuse my eyes/brain (passive 3D viewing is NOT natural).

Oh, and as mentioned, use the highest refresh rate your monitor can support. 3D means half that goes to each
eye. Non-3D I like 75 Hz, which means that to get the same refresh in 3D I should be running at 150 Hz. But
the best I can do with my monitor is 140 Hz (or 70 to each eye) ... even so I run at 120 Hz to spare the monitor,
but this means only 60 Hz per eye. So eventual eyestrain for sure, if I play long enough.