Meant to be Seen

When it rains, it pours!



AMD has released what they call the "ATI Catalyst 10.3 Preview Driver".  You will need appropriate third party S-3D drivers to go with it, but notable features include ATI Catalyst™ support for 3D Stereoscopic glasses, and Direct3D (Quad buffer support) that allows third party middleware vendors such as DDD and iZ3D to output stereo L/R images at 120Hz (60Hz per eye).
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Direct3D (Quad buffer support)

Isn't quad buffer an OpenGL thing?

Also, what exactly does this enable at the moment (seeing as the BitCauldron glasses aren't available). Would this mean 120Hz LCDs could be used with generic shutter glasses like the ELSAs? I'm confused.

I wonder if that "preview release" means that regular 10.3 will be delayed until April, since mid-month is typically a time for a full release...

cybereality wrote:Isn't quad buffer an OpenGL thing?

Yep, OpenGL has defined quad-buffered stereo long time ago, even though it was reserved for professional applications and video cards.

Direct3D does not directly support quad buffering (although DirectX 7.1 featured some rudimentary stereo support), so there's probably some driver-level API to enable it behind the back of Direct3D runtime, much like Nvidia's NVAPI.

what exactly does this enable at the moment (seeing as the BitCauldron glasses aren't available)

With the lack of 3rd-party USB glasses, well, there's nothing to enable for the end user. Older glasses won't work because they require sync from either analog VGA or VESA Stereo connector, but 120 Hz LCD monitors don't support 120 Hz over VGA, and there are no modern ATI cards with VESA Stereo.

Vista and 7 only, this boads not well for me. I wonder, will this give page flipping sync for projectors/crt/hmd's?

Okta wrote:will this give page flipping sync for projectors/crt/hmd's?

Yeah, despite everything I wrote above, it will work just because you asked

I didnt think we had been given enough information to rule anything out regarding vga sync. Maybe ATI figured a way to send sync to the iz3d drivers.

I revoke my comment, sorry. Driver enhancements for active glasses sync with analog VGA are techically possible; I just doubted its usefulness and I forgot that there are quite a few multimedia projectors capable of 1024x768px @120 Hz over analog VGA inputs only, and they include Nvidia 3D Vision-compatible projectors (blame on Silicon Image and other CE companies who don't understand PC needs and don't support 120 Hz over HDMI/DVI).

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

So there is hopefully at least one implication for the end-user, and iZ3D would now be able to finally make page-flipping work with analog sync active glasses, now that the newer Catalys drivers feature extended support for 120 Hz modes.

Running (or rather, trying to run): Wired eDimensional on Samsung 2693HM through 4870X2 - video through DVI but sync through VGA.
iZ3D Shutter (beta) - Simple
...and E-D-activator running Page Flip and LCD Mode 1.

The glasses slowly go in and out of sync, this update made no difference to that, not sure if it was even supposed to make a difference.

Is the "ATI Catalyst™ support for 3D Stereoscopic glasses" supposed to have new pages in Catalyst Control Center, if so they are hiding skillfully.

But this is great news nonetheless! We appreciate any tiny bits and pieces of support they throw at us, right?

Give us more, ATi! We are hungry! (And grateful. ...And hungry.)

It's just a driver-level hook that enables hardware page flipping from the back buffer. All the work behind the synchronisation should be done by 3rd party OEMs who make USB glassess and 3rd party applications and middleware drivers like iZ3D/DDD. There's really nothing in the Catalyst CC to tune for the end-user.