GeForce 3D Vision: Stereoscopic 3D From NVIDIA
by Derek Wilson on January 8, 2009 2:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
All in all, this is like a very polished version of what we've had since the turn of the century. No flicker, less headaches (though there may still be some issue with people who have motion sickness -- I just don't have a large enough sample size to say definitively), and broad game support with less of a performance hit than other solutions. NVIDIA has a very good active shutter stereoscopic solution with GeForce 3D Vision. But the problem is that its value is still very dependent on the application(s) the end user wants it for. It works absolutely perfectly for viewing stereo images and 3D movies (which might be more of a factor when those start coming to bluray) and applications built with stereo support. But for games, though it works with 350 titles, it's just a little hit or miss.
We really hate to say that because we love seeing anyone push through the chicken and egg problem. NVIDIA getting this technology out there and getting developers excited about it and publishers excited about a new market will ultimately really make this a reality. But until most devs program in ways that are friendly to NVIDIA's version of stereo rendering, the gaming experience will be either good or not so good and there's just no way of knowing how much each individual title's problems will bother you until you try it. And at $200 that's a bit of a plunge for the risk. Especially if you don't have a 120Hz display device (which will cost several hundred more).
If you absolutely love a few of the games that works great with it, then it will be worth it. The problem is that NVIDIA's rating make is so that you can't rely on "excellent" as being excellent. Most of the people who played with Left 4 Dead loved it, but one person was really bothered by the floating names being 2D sprites at screen depth. Which is annoying, but the rest of it looked good enough for me not to care (and I'm pretty picky). If NVIDIA wants to play fast and loose with it's ratings, thats fine, but we don't have time to tests all their games and confirm their rating or come up with our own. They really should at least have another class of rating called "perfect" where there are absolutely no issues and all settings work great and we get exactly what we expect.
Shutter glasses have been around for a long time. Perhaps now the time is right for them to start pushing into the mainstream. But NVIDIA isn't doing the technology any favors if they put something out there and let it fail. This technology needs to be developed and needs to be pervasive because it is just that cool. But until it works perfectly in a multitude of games or until 3D movies start hitting PCs near you, we have the potential for a set back. If GeForce 3D Vision is successful, however, that will open the door for us to really move forward with stereoscopic effects.
What we really need, rather than a proprietary solution, is something like stereoscopic support built in to DirectX and OpenGL that developers can tap into very easily. Relying on NVIDIA to discern the proper information and then handle rendering images for both eyes off of one scene is great as a stop gap, just like CUDA was a good interim solution before we had OpenCL. We need the API to be able to handle knowing if there is stereo hardware present and making it easy to generate images for both eyes while duplicating as little work as possible. Giving developers simple tools to make stereo effects cooler and more real or to embed hits about convergence and separation would be great as well.
And hopefully GeForce 3D Vision is a real step toward that future that can become viable right now. I could see some World of Warcraft devotees being really excited about it. Those out there like me who love 3D technology in every form will be excited by it. People who want to create there own stereo images or videos (there are lenses available for this and techniques you can improvise to make it work) will like it, but people waiting for 3D movies will need some content available at home first. But the guys who we would love to see drive the adoption of the technology might not be as into it. The hardcore gamers out there looking to upgrade will probably be better served at this point by going with a high end graphics card and a 30" display rather than a 120Hz monitor and shutter glasses.
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fishbits - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
"What we really need, rather than a proprietary solution, is something like stereoscopic support built in to DirectX and OpenGL that developers can tap into very easily."Would be nice, but whatever works and is actually implemented.
Nvidia could come up with a "3d glasses thumbs-up" seal of approval for games that get it right, and it could be displayed on the packaging. This would furter encourage developers to get on board. Heck, NV could have traveling demo rigs that sit in a Gamestop/Best Buy for a week, playing games that have superior compliance. Good for sales of the game(s), good for sales of the glasses.
I've done the old shutter glasses, was a neat novelty, but wears thin as Derek says. Sounds like these are currently only a bit better with current titles in most cases. *IF* they get this right and all major titles released support the system well, I'd buy the glasses right away. The new monitor too. But they have to get it right first.
This might work for the next generation of consoles too, albeit if hooked up to a high-refresh monitor possibly. Great selling point, another reason to get this right and off the ground. Of course Sony/Nintendo/MS might just make their own solution, but whatever gets the job done. If only one had this feature implemented well, it could be a big tie-breaker in winning sales to their camp.
Judgepup - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Been waiting for the next revolution in gaming and after all the bugs have been worked out, this looks like it could be a contender. I'm typically an early adopter, but I'm fairly happy with a physical reality LCD at this point. Will wait in the wings on this one, but I applaud the Mighty nVidia for taking this tech to the next level.Holly - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Although I am great supporter of 3Ding of virtual worlds, there are really huge drawbacks in this technology nVidia presented.First of all, the reason why LCDs did not need to keep as high refresh rate as CRTs was the fact that LCD screen intensity doesn't go from wall to wall - 100% intensity to 0% intensity before another refresh (the way of CRT). This intensity fluctuation is what hurts our eyes. LCDs keep their intensity much more stable (some say their intensity is totaly stable, though I have seen some text describing there is some minor intensity downfall with LCDs as well, can't find it though). Back back on topic... we either went 100Hz+ or LCD to save our eyes.
Even if we ignore software related problems there is still problem... The flickering is back. Even if the screen picture is intensity stable these shutter glasses make the intensity go between 0-100% and we are back to days of old 14" screens and good way to get white staff sooner or later. Even if we have 120Hz LCDs, every eye has to go with 60Hz pretty much same as old CRTs. This just won't work. For longer use (gaming etc.) you really need 85Hz+ of flickering not to damage your eyes.
Another point I am curious about is how the GeForce 3D Vision counts in screen latency. It's not that long AT presented review of few screens with some minor whine about S-PVA latency coming way up to like 40ms. Thing is this latency could very easily cause that the frame that was supposed for left eye gets received by right eye and vice versa. I can imagine nausea superfast TM out of that (kind of effect when you drink too much and those stupid eyes just can't both focus on one thing).
I believe this stereoscopy has a future, but I don't believe it would be with shutter glasses or other way to switch 'seeing' eye and 'blinded' eye.
PrinceGaz - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
The answer is simple, move from LCD technology to something faster, like OLED or SED (whatever happened to SED?).Both of those technologies are quite capable of providing a true 200hz refresh that truly changes the display every time (not just changes the colour a bit towards something else). A 200hz display refresh (and therefore 100hz per eye refresh) should be fast enough for almost anyone, and most people won't have a problem with 170hz display (85hz flickering per eye).
I do think 120hz split between two eyes would quite quickly give me a serious headache as when I used a CRT monitor in the past and had to look at the 60hz refresh before installing the graphics-card driver, it was seriously annoying.
Rindis - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
"A 200hz display refresh (and therefore 100hz per eye refresh) should be fast enough for almost anyone, and most people won't have a problem with 170hz display (85hz flickering per eye)."Almost is the key word here. I'm okay with 75Hz CRTs unless I'm staring at a blank white screen (Word), and by 85 I'm perfectly fine.
However, my roommate trained as a classical animator (which means hours of flipping through almost identical drawings) and could perceive CRT refresh rates up to about 115Hz. (She needed expensive monitors and graphics cards....) Which would demand a 230+Hz rate for this technology.
paydirt - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
It's strange. I definitely notice when a CRT has a 60 Hz refresh rate. I have been gaming with a 29" LCD with 60 Hz refresh rate for about 4 years now and don't notice the refresh rate.DerekWilson - Friday, January 9, 2009 - link
That's because the CRT blanks while the LCD stays on. With an LCD panel, every refresh the color changes from what it was to what it is. With a CRT, by the time the electron gun comes around every 60Hz, the phosphorus has dimmed even if it hasn't gone completely dark. 60Hz on a CRT "flashes" while 60Hz on an LCD only indicates how many times per second the color of each pixel is updated.SlyNine - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Yes but LCD's have ghosting, unless you can purge that image completely the right eye would see a ghost of the left eye. If you ever looked at the stills from testing LCD ghosting, you will see that even the best LCD's ghosts last for 2 frames.The best TV I can think of to use this with is the 7000$ Laser TV from Mitsubishi.
Why can they not use dual videocards for this, Have one frame buffer be the left eye and the other be the right, then even if the car has yet to finish rendering the other image just flip to the last fully rendered frame.
Holly - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I think the result would be quite bad. You could easily end up in situation where one eye card runs 50 FPS while other eye card would be on 10FPS (even with the same models... the different placement of camera might invalidate big part of octree causing the FPS difference. Not sure how the brain would handle such a difference between two frames, but I think not well...SlyNine - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
You know what, I skimmed every thing you wrote, and rereading it I realize the error I made.My bad.