Nvidia 3D Vision Stereoscopic Glasses

Introduction:The concept of using Bifocal lenses to project 3D images is no new concept. We have been doing it since the early theater. Over time that technology has come to PC's and has been available in many forms from various companies. Early 3D stereoscopic glasses were limited to just specific colors. Either done in LED or early Green/Red monitors. Some might even remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy which used scanning technology per eye. More recent solutions would divide a monitors 60 Hz into 30 HZ per eye. And tended to be rather low resolution. Which caused flicker and eyestrain. All the devices I mentioned tend to cause headaches after prolonged use.

Introducing 3D Vision Stereoscopic Glasses: Nvidia and many Monitor companies have worked together to solve many of the problems of early 3D Stereo devices. The first and foremost thing is the glasses run at 60 HZ per eye which will greatly reduce flickering. Also Monitor companies are releasing 120 HZ monitors too which can support these glasses. The beauty of it is. Most devices will be rendered at least 1680x1050 resolution now. Rather than the super low resolution that accompanied older glasses.

So How do they work?: Nvidia 3D glasses work at the driver level. And on a 3D compatible display such as the Samsung Syncmaster. The image will get rendered twice at various depth. ((Something I will explain further in the article)). The glasses will take image and shift between them rapidly creating the illusion of a more 3D image. This illusion is very real. Each lense will render @ 1680x1050 with 60 HZ refresh rate. Each frame will be synchronized back and forth between the lenses making the image appear to be "whole". I could go into great depth about optics and how human eyes percieve a single image. But to make a long story short. The glasses are bifocal in design so each lens will be rendering a different object. Thus creating the very realistic 3D illusion. Unfortunately since the entire concept of the technology works behind the concept of bifocal optics. You will not be able to "shown" the effect by screenshots.

The IR emitter

What the Dahookey: The IR Emitter is essential for the 3D Stereoscopic glasses to work. A USB cable connects to the PC to the IR Emitter which sends the signal to the shutter glasses on how to render the scene. Its very small and has a wide radius to which you can use it. You dont have to be sitting straight in front of it. I put mine under my monitor but I have been able to set it numerous places so long as it is front of the goggles. I was able to use the glasses to up a 20 yard range.

Getting Started and Setting it up: In order to use these glasses there are some strict requirements which must be met. Nvidia says that these requirements are needed to ensure the optimal Stereoscopic experience. Judging from past uses of these technologies. I tend to agree.

GPU Requirements:Nvidia requires a Geforce 8 or higher GPU for the 3Dvision glasses.

Supported GPUS

-Geforce 8 Series
-Geforce 9 Series
-Geforce 200 Series
- SLI Supported

Unsupported

- Geforce 7 and Below
- 3 Way And Quad SLI (Pending Support from Nvidia)

Monitor Requirements: A monitor with a 120 refresh rate is completely required. Which means you'll need to make a 1 time update of your monitor to make use of this technology. The reason for this is simple. To keep from having awful eyestrain of low refresh rates. In this case you will get dual "60 Hz" per eye. Dual Link DVI is also essential due to the extremely high refresh rate. The benefits of 120 HZ can also be seen beyond just using 3D Glasses so this is an upgrade in more ways than one. For this review I will be using a Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ. Other compatible displays include Viewsonic FuHzion VX2265wm and various other DLP HDTV displays. Nvidia will be maintaining a list for use. When that list is ready I will be providing a link in this guide. Nvidia will be certifying displays as "3D Vision Compatible Displays" to make it easier for end users to find compatible displays.

Monitor Compatibility List

Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ: Completely Beautiful Display

USB 2.0 is a required connection because of the power requirements of running the IR emitter. This shouldn't be a problem for most people but some keyboards and other connectors still only offer 1.1 compatibility.

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The Package: Obviously the next thing you'll need is the glasses themselves. Nvidia plans to price these glasses at 199.99. Which is about the cost of a midrange GPU. When I asked Nvidia about the price. They said their plans were not for this to be a high end exclusive technology. At this introduction price I can see that. Once monitors with the requirements become more mainstream. I can see this as having viable potential for the mainstream market. Below will be the base package that comes with the glasses.

- Wireless Glasses
- IR Emitter
- DVI to HDMI Cables ((For Use with DLP HDTVs)
- one 6 foot USB Cable.
- one 10 foot USB cable
- Pouch and Cleaning cleaning Cloth
- Install CD
- Nose Pieces
- Vesa 3 Pin stereo connector ((for HDTVs))

General Setup

Thoughts: Typicals setup is very easy. Install Monitor as you would any monitor. Connect the USB device. Further instructions below.

Glasses use and Setup

Thoughts: Using these glasses is quite simple. There is 1 indication light which tells you the over all charge. And another which tells you they are in use. The in use indicator will shut down after a few seconds. But to turn them on you simply push a small button on the lefr ear piece. The glasses themselves can hold their charge for up to 40 hours. So you need not have them charging at all times.

Note: Before using it is recommended you charge the glasses for at least 4 hours via the USB connector.

Note: You also can use the glasses with them plugged into the charging device if you wish. But you'll lack the mobility of using them without the cable.

Comfort and Use: The very first question I asked when I heard about these was. "Can you wear your glasses with them?". The answer is yes. As a person who wears glasses I just slid them over the front without issue. Nvidia also offers two additional nose pieces to make for more comfortable wearing amongst different users.

Common Sense Note: These are not prescription eye glasses or shades. Do not use them as protection from the sun or as an alternative to corrective lenses.

IR Emitter use and setup

USB Connection: The USB connector is pretty simple. Its how the computer detects the device and installs. It also the basic means for which the driver communicates with the glasses. Its no more difficult to install than other USB connections

Depth Adjusting Wheel: This is a very important part of the device you'll probably be toying with alot in various games. The more depth you have the more "3D" the effect will feel. One thing users should keep in mind. That you dont need too much depth for an LCD monitor. Over can be just too high for some people. If you go too high you can cause eyestrain and often see "Double" with your eyes. Users starting out should should start at 15% and do further tweaking from there to best suit their needs. The actual comfort level will vary from user to user. I myself found myself comfortable in the 25-30% range playing World of Warcraft.

Vesa Stereo Connector: Unless your using a 3D Stereo compatibile HDTV. You will not be using this feature. Refer to manual for HDTV setup.

Status Indication Lights: The Emitter has 3 Status indication lights which reflect the status of the emitter and whether its working or not.

Red: No Driver detected

Dark Green: Active and detected but not in use

Bright Green: Active and in use.

Note: Indicator light is also a button. If you wish to disable the 3D Stereoscopic effect at any time. Just push the button and normal rendering will enable.

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Compatibility and Performance

Profiles Again: Nvidia is using profiles similar to SLI profiles. These profiles are supposed to enable specific application fixes such as Crosshair fixes ect. However I have been able to "force" 3DVision in other apps such as Neverwinter Nights 2. They just lack general compatibility fixes that Nvidia has tested. Game support appears to be about 350 games currently but Nvidia promises driver updates and by leveraging their "TWIMP" campaign that future games all support StereoVision out of the box. It is not recommended to attempt to force 3D Vision in non supported games unless you are a power user.. But some issues may come up. You should also be aware of the tooltip in the game compatibility window. As you may have to make a few compromises to get it working. ((Shadows. Bloom ect)) Hopefully these issues wont be present in future games and games will work without issue or tweaking as Nvidia promises.

Is it perfect compatibility?: It is close but I would not say its perfect. Sometimes theres fiddling that must be done on the user level which hurts the transparent experience. As well as some games just not having appropriate rendering for 3Dvision glasses. I have found games leveraging an abundance of 2D effects tend to not gain as much with glasses ((obviously)) and make the enviroment appear flat.

Performance Factors: In order for 3Dvision glasses to work. The image "Must" be rendered twice. Nvidia claims that because they can do this at the driver level without a DirectX wrapper. Their performance figures should be quite a bit more performing than competing solutions. But I wont sugar coat it. There is a performance hit for using it. And its entirely GPU limited one at that. CPU limited games probably won't notice this performance impact.

Positive Note: Since you basically rendering the scene twice and merging it. You do get a psuedo AA effect. So the need for high levels of AA does diminish by a substancial bit.

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The Subjective Experience

Note: Note these are extremely subjective opinions. And should be taken as such. I have mentioned to Nvidia that setting up "demo" booths at places like Best Buy would certainly give people the real feel for it.

The Effect: Ultimately I think the effect of using these glasses is really cool. The only way I can describe is it as your monitor not being just a picture rendering an object. But a Psuedo 3D effect. As if your monitor has become a window and your looking into it. Often at times you'd find yourself thinking. "If only I could push my hand through the monitor I could reach out and grab that!"

Experience: My thoughts on this have been mixed positive and negative. To be fair these are subjective experiences and the users may differ. My primary tests have been Far Cry 2, World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament 3. All of which are supported by the 3Dvision glasses. I'll go over the games I played and my thoughts on each of them.

Far Cry 2: Far Cry 2 was a mixed bag of results. I had to turn off shadowing in order to get it to display correctly. Which was recommended by the tooltips. By not doing this the shadows flickered and it looked really awkward as a whole. Otherwise the game played very well and the effects of the glasses worked well for me. I played through the first level and it almost felt as if the leaves and grass terrain you were running through were splashing against your monitor as they would a car window driving through a dense field.

Unreal Tournament 3: I did not encounter any problems with this one. None that were obvious to me. I picked it up and played it and it was just a blast to experience. The only thing that was missing was the feeling of the monitor "Cracking" as the flak shells and bullets slammed against you.

World of Warcraft: World of Warcraft was actually my best experience with the glasses. It seems Blizzard and Nvidia have been working hard on making this game a showcase of the technology. For those familiar with the game. These descriptions will bear alot more meaning. But when your flying around the world on your flying mount the world has so much more depth to it. Passing by other people mounted in the air would make it seem like a dragon is swooshing by me. In the daily quest for the Battle of Wymrest Temple. The Blue dragons are shooting you with bolts of energy. And these bolts look as if they are "flying" into your monitor. I had one zap past me and it almost made me jump. Blizzard is also apparently releasing a patch a that will improve the experience. The only flaw I encountered was the mouse pointer appeared 2D. Nvidia informed me that the mouse pointer should be fixed in an upcoming blizzard patch. I very much look forward to testing these glasses with other MMORPGs as I think they have the chance to provide true realism to these games.

Overall Thoughts and Opinions: When these glasses came to me I was very surprised. I wasn't expecting them. My excitement was not met without reward when I played games like World of Warcraft. I think as more and more games come out and more monitors meet the requirements for this technology. Nvidia will have a very appealing product on their hands. Those wanting to splurge now should not find themselves unhappy with the technology. Especially the games it works really well in. The downside is that these glasses dont work perfectly in every title. Nvidia assures me that they are rapidly working on future drivers which will improve compatibility as well as newer games being designed with them in mind. Nvidia made many of the same promises back when SLI was first released and for the most part I feel they have delivered so my faith is set in Nvidia delivering yet again on the '"Future games" promises. That being said Nvidia currently supports 350 games and that will improve with time.

Something that just bugs me: I must say that I am a bit displeased about the lack of 3 Way SLI and Quad SLI support. While some may argue you don't need that kind of rendering power for 1680x1050 display. I disagree. When you render the scene twice for the glasses to work your GPU workload increases by quite a bit. And I just know my GTX 295 Quad SLI setup would have really allowed these to flourish. Future monitors will also be larger as time goes forward and lets not forget the HDTV and Projectors which do support it now. After alot of badgering towards Nvidia on my part. Nvidia assures me that they will have working Quad and 3 Way Drivers in the not too distance future. I look forward to that. So I can fully appreciate these glasses without the comrpomise.

Pros

- Driver based game support, Works very well with existing games.
- 120 HZ. 60 Hz Per eye. Much easier on the eyes than previous solutions.
- 350 current supported games with Nvidia promising more to come.
- All current DX10 cards supported.
- Can really change and immerse you into your gaming enviroment.

Cons

- Does not always work 100%. Rendering can be subjected to minor flaws
- No 3 Way or Quad SLI support
- New expensive monitors. ((Something that time will cure.

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