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RADEON + Stereo-3D Glasses. #37250
12/01/04 12:33
12/01/04 12:33
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 49
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dirkmittler Offline OP
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dirkmittler  Offline OP
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 49
People have posted before, that they would be interested to give players a Head-Mounted Display (an HMD), not meaning a Head-Up-Display as part of the game's views. Instead, they would like to put a display on the head of the player, so that he or she can experience the game by moving their heads, so that the camera position will update itself. I do NOT submit a description of how to do that here. But, I have done an experiment with Stereo-3D glasses which let a player look at their normal screen, and perceive 3DGS games with depth.

It was often my mistaken impression that it's the responsibility of the game author to create two camera positions and guide them through the game level, to emulate a left- and right-eye view, so that objects will really look 3D. However I've learned that because the scene is already loaded onto the graphics card in 3D representation, and that graphics card's hardware mainly responsible for rendering a 2D perspective view of that scene, drivers actually exist for the graphics card, which will trick it into generating 2 views in place of 1.

In fact, if you own an nVidia graphics card, I hear that this company has already supplied those drivers and all you need to do is connect your 3D glasses. But alas, I don't have an nVidia graphics card, but rather an ATI Radeon 9000 AIW Pro, because my first uses for it would be watching television, capturing video INPUTS TO the graphics card and so on... Games are secondary to me. And ATI has given ZERO support to the development of drivers for 3D glasses.

Yet, there exist at least two sets of 3D glasses which come with 3rd-party Stereo-3D drivers. I decided to buy a set which supposedly work with Radeon, but had 2 to choose between. One was Eye3D, which uses the already-well-known Wicked3D drivers. But because many games don't work with Wicked3D, I didn't even try those. Instead I tried e-Dimensional glasses, also known as E-D glasses, that come with a dongle to synchronize everything, and I happened to choose the wireless ones, with internal 50-100 hour watch battery and IR sensor.

These glasses are properly adjustable due to two sets of ear-hooks and variable lengths for each.

My report to you is that E-D glasses do work with 3D Game Studio's engine and 'normal' scripts. Also, using E-D glasses still permits me to watch TV and DVDs... But this system uses a driver program that does not release the graphics card fully once it has been activated, even if you shut down the program. Further, if you turn off the setting to start this driver with Windows each time, then indeed it will not start with the next reboot. But just running the program again defaults it to 'start me up...' Which you can undo again before even using it. This means that outside of games, your display, your Desktop, will still be displayed in (accurate) pseudo-interlaced form, and will flicker noticeably at 60 Hz. Further, you must change the refresh rate of the graphics card while the program is not running. Think about this. Your ATI control panel will get confused if you switch the refresh rate while this program is active.

Yet, after I struggled to set this up correctly, I found that my Desktop is relatively free of flicker at 70 Hz, that my 3DGS games run well, and that everything can optionally be viewed with full depth-perception due to these shutter-glasses.

The only exception is that 3DGS particles, for some reason, appear with the distance of the real monitor screen, as do panels, while all the entities, including sprites, will appear at the correct distance. Some people (like me) also have the vision tendency, if an object is presented as if at 25 feet distance, to focus their eyes at 25 feet. Yet, every image detail will only be in focus at one distance. I find that focussing on panel text at the distance of the screen first, helps me focus to distant objects in the game next as well.

It occurred to me that occasional game engines might not work with E-D glasses, and that other 3DGS users might not want to take the risks with their money. Well I took that risk and can tell you that this game engine and those glasses are compatible.

Further, the drivers have been improved since they first came out. Now, there is no need to put any kind of file into the game folders. Instead, the new driver keeps a list of settings for each "game" that you might want to run, in one central file of its own now. And although 3DGS always appears as the same 'game program' , you can set other engines to remember their adjustments, since one important step is to adjust the amount of depth and any additional shift bewteen views. Also, if you have programs which test the DirectX drivers, you can set those programs, plus whatever games, not to use the Stereo-3D mode. You can turn this function on and off without any delay. And the driver distinguishes between its function keys and the game's using Scroll-Lock. With that mode, you get the driver, and without you get your game.

You might want to disable this function for MED for example, since that also makes use of Dx. Unless you want to view in 3D while buidling your model. But with a battery, you might not want to waste that experience on actual design. Yet, there is a version with a wire and no battery.

OpenGL content is also supported, and supposedly as widely so.

By a 'normal' game I mean one, which uses the main camera position. I have tested that this one camera position gets doubled by the driver, but am not sure if multiple camera positions will also get doubled, that come with multi-view games.

And one way to deal with 3DGS partciles not appearing in 'true 3D' could be, to "shift" the two images closer together in the adjustment of the E-D glasses, thus bringing the entire virtual scene closer to the player. This is a seperate adjustment from the strength of the 3D effect, but can make it easier for a player to associate particles still on the surface of the screen with close game entities and events given full 3D by the glasses.

Dirk


Last edited by dirkmittler; 12/01/04 22:58.
Re: RADEON + Stereo-3D Glasses. [Re: dirkmittler] #37251
12/01/04 23:17
12/01/04 23:17
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 493
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WHURL Offline
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WHURL  Offline
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Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 493
That's extremely interesting to hear of your tests and progress. Thank you for sharing in detail. You are obviously a person of considerable... depth


So Many Toys... So Little Time. A place to lurk while you work > irc://irc.webchat.org/3DGS
Re: RADEON + Stereo-3D Glasses. [Re: WHURL] #37252
12/02/04 00:16
12/02/04 00:16
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 49
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dirkmittler Offline OP
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dirkmittler  Offline OP
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Thank you for your reply and interest.

I thought that I should mention, that if you want to get rid of this effect, which gets put directly onto your graphics card, you need to set the program first, so that it will not start when the computer reboots. And then you will need to power the computer all the way down, long enough to discharge the capacitors. Because that will clear your graphics memory.

Only then can you change the refresh rate. But I'm learning day by day, that if I leave the refresh rate at 70Hz, my uses of my graphic card, and restarts of the computer seem fine.

It's also noteworthy, that I'm still able to watch 50Hz DVDs from Germany IN NORMAL 2D, while my screen is at 70Hz, due to ATI hardware.

Dirk


Last edited by dirkmittler; 12/02/04 00:45.
Re: RADEON + Stereo-3D Glasses. [Re: dirkmittler] #37253
12/07/04 06:48
12/07/04 06:48
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 49
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dirkmittler Offline OP
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dirkmittler  Offline OP
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 49
Sorry that I'm bumping my thread, but I thought that comments this far apart in time should be left to stand, and not re-edited.

It would seem that E-D Glasses use the Z-buffer to determine by how much to shift the pixels to the left or right. That would explain a lot, including why it's necessary to adjust them for different games: Different games would scale the 16-bit Z-buffer differently, but still calculate distances accurately for their own sake.

For particles, apparently those just stay at the surface of the screen (left image exactly as right image). This could be due to alternative code by Conitec determining screen position.

For TRANSPARENT sprites, this would mean incomplete depth-effect, because those don't write the Z-buffer at all in 3DGS. Not as badly as particles though, transparent sprites seem to have the same depth as other objects, still within the game's space. They appear as though the player was projecting them over the other objects. Although this doesn't become immediately obvious, their depth is perceived as uncertain.

But one very important advantage of this should be (correct me if I'm wrong someone) that multi-view games should work fine. As long as the multiple camera-positions are displayed directly on the screen, they should still have a valid Z-buffer there. While views redirected with Professional Edition to an object texture MIGHT remain flat, because their Z-buffer is stored elsewhere. But this I can't test because I only have Commercial Edition.

I have no idea whether shader commands to enable writing the Z-buffer or not will work for E-D Glasses, because the shaders supply their own code to determine screen position, which COULD BE the same as for particles. I don't know if shader passes come before the E-D drivers or after them. And I'm too lazy to test this today. But just because the shader updates the Z-buffer and the E-D drivres read that, it would be more logical if shader passes come before the E-D drivers, and shaders render with appropriate depth-effect.

One little quirk with this, is that at the edge of visibility, either at the edge of the screen or behind some corners of the level, small rectangular patches can remain unrendered along surfaces when one moves, because the Stereo-3D effect does not force additional rendering for the other eye. This can cause an interesting but accidental effect of 'visible construction process'. But those same patches appear to remain buffered past this edge, once the player has moved and they have been rendered already.

Dirk

Last edited by dirkmittler; 12/07/04 08:13.

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