How Nvidia Wants To Bring 3D Glasses Back 341
notthatwillsmith writes "For the last ten years, we've heard the promise of 3D shutter glasses, which when combined with the proper video card drivers and a good display, can trick your brain into thinking that your 2D monitor is creating 3D images. Unfortunately the glasses never really took off, partly because there were rendering problems with many popular 3D games but mostly because monitors didn't support high enough refresh rates to display games without giving people crushing headaches. Nvidia thinks they've solved both problems--the software works much better, and there are a surprising number of supported 120Hz-capable TVs and monitors that ameliorate the headache factor. Maximum PC has a hands-on with Nvidia's new tech, plus details about Nvidia's planned hardware solution."
Re:Bigger glasses (Score:1, Informative)
are you kidding?
The glasses block one eye at a time to trick you into seeing two slightly different pictures (the monitor switches pictures at the same rate the glasses switch which eye it blocks).
If you put the glasses on the monitor, both eyes would see the same thing at the same time.
Re:"Mostly" monitors? (Score:4, Informative)
It was the Sega Master System that had the 3d glasses. I have one, and I found the 3d effect really difficult to maintain. The depth of field is very limited. anything significantly in front of or behind the object you're focusing on is a double image.
Re:Visuals, Smisuals (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Mostly" monitors? (Score:5, Informative)
Riiiiight... (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no. The glasses never took off because no one wanted to wear clunky, heavy glasses with a HUGE battery pack or cable attachment. (Or even better, two cables: sync and power.) Not to mention the hardware integrated into the frame for manipulating the shutter or polarization of each lens...
And then there's the fact that a fair amount of gaming is not done in the solitude of a dorm room or mom's basement, but in public. And how would you look wearing a pair of shuttering glasses in Starbucks? True 3D is cool, but even nerds have their - our - limits.
But, hey, this is Nvidia trying to find a raison d'etre after its sole niche becomes commoditized. I get that, but that doesn't make it not stupid. Next I suppose Nvidia will start touting other good-only-at-first-glance peripherals: the Nvidia gyroscopic mouse, the Nvidia true-3D-audio speaker set, and the Nvidia dvorak keyboard...
- David Stein
Re:My religious stance? (Score:2, Informative)
Wow you took that personally. It wasn't personal or directed at you it was to stop my argument from the Linux Zealots who would often post after me Touting how COOL Linux is and how great it is for gaming, etc. I just wanted people to stop and look at the facts and understand a business reason for just using Vista Drivers. Um posts on Slashdot tend to do the following.
1. Never read the username, as it is kinda pointless.
2. Assume the context is about what the general feeling are on the topic (in this case zealot Linux furver).
3. Does the message appear to support or reject this stereo type.
If you are going to go off the fact that I asked people in general. To put their views aside on Linux and Windows and actually look at the reasoning. To show that choosing Vista is actually a good decision for Nvida to use.
I've used Vista myself and I hated it. But that is besides the point. But to make a big deal that it is Vista only isn't part of the story it is about the product and how it works not what platform it currently runs on.
Great monitors and Great Glasses (Score:3, Informative)
Crystal Eyes and Monochrome monitors. The monochrome monitors were capable of putting out 200+ fL of light (about 4x brighter than your typical out-of-the-box LCD) and the crystal eye shuttered glasses were capable of extinguishing 99+ of the light. The result was a realistic, if slowly refreshed, 3D image.
I've also looked at a number of displays- my favorite so far is the Stereo Planar- still requires polarized glasses but the display is sharp and fast and, when integrated with the 24" NEC IPS panels gives decent motion performance.
There is McNaughtten (Sp?) rear projection LCD displays- I only used the prototype- I wasn't a fan but others have liked it. I believe the fan noise bothered me quite a bit, not to mention some of the speckle. That's being fixed with some new diffuser materials.
Lastly Kodak actually had a 3D display- used two LCDs aligned in a box- you looked through a lense element (no glasses on the face) and saw the projected 3D image. Very high resolution, very bright- but it got canned.
There are good 3D solutions out there (or at least it's getting better). You're probably just not willing to pay the price to get it.
Re:excellent (Score:2, Informative)
It states in the article that they are planning on having that, including possibly a scroll wheel to adjust it on the fly. They also stated that the defaults will have a low depth to allow people time to get accustomed to the effect.
Re:Can I have my 5 minutes back? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Effective refresh rate (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Mostly" monitors? (Score:5, Informative)
Gah, cues goddamnit!!! Not queues. Cues!!! You'd think Slashdot of all places would get that right ...
Re:My religious stance? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Because I have 4 PC's in my house at the moment running windows Vista, 1x Home Premium 64, 2x Ultimate 64 and one Ultimate 32. In the last month of near-constant use for everything from 3D rendering applications, heavy gaming, casual use and more there has been a grand total of 0 crashes between all 4 PCs.
One of the PC's started having problems, but that turned out to be related to the NVidia 8500 drivers, using the onboard ATI HD3200 it runs smooth and stable pretty much around the clock.
You can throw around your certifications all you like, although expecting them to earn you anything more than cursory mod points on slashdot is rather just e-penis inflation. What applications were crashing? How are you able to say beyond question that these crashes were the fault of Vista? So your computer crashes on an application and your first method of troubleshooting is to install a new operating system? Srsly?
At least you weren't modded all the way to insightful, but if you want to come out sounding like anything more than just someone bashing Vista like everyone else on /. then I'd like some form of intelligent support behind your claims.
Or this, I'm a certified Linux user, I bash Windows on public forums all the time, I even have a penguin sticker on my car! I use linux all day, every day. However, when I went to install the newest distro of Bandwagon 0.8, certain things would crash. (Did I forget to mention that I've got internet access, which lets me download imaginary credentials?) Anyway, since something didn't work, I decided to turn the monitor upside down and install Bandwagon in a different language. Still doesn't work....
I could keep going, but it stops being funny and becomes sad rather quickly in this context. All you provided was a set of credentials which describe probably a good 75% of the users of this forum, and a REALLY pointless story that shows me nothing except your absolutely horrid reasoning skills. (And I'm even being generous and assuming that before reformatting your OS you were intelligent enough to check the application's website to ensure compatability with 64-bit Vista). I mean, there are so many things WRONG with your reasoning that I can't stop myself from typing. Did you try using compatability modes? Did you take ownership of the application? I give up, but I hope you feel better about having earned your vista-bashing certifications on /.
Re:My religious stance? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've been using this for a while (Score:3, Informative)