3D technologies and future support

Kaotik

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AMD has HD3D, which hasn't really gotten much air under it, and uses industry standard(?) quad buffering supported by OpenGL and Direct3D (though only D3D is apparently currently supported in drivers)

nVidia has 3D Vision, their propiertary standard, but as it appears, they don't support industry standard(?) quad buffering at all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_buffering
http://3dvision-blog.com/the-game-deus-ex-human-revolution-and-its-stereo-3d-support/

To my knowledge, DE:HR was the first game to officially support HD3D, and uses quad buffering which in turn means nVidia users can't get 3D support in this game.

Will the industry move with nVidia like it has mostly done so far regarding 3D support, or will it instead start to use industry standard(?) quad buffering meaning nVidia needs to "yield" and start supporting it instead of (only) 3D Vision?
 
DXGI 1.2 will have official stereo support according to the preliminary documentation. This will almost certainly supersede both those in time.
 
What versions of Windows and DX will that work for?

AFAICS it's windows 8 only, completely irrelevant ...
 
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No I meant WDDM/DXGI 1.2 ... AFAICS Microsoft is making it Windows 8 only. By the time that becomes relevant we will be on WDDM/DXGI 1.4 no doubt, which will only work in a new version of Windows no doubt.

Come on Gabe Newell, when will you realise PC gaming needs leadership and Microsoft will quite intentionally not supply it and the hardware manufacturers can't? Really Steam is the only force which can force useful standards through at the moment.
 
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But newer versions of Windows will still support DXGI 1.2, so the support for 3D in DirectX will work on, say, 50% of the HW available, so it will push proprietary solutions into oblivion. So Humus is IMO pretty much spot-on.
 
It will take nearly half a decade to be relevant.

In time we will all be dead and not need stereographic standards ... in the mean time we need a major software force to push through an useful standard a little fucking faster than Microsoft. Unfortunately most game developers are sucking either at the hardware manufacturers or Microsoft's teet ... which leaves Valve as the only credible force , but they refuse to take leadership in PC gaming despite being desperately dependent on a healthy PC gaming eco system.
 
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It will take nearly half a decade to be relevant.

Maybe 3D will become relevant in that half decade. Maybe not, but it's going to take a standard to make it happen for PC and right now there's about nil incentive for MS to add it on to existing windows platforms.
 
I'm talking about the irrelevance of Microsoft's standard if it isn't backwards compatible, not stereoscopic displays in general.
 
I heard somewhere (forgot where) that DXGI 1.2 would come to Win7 sp2. Not sure about Vista. But given that DXGI 1.1 was brought to Vista with sp2 I don't see why DXGI 1.2 wouldn't come to Vista/Win7.
 
Yeah, I have not heard any explicit confirmation of DXGI 1.2 coming to Win7 but at the same time I've seen no reason to think that it wouldn't. I would like to think that MS learned their lesson with regards to restricting new DX versions to a new version of the OS.
 
We have official confirmation that they call it the "Windows 8 graphics driver model" though ... so in the absence of anything more official to the contrary I'll call it that as well.
 
If this incoming "stereo support" is just, like, support for presenting left and right views separately; then the only 3D tech being obsolete soon I think will be AMD quad buffer API.

You can replace a hardware specific API with a more vendor agnostic API, but to replace a complete solution you'll need more than just an API. 3D Vision, Iz3D and TriDef; all are stereo solutions that do much more than just presenting stereo buffers. And they will stay relevant until the majority of games implement stereo supports natively. Of course DXGI 1.2 should make it a bit easier for the developers to do this, but will they?

And if this "stereo support" means -- very unlikely -- automatically generate, and present left and right views separately from regular Direct3D games, then yeah; I guess all these stereo middlewares are obsolete soon. AMD however, might be forced to buy/hire either Iz3D or TriDef to implement this feature in their drivers :p
 
then the only 3D tech being obsolete soon I think will be AMD quad buffer API.
AMD whatnow?
quad buffers is a feature available straight in OpenGL and Direct3D, and isn't AMD related at all - anything supporting quad buffering should for example support DE:HR 3D (though as it appears, the game has been later patched to support 3D Vision too)
As I learned after reading a bit more, nVidia supports quad buffering too, but only on Quadros and even those only in OpenGL.

On AMD / quad buffering case, TriDef and iZ3D are just handling how you send the data to screen / sync your glasses as far as I know.
 
AMD whatnow?
quad buffers is a feature available straight in OpenGL and Direct3D, and isn't AMD related at all - anything supporting quad buffering should for example support DE:HR 3D (though as it appears, the game has been later patched to support 3D Vision too)

You need to understand the differences between an API, its underlying implementation, and weasel words :smile:

OpenGL API has native stereo support, AMD quad buffer API is not needed to write stereo (non-anaglyph) capable application in OpenGL. Direct3D has never had native stereo 3D supports. Some parts of these APIs might be implemented similarly underneath the driver, but this has little relevance as far as developers are concerned. They are all distinct APIs.

DE:HR using AMD quad buffer API is no different than Batman using PhysX or NVAPI.

As I learned after reading a bit more, nVidia supports quad buffering too, but only on Quadros and even those only in OpenGL.

Yes, and in AMD side, only FirePro cards support OpenGL quad buffer stereo. Isn't it amusing when you think "anything supporting quad buffering should"? :p

On AMD / quad buffering case, TriDef and iZ3D are just handling how you send the data to screen / sync your glasses as far as I know.

Well, that is wrong. They do the bulk of the work to make stereo 3D happen with AMD hardware, and deserve more credits for that.
 
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