Will R420 Support 3D Glasses ?!

rms

Newcomer
ATI has pointedly refused to support 3D Glasses for over a year now.

Since R420 apparently will have few new features and only offer increased speed, will this be yet another generation of ATI cards that will not support 3D Glasses?

rms
 
Personally, I'm squarely in the "I don't really care" camp. ;) But to answer your question: I have no idea, but I suspect not.
 
people still use 3D glasses? I didn't even realize you could still buy them... thought that went out around the time of the GF3.
 
Yeah, support of 3d glasses depends on driver support, not hardware. I'd be interested in trying out 3d glasses, but I haven't due to lack of support.
 
They could dupport 3D glasses with PCI-Express enabled boards.... Just imagine, each board would compute for one eye..... Who said overkill price ? :D
 
rms said:
ATI has pointedly refused to support 3D Glasses for over a year now.

Since R420 apparently will have few new features and only offer increased speed, will this be yet another generation of ATI cards that will not support 3D Glasses?

rms

ATI have always said that this is very low on their list of priorities because it interests such a small part of their customer base. I doubt that will change with the new cards.
 
Who uses 3D glasses?

I mean, they're cool and all (I tried on a pair and played UT2K3 once) but not really practical for most hardcore players.
 
I find I can achieve the same effect as 3D glasses if I snort Desinex foot powder...... eyes water and hurt, and I get a really painful headache! ;)

BTW....has anyone here tried looking at any paintings using 3D glasses - the blue & red lense types........ pretty interesting!
 
Where can you even BUY 3D-glasses anymore? Haven't seen them anywhere in Sweden since the original DOOM game was hot.

I mean, WHO CARES? Get real, it's not that ATi "refuses" to support it, it's that virtually nobody uses them.

RMS, if 3D-glasses is so important to you, by all means, buy Nvidia instead man... :rolleyes:
 
Are there any sets of those that actually work any decent without giving you massive headaches? If anyone knows of any I wouldn't mind giving them a try, but I've always thought they were more of a gimmick than anything else.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Are there any sets of those that actually work any decent without giving you massive headaches? If anyone knows of any I wouldn't mind giving them a try, but I've always thought they were more of a gimmick than anything else.

3D-glasses are not a gimmick.
They have been used in mechanical/architectural/molecular CAD for well over a decade, and believe me, when looking at an active site within a proteinstructure, 3D-glasses help. Immensely.
3D-perception was important enough that before ready availability of LCD-shuttered glasses, we used dual mirror "binoculars" and drew double images on the screen which were then superimposed using the mirror "binoculars". I wrote such code myself, it was essential.

A lot (most, I'd say) of the bad reputation 3D-glasses have is due to people trying them being ignorant of the consequences of their operation, the most significant being that you need roughly twice the frame-rate, and twice the screen refresh-rate in order to maintain subjective image stability. If you try to use 3D-glasses with a 75Hz or so CRT, running a game at 30ish frames per second, the results will be pretty grim when split in half. But then, you asked for it. Headaches aren't surprising....

Furthermore, most games use 2D-interface elements which then doesn't behave well within a stereoscopic world. Trying to aim with a 2D-crosshair in a stereoscopic world is quite suboptimal. Fixable, if programmers bothered.

In a gaming context, 3D-glasses make sense for adventure games or RPGs. But they could be great for immersiveness in FPSs as well though, a game like Splinter Cell for instance (if not for the problems the frame-rates would bring).

When set up properly and operated under sympathetic conditions, 3D-glasses are great tools, and and for professional use, I'd say they are absolutely necessary accessories. Their use has some problems, but once you've experienced it working well, the current status quo of flat 2D-projections of internal 3D-models will never really satisfy you again. The picture of an apple can never approach the reality of it lying on the table in front of you. But I've several times unthinkingly reached out to touch stereoscopically projected objects. It quite literally adds another dimension to 3D-modelling.
 
Yeah, you really need a great monitor for 3D glasses to work well, running at at least 150Hz (Well, 120Hz would be okay, but I for one can't stand 60Hz refresh rates....). One of these days I'll have to try 'em. They would be great for some of the physics visualization stuff I've done....

Edit:
Oh, btw, if you were wondering if anybody was still selling them, here's one company:
http://www.edimensional.com/

I'm sure there's more.

(Oh, and EDimensional claims support for ATI cards. I would guess that this means you can only use drivers that EDimensional has modified, meaning you can't use the latest ATI drivers....).

Edit 2: Yep, definitely less than optimal for ATI cards, but it should still work:
ATI and non-nVidia users send an email to drivers@eDimensional.com to obtain the patented E-D stereo drivers for non-nVidia cards. Current version is 3.4. Please do not email if you are already using version 3.4. Please be sure to include your order number in your email.
If those are Catalyst 3.4, then those drivers are quite old....
 
Surely it can't be that difficult to incorporate if Matrox (whose driver teams are so understaffed/overworked they've dropped advertised features) was able to add 3D Glasses support within the last couple of driver releases for Parhelia/P-Series.
 
keegdsb said:
Surely it can't be that difficult to incorporate if Matrox (whose driver teams are so understaffed/overworked they've dropped advertised features) was able to add 3D Glasses support within the last couple of driver releases for Parhelia/P-Series.
From what I've heard, Matrox actually has the best drivers in the industry.
 
Entropy said:
When set up properly and operated under sympathetic conditions, 3D-glasses are great tools, and and for professional use, I'd say they are absolutely necessary accessories.

But for how many professionals is it an absolutely neccessary accessory? Not everyone that works with a computer has use for 3D glasses! Very, very far from it.
 
Guden Oden said:
Entropy said:
When set up properly and operated under sympathetic conditions, 3D-glasses are great tools, and and for professional use, I'd say they are absolutely necessary accessories.

But for how many professionals is it an absolutely neccessary accessory? Not everyone that works with a computer has use for 3D glasses! Very, very far from it.

Depends on what you're doing. I examplified with mechanical CAD/Architecture/Molecular modelling.

Of course, there's a lot of people that do 3D-modelling that will eventually be output on 2D-media and it may not be as important then. Also, I have a feeling it may have to do with traditions - graphic designers migrating from 2D to 3D modelling simply may not reflect on the fact that they are still dealing with 2D projections of their model. At this point in time, I believe that many people just aren't aware of the option.

When Silicon Graphics started selling LCD-shutter glasses, they were sold together with monitors that supported higher refresh rates than the (not too impressive) state ot the art at the time. People at these forums would be shocked to hear what they charged for the fuctionality. I won't tell for fear of breaking peoples jaws against their desks. :) But for a lot of their customers at the time, it was worth it.

It is understandable if gfx companies that have evolved out of consumer/office PC space do not understand the point of catering to what they percieve as niche applications. A bit disappointing even so, you could wish for more from market leaders.

But for producers of games and of gaming related products (which 3D-gfx cards mostly are today), I feel it shows almost criminal shortsightedness. In the current "cinematic rendering" rut that would seem to permeate the industry, people seem to have forgotten that games represent a virtual reality, which is far removed from watching a film in many ways. A 3D virtual reality, nota bene, and it would make perfect sense to actually view it in stereoscopic 3D.

And it would be unique to gaming.

If you choose to look at it from an entertainment industry point of view, you have the possibility to present your content in a new and arguably better form. Simply being able to offer the alternative is an enticement. If I were a console producer I would jump at the opportunity with both feet.

Stereoscopic viewing via LCD-shuttered glasses may not be an ideal solution, but it would represent an easily accessible starting point that would serve to make the public aware of the possibilities, and might drive a wider demand.
 
I dont understand how shutterglaces on a crt could possibly work.
When i read about the one shutterglass they use in front of an lcd screen they even said in that article that for a crt they would need a shutter that can move verticaly too to move with the picture that is drawn on the screen.
So how can shutterglaces work on a crt?
I would think you always see the left and right frame blend together for both eyes? (top of the display probably shows the correct frame while the bottom shows the previous frame)
The only way i see this working is if they would use 2 refreshes per eye and only show the last.
 
Entropy said:
And it would be unique to gaming.

If you choose to look at it from an entertainment industry point of view, you have the possibility to present your content in a new and arguably better form. Simply being able to offer the alternative is an enticement. If I were a console producer I would jump at the opportunity with both feet.

Stereoscopic viewing via LCD-shuttered glasses may not be an ideal solution, but it would represent an easily accessible starting point that would serve to make the public aware of the possibilities, and might drive a wider demand.


I have a set that came with my Asus V7700 graphics card. After playing with them for about half an hour they have been sitting on my desk collecting dust. I'd call it a gimmick.
 
malcolm said:
I dont understand how shutterglaces on a crt could possibly work.
When i read about the one shutterglass they use in front of an lcd screen they even said in that article that for a crt they would need a shutter that can move verticaly too to move with the picture that is drawn on the screen.
So how can shutterglaces work on a crt?
I would think you always see the left and right frame blend together for both eyes? (top of the display probably shows the correct frame while the bottom shows the previous frame)
The only way i see this working is if they would use 2 refreshes per eye and only show the last.
Shutter glasses work by displaying a different image to each eye. Left shutter is closed and the CRT displays the right eye image. Right Shutter is closed and CRT displays the left eye image. Same with an LCD display. If the refresh rate is high enough the fact that a CRT draws vertically down the page doesn't matter. There is no blending between the left and right images.
 
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