Stereoscopic 3D for Next Gen Consoles?

[EasyRaider]

Gosh, it's only $780!

The one from iZ3D sells for $399! And it sports full 1680x1050 resolution in 3D.

Xbitlabs review

 

[Fafalada]

The Blu-ray 3D doesn't need glasses ?

I dunno what Blu-Ray 3D specification is, but the one BR movie in 3d I've seen so far is using Red-Blue shift, so it obviously uses glasses.

The one from iZ3D sells for $399! And it sports full 1680x1050 resolution in 3D.

Well it's nice to see the tech 'is' feasible for consumer market after all. Now if only some of the big players pick up on it (Samsung has been doing 3d with their recent sets, but they are doing the Shutter-Sync method with higher refresh rates (120Hz)).

 

[manux]

I dunno what Blu-Ray 3D specification is, but the one BR movie in 3d I've seen so far is using Red-Blue shift, so it obviously uses glasses.

As far as I understand the proposition from panasonic for a blu-ray 3d standard is only a method to actually store image for both eyes separately. Panasonic quoted that they use h264 based encoding taking around 1.5 times more space for 3d image than 2d image. Blu-ray specification doesn't determine how to display the separate images. The current crop of blu-ray 3d movies has nothing to do with 3d format panasonic is proposing.

Panasonic also proposed an extension to hdmi format to carry those separate images to display device which then handles the physical transfer from separate images to 3d image displayed to user.

 

[DieH@rd]

This is what i want [same can be achieved with a PS3 camera]:

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

 

[ShadowRunner]

I dunno what Blu-Ray 3D specification is, but the one BR movie in 3d I've seen so far is using Red-Blue shift, so it obviously uses glasses.

Is the Red-Blue shift way of doing 3D able to produce a full colour image? If so why is this not a viable solution, at least in the short-term until 3d sets are commonplace?
Colour accuracy i guess would be compromised to a certain degree im sure but to what extent i have no idea.

 

[GregLee]

Here is a discussion thread on AVSforum about the 3D capabilities of the Samsung PN42A450 and PN50A450 plasma TVs: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15251412#post15251412. Special glasses are required. (I have a PN50A450, but not much interest in 3D, and no MS operating system to experiment.)

 

[corysama]

At Siggraph, various companies and universities have been showing "no glasses" 3D displays (using lenticular lens films) for many years. Until `07 they were hopelessly bad. In `07 I saw 3D displays that were hopefully bad. In `08 I was looking forward to seeing how they had progressed, but apparently there was some big TV conference sheduled right after Siggraph, so no one was showing at Siggraph.

Here's a vid of a blurry, 16-view display.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/04/mitsubishi-shows-off-3d-tv-technology-no-glasses-needed/

I saw several somewhat sparkly, almost sharp, 2-view, no-glasses 3D displays in `07. I'd be interested in any first-hand reports from the past year.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Either way, polarized screens or interlaced left/right views, it'll be double the overhead. I used the Sega Master System 3D glasses at 25 fps flicker, and it did flicker, but the eyes adapted and I didn't get headaches as a result. All those without the glasses really suffered though! That's a big problem here. If you want social gaming or viewing, you need a system where everyone can wear the glasses, including people already wearing specs for optical correction, and be synchronised. I don't know what wireless solutions would be effective and reliable wiht out very cluttered airwaves.

IR is used on LCD shutter glasses, it's the most simple and power efficient I think. The signal bandwith is very low, and you have to look at the screen anyway so there's no drawback.

I have the voodoo2 era shutter glasses (still sold by e-dimensional), you can get additional glasses. The other part consists of a little box with VGA passthrough, you connect the IR emitter on it, and it gets power from the PS/2 plug. Glasses power is provided by two CR2032.
It works, and sits on top of corrective eyeglass, but a bit bulky and makes you look like a cyborg nut.
Also the LCD shutters don't provide a great black which causes ghosting. Probably better glasses could be made nowadays.

But polarized glasses are much simpler and totally inexpensive, there are $1 cardboard pairs : http://www.3dstereo.com/viewmaster/glp-cp.html
I've just learnt it actually was the tech most used in the 30's and 50's (I thought anaglyph was used, it was but marginally)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_glasses

Big drawback is requiring either a special monitor or dual projectors.

Anaglyph works but has problems : weird, huge loss of color, and a surprising effect : after using them I had one eye seeing "warm" and another one seeing "cold" for days or weeks. It fucks your vision! but you can try it if you find or get a pair of green-red or red-blue, have a nvidia card and any kind of display.

 

[pcchen]

LCD glasses are simple, but they need to sync with the screen, although it's not really very difficult to do so. Polarized glasses need special monitors so it won't work with most current TVs. Polarized glasses work best with projectors because you can use two projectors through two polarizers and it's very simple to set up.

Another important but generally not well implemented part of 3D viewing is the ability to track head. A simple way is to put a camera on the top of the TV and use two IR LED on the glasses so the distance and orientation of the viewer's head can be easily tracked. This can bring a much better 3D experience for interactive contents but the main drawback is it's limited to one viewer only.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Anaglyph works but has problems : weird, huge loss of color, and a surprising effect : after using them I had one eye seeing "warm" and another one seeing "cold" for days or weeks. It fucks your vision! but you can try it if you find or get a pair of green-red or red-blue, have a nvidia card and any kind of display.

Anyone looking to try out gaming with anaglyph (or other 3d technology if you have the hardware) try out the iz3d drivers, they work for plenty of games and the effect is pretty good. Tried out crysis in anaglyph mode today and i think ill use the mode from now on. It does screw with the colours but after a while i adjusted and didnt notice it so much, the 3d effect was great though.
One issue was related to the 3d with itself though, everything at normal distance looked great but when using ironsights the gun is seperated into 2 seperate images similar to how ure finger looks if you hold it in front of your face and focus on something far away. Made my think about 3d in general an how you deal with issue like focus. You could change the convergance which would bring the gun into focus but then the background would be seperated. i guess the only way to do it would be a hack that didnt apply the same 3d rules to certain objects, so you could apply convergence and sepperation to the gun differenty to the rest of the image im not sure if it would break the 3d illusion though.
Would it be possible to implement a similar driver on the consoles? im not sure as console games dont all use the same api like directx, which is how the iz3d drivers rely on. The other thing is the effect on framerate, how does it work? it seems to half the framerate when using anaglyph mode, is there no efficient way of producing an anaglyph say doing it as a post process filter?

 

[Fafalada]

Would it be possible to implement a similar driver on the consoles? im not sure as console games dont all use the same api like directx, which is how the iz3d drivers rely on. The other thing is the effect on framerate, how does it work?

As has been discussed throughout this thread, stereoscopic rendering always works the same, you render the image once for each eye (from a different angle), hence the framerate halving.

it seems to half the framerate when using anaglyph mode, is there no efficient way of producing an anaglyph say doing it as a post process filter?

There are ways to extract some kind of approximation of camera-offset image from single picture. Results won't be very close to proper stereoscopic image, but it can be used for some kind of cheap effect - analogous to how you upscale an image as a cheap approximation of real high-resolution image(you generate data that doesn't exist based on some math assumptions - I think some old movies were even 'updated' for 3d this way).
But do note that this hack would work the same for all stereoscopic methods, not just anaglyph.

 

[Blazkowicz]

One issue was related to the 3d with itself though, everything at normal distance looked great but when using ironsights the gun is seperated into 2 seperate images similar to how ure finger looks if you hold it in front of your face and focus on something far away. Made my think about 3d in general an how you deal with issue like focus. You could change the convergance which would bring the gun into focus but then the background would be seperated. i guess the only way to do it would be a hack that didnt apply the same 3d rules to certain objects, so you could apply convergence and sepperation to the gun differenty to the rest of the image im not sure if it would break the 3d illusion though.

That kind of issue happens very often in games and would fare better if developers took 3d stereo in account. You could lower stereo seperation (at least with the nvidia driver), I think it's a different setting from convergence.

The most common issue is with the crosshair, which does the same thing as your ironsight, the fix is to disable the crosshair in game settings or console, and the stereo driver provides a "far away" crosshair collimated to the infinite. That actually helps you for aiming or launching grenades, you get a great sense of distance, that's nice in Far Cry for example.

Same problem happens with "coronas" (say in unreal tournament), they're doubled because set at zero distance, so you have to disable them.
And there's the pain with stereo gaming, I need to set the game to 640x480 or 800x600 (150Hz and 120Hz on my monitor),tweak it, undo the settings if I want to play non stereo again, etc. AA was non-working I think. So there's quite an amount of hassle, and reduced image quality.

Here, stereo gaming on console would be much simpler.

I can recommand Far Cry and glquake (yikes!) as games working with no hassle and providing a great experience.

 

[pcchen]

This leads to another question: why isn't there stereo support in D3D? OpenGL has it, but I don't know any driver actually supports it. Of course, anaglyph wouldn't need any special support but it's still better for D3D to have a proper stereo support in its API.

 

[Titanio]

Interesting stuff from CES...demos of WipeoutHD and GT5rologue running with 3D tech from Sony.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2009/01/07/ces-2009-sony-teases-with-high-quality-ps3-3d

We've heard from many of you that 3D technology is something you're interested in seeing at CES, and Sony has one of the most impressive displays of 3D at their booth... but you won't learn anything about it.

"Don't get caught up with specs," the Sony representative told me. "We're not going to talk about specifications. This is just a look at what 3D could look like if Sony decided to move in this direction." The idea was just to show the technology to people, to see if they would be interested in sitting at home, wearing a dorky set of black glasses, watching content in 3D.

I couldn't pry details about how the 3D affect was achieved, or if the display could turn any source into 3D, but what's clear is that, glasses or no, the 3D affect is amazing. Sony showed off Wipeout HD running in true 3D, and I was ready to whip out my credit card right there. Frank and I both agreed, this was one of the best demos of 3D technology we have ever seen.

he company is hedging its bets about how long it will take to get this level of 3D into your home, but if this tiny taste was any indication, there is a ton of promise.

We're promised more 3D surprises from Sony's even larger press event tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get some more information.

 

[deepbrown]

Needs HDMI, must be 1080p (GT5P?) and 60fps, plus 3D TV and glasses.

 

[Quaz51]

maybe they use two linked PS3 like their 240fps and 4k GT5p demo
and use a polarized screen TV i think

 

[deepbrown]

maybe they use two linked PS3 like their 240fps and 4k GT5p demo
and use a polarized screen TV i think

Possibly. Details on what's needed; http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/xbox-left-out-3d-gaming-only-works-with-hdmi-$1259348.htm

And interview with Blitz Games;

http://www.gamecyte.com/is-your-gaming-future-in-stereo-3d-part-five

 

[one]

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/06/panasonic-announces-blu-ray-standard-for-3d-movies-in-hd/

Panasonic announces Blu-ray standard for 3D movies in HD

I am wondering if this news will ever be of significance but here we go: The Nikkei, Japan’s largest business newspaper, is reporting today that Panasonic has set a new standard for Blu-rays that are capable of reproducing 3D images in HD (the picture above shows an older Panasonic plasma 3D TV).

Users will be able to see images alternately with the left and red eye at a combined speed of 120 fps. The result is a 3D effect in HD achieved in the home that’s comparable to the one experienced in movie theaters. Special 3D glasses are needed to view the images.

Panasonic apparently wants to urge Hollywood and other electronics companies to adopt the standard in the near future. The company plans to open an office in Hollywood as early as next month to test the technology and do lobby work.

Currently, Panasonic is thinking about offering Blu-ray players and TVs suitable for the 3D standard in 2010.

 

[phenix]

This year in CES there were two 120Hz 3D monitor announcements. Both needs glasses similar to the ones used in IMAX theaters. Samsungs monitor may come with free glasses which might help the consumer adoption. This may be the next big thing in gaming, coming first to PC then probably to next generation of consoles. Nvidia seems to backing it up strongly, which suggest that this time the technology might gain wider acceptance.

Viewsonic:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11324&Itemid=1

Samsung:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/0...introduces-2233rz-the-22-inch-3d-panel-for-g/

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Samsungs monitor may come with free glasses which might help the consumer adoption.

the glasses are dead cheap AFAIK. Not including glasses with your TV would be kinda suicidal! A real problem though would be showcasing the TVs. They'll look awful in the local CE goods store!