3D HDTV/NVIDIA STEREO DRIVER PATCH

[Neil]

So! Is this patch everything you hoped it would be?

Post your results! How was the experience? Any bugs with the patch that weren't there before?

For those unfamiliar, there is a patch in the MTBS File Exchange category (in the MTBS Downloads section) that will let you play games with the existing NVIDIA stereo drivers!

Regards,
Neil

[LukePC1]

Hi I made a first quick test with CRT monitor and shutterglasses.
The file does change something with Nvidia's driver (even my old ones).
I can see the checker board (in low resolution).
Page Flip is not changed - so I can still use it.
The values return to normal state - I think - on their own.

BUT I don't get a signal for my Glasses. They do nothing - or nothing right (on 100hz)

My idea was the DLP system also works with shutter glasses, so why not my system? The image is displayed like in pageflipp, but with half the resolution.
The advantage could be less ghosting though - which is very unlikely to happen... just a stupid thought

[wbloos]

BUT I don't get a signal for my Glasses. They do nothing - or nothing right (on 100hz)

correct! You will not get your shutter glasses to work since the checkerboard output is processed in your 3D DLP TV and the TV itself, NOT your PC is driving the shutterglasses. What this patch does is only changing the interleave pattern from horizontal or vertical interleaved to checkerboard interleved - all three interleaving outputs do not drive any shuttergalsses!

greetings
Werner

[LukePC1]

Oh didn't knew that. I thought you might be able to use them with shutter glasses as well... But that wouldn't make much sense...

If you have such a TV so huge in resolution, does the picture get rendered in full resolution, or does the card spare the useless pixels? If they would not be calculated the checkerboard might be a great compromise between quality and performance.

But I think its difficult to implement that in the driver/game by a registry tweak
Maybe you can enlighten us!

[wbloos]

does the picture get rendered in full resolution, or does the card spare the useless pixels?

well it seems that you do not know exactly how this 3D picture is created - let me explain it:
imagine a checkerboard - each field represents only one single pixel - now replace all white fields with the pixels of the left view and the black fields with the picels of the right view - thats all - the left and right view are only interleave - in this case not vertacal, not horizontal , it's interleaved in a checkerbaod manner. This interleved picture is then sent to the TV - the TV itself take this picture, devides left and right view and displays each view alternating driving the shutterglasses connected to the TV at 120Hz.
I'm not sure what happens to the missing pixels when these views are divided in single views - since I do not own such a TV. There are two possibilities:
- display one view the way it was divides from the 3D picture (so displaying only the 'white' or the 'black' fields of the checkerboard
- interpolate the missing pixels using all four neighbour pixels so resolution is always full HD - this needs to be done inside the TVs electronics

greetings
Werner

[LukePC1]

My observations with a CRT seem to show the immage like a chess board (black = pic1, White = pic2). If I look at the frame rate calculated by FRAPs in the test-application page flipp is faster than interleaved (seeReal) with or without the registry change (nearly 20%) - in same resolution etc.

If the porgrams measure performance right I conclude, that in interlaced 2 different images are fully (in full resolution) renderd and afterwards cut to fit in the checkerboard.

note1)
usually FRAPs has roughly half the frame rate in 3D than in 2D, because of the double calculation. Every doubble immage is counted as one Frame.

My Idea up there was to cut down the calculated resolution to increase performance. Only half the immage is displayed, why not just calculate only half the pixels (for each picture).

So all in all the driver'd have to calculate 1080p once per frame, not twice like it seems to be now. I think it'd make qite a difference for a video card, if it has to calculate 1080p or twice the amount. 1080p is already trice the amount of 1024x786 (which isn't bad for a 7900 in S-3D)

[wbloos]

My Idea up there was to cut down the calculated resolution to increase performance. Only half the immage is displayed, why not just calculate only half the pixels (for each picture).

no you still need the full resolution due to the interleved checkerboad system - in fact you are right there are only half amount of pixels (calculated) but in which direction - vertical or horizontal or even in both? - none of these option are applicable!

greetings
Werner

[CraziFuzzy]

I have glasses on order, so i should be able to test this out with my HLT6189S when i get them. Really excited about it, i hope it works. As for the workload, i believe the Tv supports 3D in 720p mode as well (at least, the test images at DDD are supposed to work in 1080 or 720 mode). 1280x720 should be no problem for most cards. I'll give a report when i get to play.

As for the black areas, I don't think they will be very noticable, as the wobulation DLP's actually produce pixels larger than the space they occupy, so there is some overlap. This will make the larger pixels much more prominent than the smaller black areas. That's the theory at least.

[pixel67]

CraziFuzzy,
I think you will be very happy with your purchase! As one of the few here that have a similar setup, I can honestly say that it is the best 3D I have ever seen. As soon as you get your glasses, head on over to Peter Wimmers site and download the 1080P demo. Absolutley breathtaking! The demo on Germany is also very good even though it is in 720P. Just to touch on the subject of perceived resolution... The image is perceived as true 1080P. I have run several tests both with games and native stereo files and there is NOT any decrease in perceived resolution. You will want to tweak gamma and digital vibrance a bit to make up for transmittance loss of the shutterglasses, but this shouldn't be anything new to those that have used shutterglasses over the years. What you don't see on this setup is ghosting. None! Nada! Zero flicker. Zippo! As a matter of fact, the stereo representation is so good that I have started to notice defects with the E-Dim shutterglasses more than I have with other display setups (CRT, Infocus X2 DLP). After an extended period of time the uniformity of the shutterglasses is compromised and you start to see "hot spots" where the shutterglasses are darker in some areas than others. Turning them off for a minute or two and turning them back on remedies this. I have tried 4 pair of shutterglasses and ALL of them exhibit the same behavior (all with fresh batteries). I never noticed this before with other setups but logic tells me it had to be present. Maybe I am just more sensative to picture abnormalities since the 3D is about as close to perfect as you can get. The only drawback to this setup, as Neil mentioned, is that the game selection right now is a quite limited. I tried the DLP Patch but was not successful since I have 8800GTX SLI set up, so the drivers from DDD are the only choice right now. They have a dozen licensed games right now with more on the way. They also have a decent opengl driver, but again game compatibility needs to be expanded upon. I recently ordered a set a Crystaleyes shutterglasses to see if I can eliminate some of the above problems. Expensive, but hopefully worth it in the long run.
Enjoy!
PiXeL

[wbloos]

head on over to Peter Wimmers site and download the 1080P demo. Absolutley breathtaking!

so you like this demo - glead to hear this - so I've done a good job? - well did you notice a slight hyperstereo effect ? These scenes were recorded with a dual Sony FX1 setup - so the stereobase was about 14cm - a little bit too large.

greetings
Werner

[CraziFuzzy]

OK, so the glasses should be here tomorrow morning, so I got my 3D drivers all set up on the HTPC. For some reason I can't seem to get the Hotkey to enable/disable 3D though. Does anyone know the window class that recieves this keystroke, as I think it is being grabbed by another program. I run Girder on the system, and can set it up to send the keystroke directly to the nvidia target, if it is known.

The reason i have to use the hotkey, instead of just leaving it enabled, is SageTV runs in Full-Screen Exclusive mode, which, if the drivers are enabled, throws the drivers into Stereo mode. I'm using the 94.x driver set from this site, FYI.

[wbloos]

Hello,

I just returned from the S3D conference "S3D Today" held in Munich last 3 days - I had the chance to test this patch myself using my own PC (quadro FX 1400 Forceware/stereodriver 94.24) on a 61" Samsung 3D TV which was shown there - I was able to play videos and display Photos using the Nvidia driver with this patch - worked fine so far. Tried to play a game - unfortunately this game did not support full HD resolution so the TV disabeled 3D display when switching to another resolutin not beeing 1920x1080. Umfortunately I could not find a possibility to activte center displaying used when my 3D LCD is connected - there was no setting which could be activated so the display would run in full HD whereas the game runs in 1280x1024

greetings
Werner

[CraziFuzzy]

Okay, got my glasses, and gave it a good work over. I found out that if you switch the TV to 3D mode while the computer is at the desktop, when the computer changes resolutions, the tv will stay at native pixel size, so the smaller resolution will play in the center of the screen. At least it seemed to work this way for everything I tried. I figure this is good, because it will allow me to create a custom resolution smaller than the overscan, and have my games run in that. As long as I enable 3D mode on the tv before the game takes fullscreen, it should work fine. I also tried some of the sample vids with StereoPlayer, and it worked great in both Nvidia mode, and in the native 3D DLP mode.

It will take me some time to get the stereo set up for my games, but I did let the 3DMark 03 and 05 demos run and adjusted them to look good, and they really looked amazing. Zero crosstalk (at least none I could see). Can't wait to start blasting some roids in Eve in deep 3D..

Chris

EDIT: This is on a Samsung HL-T6189S. Definately have to bump the gamma up to get good results, but this TV has PLENTY of brightness to spare, so no problem there.

[Tril]

I have a few questions for you CraziFuzzy (a bit off topic from the thread) since you use the HL-T6189S.

Does the TV store separate brightness settings for the 2D mode and 3D mode?
Does the remote has a button to change the between a few brightness modes (picture mode key, maybe)?
How far are you sitting from it (the manual recommends at least 7.2 feet)?

[LukePC1]

I read the TV is supposed to do 120hz, but not at full resolution.
Can you play in Pageflipp mode, if you use a "small" resolution?
Maybe something like 720p? Would be interesting...

[CraziFuzzy]

Does the TV store separate brightness settings for the 2D mode and 3D mode?

Not in so many words. The TV has basically three different sets of picture settings. Dynamic, Standard, and Movie. Brightness, Contrast, etc are stored specifically for each of the three modes. each input will remember what picture mode it was in, and 3D appears to be locked to Dynamic. I have HDMI3 normally set for Movie, and calibrated for normal display from my HTPC, but when i switch to 3D mode, it changes the picture to Dynamic, so I can adjust Dynamic for 3D mode.

Does the remote has a button to change the between a few brightness modes (picture mode key, maybe)?

the P.Mode key is disabled in 3D mode, as it is locked to Dynamic

How far are you sitting from it (the manual recommends at least 7.2 feet)?

My normal viewing locations are around 9-11 feet. However, when playing games, I sometimes scoot a chair to screen center, about 8 feet away.

I read the TV is supposed to do 120hz, but not at full resolution.
Can you play in Pageflipp mode, if you use a "small" resolution?

Pageflip mode will not work, as the glasses are not synced to the input, they are synced to the wobulation of the DLP. current 1080p DLP's do not actually have 1920x1080 mirrors. They have half that in a checkerboard pattern. (It actually works much better that way, as the chip can be layed out much better.) Then there is a wobulation mirror afterwards that shimmies the display back and forth at 120Hz. to move the checkerboard back and forth, making a full display. So yes, full resolution is not 120Hz, it is 60Hz. This works great for 3D though, as the glasses can be synced to the wobulation (120Hz), instead of the signal, so the signal could actually run at any refresh the set can recieve, as long as the 2 images are interleaved properly.

That being said, i do wish the set had some processing in it to convert a page-flipped signal to its interleaved picture, for backwards compatability, and for easier display of 3D HD DVD material. (the interleaved signal is not very condusive to mpeg compression)

Maybe something like 720p? Would be interesting...

if you output in 720p, and are in 3D mode, it will display a smaller 1280x720 picture, centered on the screen. This is to keep the pixels sized correctly for the wobulation technique. Scaling will not work, unless the TV was to de-interleave the picture, scale each eye, then re-interleave them.

This is something that is best done in the software, scaling before the interleaving. It does work like this in Sterescopic Player, but not in games. Maybe future NVidia drivers will support this capability, but I am still holding my breath that there WILL be future stereo drivers.

[Xerion]

Bah I wish I could get one of these tvs around here :/