| Author | Message | ||
     Albert Hermann Rating: N/A |
Hi, A few questions from a relative neophyte. I'm a research scientist and been tinkering with low-end (aka low-cost) stereo visualization of VRML worlds. I have one PC with a high-end graphics card (3DLabs Wildcat 5110) and another with a gaming-type card (ASUS GeForce 3). I have two software packages for stereo VRML rendering: 1) TGS 3SpaceAssitant (which doesn't support Java, but is a powerful editor and lets you adjust parallax and such) and 2) Parallelgraphics (free) Cortona VRML viewer (which does support Java, but won't let you edit the worlds). The Wildcat does a beautiful job with 3SpaceAssistant in stereo, but *will not* render Cortona in stereo. The GeForce 3 does a beutiful job with Cortona in Stereo (in full-screen mode only), but *will not* render 3SpaceAssistant is stereo. I get the impression that Cortona has more in common with the gaming apps, as the GeForce 3 also handles games in stereo quite nicely. First question; am I dealing with two fundamentally differnt "types" of stereo, which have little to nothing in common with one another? My limiting understanding suggests that the "professional", OpenGL type of stereo uses a dedicated buffer, and can operate in a window, whereas the "gaming" type of stereo (using both OpenGL and DirectX, but mainly the latter) can only operate in full-screen mode. What's the fundamental difference, and why are they so incompatible? Second; is there a *single* card out there which will run *both* of these apps in stereo, without needing any special interpreter? I have checked into wrappers/interpreters like GLDirect, but the results have been slow and inconsistent (or in the case of the Wildcat, disastrous, as it does not support DirectX in any form, and GLDirect seems to need that). Any advice appreciated. Thanks! | ||
| Benoit Olivier Rating: N/A |
You should try a nvidia quadro based card. It's normal you had disastrous result with gldirect on the wilcat as it is not supported by gldirect( no reason it should be as wildcat cards have natively "full " opengl drivers (support)). | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Your GeForce3 can be modded to a Quadro for OpenGL stereo. Use this cool hardware mod: http://www.tweakhardware.com/guide/quadro-switch/ (some details on GF3 might be missing) or this software mod that works on drivers up to 23.11: http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/ | ||
| Richard Scullion Rating: N/A |
Hi, You've got it pretty much right. Professional OpenGL is Quadbuffered and provides Left and Right buffers which you can draw to. Gaming OpenGL Stereo is something that the developer has no control over because the graphics drivers render two views of the 3D openGl model. The fact that it only works in fullscreen mode is a decision (limitation) of the NVidia drivers - the old ELSA ones worked just fine in windowed mode. Richard Scullion http://www.photoalb.com/combine | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
All Quadro cards or GeForces hacket to Quadro support both profesional OpenGl stereoscopy and game D3D stereoscopy ... I have tested in on a true Quadro 2 Pro and on a GeForce 3 hacket to Quadro DDR . | ||
| Albert Hermann Rating: N/A |
When you tested on the Quadro 2 Pro, what driver/glasses combo did you use (and ditto for the any GeForce 3 tests)? Quadro sounds very appealing. However, I just found out the only US distributor of the Quadro (ELSA) no longer supports stereo glasses (that is, no 3-pin stereo connector as they used to have, and no support in ELSA's driver). It's beginning to sound like the only way to get stereo is to use the nvidia driver, and hope for compatibility with my Stereographics glasses. The nvidia driver is fine as far as it goes, but lacks the flexibility of, say, the ASUS GeForce 3 driver (which does a great job on parallax and separation - much more realistic stereo than the nvidia driver which has no parallax adjustment). I have tried some of the tweak utilities, but they seemed rather unstable (acutually had to unplug/reinstall the card at one point to cure a blank screen at startup.....) Thanks for the tips! | ||
| Benoit Olivier Rating: N/A |
Standard Detonator driver + revelator glasses. + simuleyes Only the new quadro4xgl have a din 3 connector. | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
Albert: I use NuVisio 60 GX NSR synchronization box. It extracts standard 3-pin conector signal from the VGA monitor signal. I am not a specialist in games area = ASUS GeForce 3 I can not tell whatever it has better stereo geometry for 3D wrapping than nVida native drivers. |
