| Author | Message | ||
     Graham Toal Rating: N/A |
First of all, to make sure I get a reply at the appropriate level, I profess my ignorance of the state of the art of 3D (stereo) drivers, because until recently I have not had any 3D hardware, so I only know how they work second hand from reading usenet and the web. I have built a very nice 3D display using the old principle from Edwin Land's 1935 patent of having two monitors at 90 degrees to each other, behind polarized filters, and viewing them each superimposed by use of a semi-silvered mirror. You can view this with passive (no electronics) polarized glasses; the same ones that they used to supply at iMax-3D before they switched to shutter glasses. The display works really well, and if I run each monitor on a separate computer, I can manually place a left-eye still on one screen and a right-eye still on the other, and view them - and it really does look great. However I would like to integrate the display properly; preferably using only one computer (though I see there are some solutions using two computers and synching the displays using TCP/IP) I can see two methods of doing this: the first is to use two video cards; the second is to use one video card which has drives two displays. I'll be happy to buy either kind of card; my problem is the drivers: All the drivers I've been able to read about on the net appear to be for interlaced displays of some sort or other - not for seperate left and right screens. Is there any already existing 3D driver that would cover my type of hardware? The requirements are that one eye view is presented on one monitor and the other eye view is on the other monitor, *BUT* the second one must be either horizontally or vertically reflected (depending on how you place the displays - side by side, or one flat and one vertical) If no such driver exists, is there anyone with the ability to create one? Although at the moment this is at the hobby stage, if the only way to take it further is to pay someone to write a driver, I do believe I might be able to raise some R&D capital somewhere with a bit of effort. (My other hobby is arcade video games, and I think it might be possible to get some of the arcade manufacturers to invest a little for a prototype 3D arcade game... especially if by use of a proper driver we can get things like Unreal Tournament or equivalent games to work) Feel free to post here or mail me privately, thank you Graham Toal | ||
| Maart Rating: N/A |
What you will need is a de-multiplexor, to convert the page-flipping stereo into 2 different signals one left and one right. (the stereosignal can be created with one of the universal stereo drivers e.a, elsa, vrcaddy, nvidea) the remaining problem is to get one image horizontal inverted for the mirror. my option would be to use projectors since you can use them for rear-projection (this will do) maybe some hardware trick can do the same on a monitor (i don't realy know). About arcade stuff, you could convert the origional arcade titles to 3D (with the impact emulator), read the article on www.stereovision.net from Toxic_x) Can you show us some pictures of the set-up of the system? Maart | ||
| Graham Toal Rating: N/A |
> Can you show us some pictures of the set-up of the system? The basic idea can be seen here (US Patent No: 02084350): (you may need to download the free tiff viewer to see the diagrams - http://www.mieweb.com/alternatiff/) http://patimg2.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=02084350&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2F164.195.100.11%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPALL%2526p%3D1%2526S1%3D2084350.WKU.%2526OS%3DPN%2F2084350%2526RS%3DPN%2F2084350&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=384EFE240B06 I can't show you my variation of this because it uses a neat trick that I'm 99% sure no-one else has used before, and I'm contemplating submitting for a patent on it myself. But functionally, the above does the same job. Imagine one of those arcade video games where the monitor is actually mounted ass-downwards and face-up, and there's a 45 degree mirror above it which makes the monitor appear to be on the rear face of the videogame cabinet. Well, subsitute a semi-silvered mirror, and place another monitor in the physical location where the virtual one appears to be, and view the polarized monitor images through polarized lenses. If you do it that way, one display must be inverted bottom-for top; or if you place both displays in a normal vertical position, one in front of you, and one turned sideways, and you turn the mirror appropriately to suit, then the second display needs to be flipped horizontally instead. Thanks for the lead on www.stereovision.net - however unless I've read it wrongly, I would still need a BIOS video driver *or* some sort of plugin to be written to handle this type of display; couldn't find any way to do it with their existing software. I'll write the guys there and ask - thanks for the lead. Graham | ||
| Alexander Oest Rating: N/A |
There's a couple of threads that might be interesting: PAGE FLIPPING ON A DUAL-MONITOR GRAPHIC CARD http://www.stereo3d.com/discus/messages/21/377.html? Stereo images with 2 standard projectors http://www.stereo3d.com/discus/messages/21/352.html? There's no discussion of horisontal inversion of the image - but as far as splitting the stereo onto two vga sources, the threads are relevant. Does anyone know if the new Nvidia driver can do the trick, btw. They do make dual vga chipsets (on the ASUS 7100 2v1d for example), so they might have implemented it. Alex | ||
| Giorgio Bogoni Rating: N/A |
Dear Graham, I've started one of the discussions above. If you buy a graphic card with two SVGA output you don't need a de-multiplexor but a driver that can output to side-by-side format: just set a 1600 x 600 desktop and you'll get the 800 x 600 left image on the left monitor and the 800 x 600 right image on the right monitor. Of course you'll need to reflect one image but you can' t aspect a standard driver could do it. Have you asked to WIN-3D for a custom driver? Maybe they can help you. Before doing this anyway I suggest you to run a side-by-side stereo video on the stuff I described above (remember to reflect half of the side-by-side images using a video-editor) ... you have performed tests with static images but a game is like a video and if something is to be pointed out before it's too late ... Another thing: have you read about the 3D arcade machine by APEC? It's spex-free. Are you sure people would be glad to wear polarized glasses? Let me know about tests. Regards. | ||
| Alexander Oest Rating: N/A |
Has anyone had a go at Nvidias developers' kit? It's mentioned in a press release at: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20010530_6289 With this, it might be possible to do the sorting of right/left image on separate vga ports PLUS the horisontal inversion all on a software level. Alex | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
This kit (nVidia SDK for stereoscopic output) is something what I realy want. Unfortunately keyword search on "stereo" made on nVidia developer WWW shows that this functionality is not described in any kit. Maybe tha the latest nVidia drivers support the stereo as specified in DirectX 8. In this case DirectX 8 SDK could be used ... Did anyboy check the drivers capability (by some DirectX 8 diagnostic) for standardized stereoscopic futures ? I can not do that, I do not use nVida graphic cards .... | ||
| Alexander Oest Rating: N/A |
Unfortunately, I know too little about driver development to check the capability of the SDK. To make it easier for those who can, here's the link to the SDK page (which in turn links to a.o. the Directx8 and OpenGL SDKs): http://partners.nvidia.com/developer.nsf Alex Btw, in ten minutes I'll be installing my TwinView Geforce2 MX card with the latest Nvidia drivers. So if Nvidia has already implemented anything like dual monitor stereo, I'll probably find out soon. | ||
| Alexander Oest Rating: N/A |
Just a follow-up: I found no indication that stereo would work on two monitors with Nvidia drivers. In winME it was not even possible to run an application full screen spanning both monitors. Alex | ||
| Giorgio Bogoni Rating: N/A |
Sorry to hear there's no way to run an application full screen spanning both monitors. As far as I know, the graphic chipset should do it. Anyone knows if old drivers show this bug? | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Thank you to everyone who followed up my post above -- I don't want you to think I was being rude by not having answered before now - I have been on vacation, followed by a panic at my day job, followed by a couple of weeks doing carpentry creating a prototype of this display that doesn't wobble when the air conditioner starts blowing :-) The prototype is 100% solid now, looks great, and I'm now going to follow up your leads above and see if i can get a driver for this puppy, or at the very least a convincing demo. (Giorgio - no I'm not aware of the APEC 3D arcade machine - can you give me a pointer? AltaVista searching hasn't been fruitful... the name APEC clashes with some amateur photographer group who also do 3D stereo stuff and I assume it's not them! nor the metalworking company called APEC - thanks) I'm very disappointed to read that the GEForce (ASUS)/ invidia combination doesn't allow full double-width to a single application - I was just about to rely on that! There was another manufacturer who did a logical double-width screen card with two displays - www.dualmonitor.com (Tridium, out of Seattle) but the website is gone and I have a suspicion they've gone out of business. (Who can compete with the M$ combine now behind ASUS/invidia?) I have been given a pointer to VRCaddyPro which does side-by-side video, although not with one image mirrored, but it's also something to follow up. (http://www.vrcaddy.com/) Thanks again Graham | ||
| Giorgio Bogoni Rating: N/A |
Graham, take a look here: http://www.apec.com.tw/products/3D_Arcade/arcade.htm Giorgio. | ||
| Graham Toal Rating: N/A |
Grrr! I hope I haven't sent this twice - typing ^X^W in a Netscape window by accident doesn't have quite the same effect as when you do it in Emacs :-) There was once a submarine video game which used simple mirrors to get two views, and very cleverly disguised the whole apparatus by making the viewer into a periscope. I have a suspicion that this APEC cabinet may be doing something similar because it seems to have a very small viewing aperture. Makes it easy to manage the stereo view, but has the disadvantage that people standing around the player can't see what he's doing. Kibbitzing of games in an arcade is the number one way of attracting new players to a game, so they may have shot themselves in the foot a little here! It's a shame that they don't really describe how the game works, optically. Since most of their products are field-sequential, my guess is that the viewing aperture is two sheets of shutter- glass and that you need to stand up close to it (nose almost touching?) so that each eye views the screen through the appropriate half of the window. My bet is against it being an autostereoscopic display. I'ld love to see one however. (There's quite a bit of other interesting stuff at that APEC site by the way, - thanks Giorgio) My own design is not too bad for allowing people (with glasses of course) to kibbitz. I've had 5 people standing around and behind me while giving demos. From an arcade manufacturer's point of view, glasses may not be such a bad thing, especially if you build in a vending machine to the cabinet and make it an extra source of revenue! (Those cabinets are 95% empty space anyway - there's plenty of room for a dispenser) Graham |
