Build Your Own: Wall-Sized 3D Gaming, Just Like Theaters Do It

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The screen looks like 4:3 aspect ratio. Most of projectors are also 4:3 (not to mention that it is easier to manufacture a projector of aspect ratio that are closer to square). All games can render in arbitrary aspect ratio, so why is this silly narrowscreen (tm) setup? Also, speaking of wall sized screens it is often easier to find extra vertical dimension space in your room, than horizontal one.
 
I have a polarized projector setup at home. It's heavenly when it works (Mirrors Edge was AWESOME) but it can sometimes be a pain to get the software working. I got my screen and polarized filters from http://www.berezin.com/3d/ for a lot less $, but the quality obviously isn't as great. Since my basement gets pretty cark, I tend not to notice.
 
[citation][nom]d70guy[/nom]There are a lot of issues with this. The lack of resolution, difference in brightness of the images over time (no two bulbs are identical), the less than ideal projection surface, the fact that all bluray titles will be 1080p for each eye, etc.. I mean, this *is* a fun toy, but not for a serious gamer, and not for an even semi-serious home theater person. It is strictly for someone with the money to blow on a toy.[/citation]

I've been gaming on a similar setup for years, and I've never had a problem with different brightness. The brain compensates for a lot. And when it's on such a big screen, you tend to forget about the lower resolution because it's such a great, immersive experience.

Also, to address some other questions people have asked, circular polarization is available and used in a lot of commercial settings, but it's really expensive. I got 10 sets of glasses and two 3"x3" polarized screens for $45ish, and would have spent $200+ for the same with circular.

InFocus has a 1920x1080 for a little over $1000, but most full HD projectors are running around $3000. So the price gets out of control pretty quickly.
 
very interesting article. i would love it if you pointed out benefits/cons of using anaglyph glasses. getting dual projector for home use seams like a big waste of money. it appears that for the same money you could have gotten 1080p 120hz projector and glasses and have had a smoother ride at it.
 
[citation][nom]Minor_Threat[/nom]I don't see how this is true 3D.... It shouldn't be like this. The foreground image should be more shifted to make it pop out more. It's simple geometry.[/citation]

There are other factors you're missing, such as convergence.

in any case, you can argue theory all day, but it works perfectly in practice. :)


 
[citation][nom]eodeo[/nom]very interesting article. i would love it if you pointed out benefits/cons of using anaglyph glasses. getting dual projector for home use seams like a big waste of money. it appears that for the same money you could have gotten 1080p 120hz projector and glasses and have had a smoother ride at it.[/citation]

Anaglyph
pros: cheap
cons: no colors other than red and blue. 🙁

The con is too important to consider it for mainstream use.


A 120 Hz projector is indeed likely to be easier to set up, and that's why we'll be following the article up with that setup in the future.

But as this article points out, 120 Hz projectors have two major flaws: first, it costs $150 for each pair of glasses, making group viewing a lot more expensive. Secondly, the shutter glasses can be uncomfortable on the eyes, while a dual projector setup is always very easy on the eyes.

I cover all of this in the article though.
 
[citation][nom]tegiri nenashi[/nom]The screen looks like 4:3 aspect ratio... All games can render in arbitrary aspect ratio, so why is this silly narrowscreen (tm) setup? [/citation]

We ran the projectors at 1280x720, read the article. Just because we used a 4:3 screen doesn't mean we are forced to use a 4:3 projector.

Having said that, in my particluar basement setup, 4:3 is a better way to fill the wall.

It really depends on your viewing environment. One size does not fit all.
 
[citation][nom]Icehearted[/nom]As for poor folk like me, we'll just settle for those still images where we cross our eyes, and cry because $2,565 is far away from "comfortable".[/citation]

Used projectors can be had in decent shape for $300. True it's 1024 native, but most will interpolate well to 1080p and on a budget it's a killer sub-$1000 setup.

That's what i did after writing the article. :)
 
[citation][nom]Rehnquist-[/nom]Why on earth are all the screenshots scaled down to such a low resolution?[/citation]

Because crossviewing is much harder to pull off if you have large images. The larger the image, the more your eyes have to cross to see the effect. I chose to deliver accessibility... and no matter how big I made them, it's still not as nifty as having it cover a wall.

But this way the maximum amount of viewers can at least get a taste of it. I know most people I show it to can't even learn to cross-view these small images.
 
Projectors didn't really change for the past decade. I've bought Infocus X1 7 years ago and don't think that upgrading or just changing the bulb is a value proposition. At the same time, we've seen 3 generations of TV sets (rear projection -> plasma -> LCD) with dramatic improvement in image quality and screen size/$.
 
So if I sit down to design my house do I now need a family room, gaming room and an office for all the different displays and requirements? If you have a Wii, Natal or other motion based gaming system you already need a different area than what you use for office tasks. Perhaps you can accommodate everything if you simply have the ability to move the furniture out of the way...

For that matter when will we have just a single multi-core machine with different VMs routed to different displays in our homes? There's a thought. Perhaps in a couple technology generations the consoles like the Wii, PS3 and XBox might be sold as VMs that run on your household computer (if they don't turn into an Always connected, online only experience).
 
[citation][nom]Spanky Deluxe[/nom]I've had this kind of thing in mind for a few years now but a pair of new (so that the brightness etc match exactly) are still too expensive for me. It's now possible to do this with under a £1000 budget by using two £350 (I've seen some) 720p projectors. Personally I wouldn't want to do it with anything under 1080p since I'm now used to 2560p gaming and 1080p large screen blurays so I'd need much deeper pockets to get the kind of setup I'd like. In a few years maybe.[/citation]

Me thinks you are confusing horizontal for vertical resolution otherwise.. You must mean 2560x1600... 2560p or even 1600p standard does not exist yet. The interlace (25fps)/progressive (50fps)labels largely loose their meaning for gaming anyway and it becomes a game of projector response.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the article, thanks! It is a bit disappointing that 3d is going with the alternating approach instead of using polarity as I greatly prefer the comfort of polarity over the eye-strain of alternating.

And as a side note, tilting your head 90 degrees to the side with the polarized lenses should have the effect of switching the images for your eyes (right eye sees left image, left the right). As a simple example, if the right eye light is horizontally oriented and the left vertically, when you tilt your head your right eye's polarity will now block horizontally oriented light while the left will block vertical, switching the images. As stated in the article, it is the angles in-between that are troublesome as they allow more of the opposing oriented light through.
 
The tech used in the theaters where I saw Avatar in 3D wasn't polarized or shutter glasses. It was a color wheel technology with fine tuned colored glasses, which is something I would much rather have than polarized or shuttered glasses. Not really something you can have in your home yet though...
 
Excellent article. Nothing having some true competition in the playing field with all parties rushing in to try to offer the best experience.

Honestly, I want to put five 120Hz 1080p projectors all in a portrait view (for 5400x1920 at 2.8125:1) and just buy a couple of LCD shutter glasses. I'd also likely buy two 5970's or three 480's to run it. I could probably keep the budget under $12,000.
Cheap 120Hz 1080p projectors may barely have over 1000 lumens typically, but when you're running five of them, I doubt it'd be a issue. I'd also run the setup in a windowless basement likely.
Sure, you can buy a cheap brand new car for that amount, but really, it would be a piece of beauty.

Now I also want to buy a high brightness projector, go rent a bachelor suite, and play Crysis on the wall of a opposing building a few stories up. =D

Also, actually being forced to close one eye to look down the iron sights seems pretty cool to me.

Think we will ever get visual correcting options for those of use with one good and one not-so-good eye?
How about polarized contacts?

I'm excited. =D
 
[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]I wonder how nvidia did the 3dvision on the gtx480 on 3 projectors at pax east 2010. Looked like everyone was wearing polarized glasses when viewing the presentation in the video's I seen.http://www.youtube.com/results?sea [...] type=&aq=f1. [/citation]

If it was an Nvidia presentation, they would have used their own brand of active LCD shutter glasses. They look like simple shades but they're $150 a piece and contain a battery and LEDs.

[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]Why use an old card for this review? If you have the money to blow on two projectors then why not buy a ati 5970 or a gtx 480?2.[/citation]

A 4890 is no slouch. When i wrote the review the new 480 wasn't out yet. Also, I did have a problem with the triDef drivers and some games when I used a 5000 series card, I mention that in the review.

[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]Does nvidia's 3d have the same anomalies present in 3d vision as this set up does??[/citation]

Hard to say without testing them, but I mention in the conclusion that I'm setting up a follow-up review to do just that though. :)

[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]3. How come you didn't use circular polarized lenses like they do in the theaters Doesn't circular polarized setups look better? What are the advantages disadvantages?[/citation]

Circular polarizers don't seem to be as commercially available as linear. Aside from that, most of the advice fromt he home-theatre enthusiast crowd was that circular is no better, in fact is has a little more crosstalk on average. You can only tilt your head a little more than you can with linear filters before the same issues happen anyway.

[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]4. How come no company came out with a single polarized 3d h.d. projector with 2 lenses built in yet? Seems like something that would make sense. Everyone would probably want one, and the ease of setup would mean you wouldn't have to have a degree to set it up.[/citation]

They're out there, but these are extremely expensive sine they're made for theaters mostly and not consumers. Consumers can buy a ready-made system from some shops, but its usually cost prohibitive for the home. That's why we went the DIY route.


[citation][nom]dreamphantom_1977[/nom]5. Since your done with your review, Can I have your projectors and lenses and screen? (never know unless you ask )[/citation]

Hey, I didn't even get to keep them. BenQ was nice enough to lend them to us, but we sent them back.

I personally bought some cheap used projectors so I could play with the tech on a permanent basis tho. :)
 
My first question that I didn't see the "WHY" is why are you using a DLP projector instead of LCD like suggested by one of the companies? I don't know the difference and I'm betting it's just because you prefer the quality of the picture vs the other?

2nd: Seems like this kind of 3d would be really easy to implement by drivers if you had 2 video cards in a computer. Each video card could send the signal to it's respective projector. The driver would need very little tweaking to get this to work. ATI should jump on this. You wouldn't really lose on performance in this case. It would make a 2x5770 video card setup very economical for 3d.
 
cool article! this set up is sweet! too bad 3d 1080p projectors are still 10k$$ All you naysayers have no idea what you are missing! i bet you have not even tried it- or cant afford it. 3d gaming is unbelievable! Far superior experience compared to 3d movies at the theaters. ill never go back to 2d! even 3d movies work great right now. im running the Nvidia solution on this computer:

I920 overclocked to 4ghz
Asus Rampage Extreme II
2 Ge-force gtx 295 in Quad SLI (2 480's on order!!)
12gb ddr3 2000mhz ram
Intel SSD in RAID 0
BR RW
Sony surround sound
Mitsubishi 65" 3d ready 1080p DLP HDTV (only cost 1000$ shipped to my door!!)
NVIDIA 3D Vision

I think its great news that ati is trying 3d. you ati guys are really missing out on some important features. hopefully they can soon catch up- but nvidia is way ahead- they have dx11 support, sli support, soon will have triple monitor 3d support, and much more 3d profiles (which is key for 3d games to work). iz3d has no official sli support, no official shutter glass support, no single dlp projector support (dlp is the best 3d solution right now). u defiantly want sli to game at super high image quality levels. i would love to game in 3d on ati hardware but its not there yet. but it looks like it will happen soon! good news for all!

my dream set up is a triple 1080p projector rig running 3d vision surround or eyefinity on huge screens! all we need is some projectors now!
 
Who here wants to let their eight year old kids wear these glasses?
Great idea, sure to be a hot market! I will take 20 pairs of your hyper-expensive 3-D glasses sir. Really?
 
anamaniac - careful what you buy- do the research- even nvidia has issues with quad and tri sli at the moment. thats why im selling the 295 quad and going with the sli 480s-

they have been working at it for almost 2 years- and quad is still beta- and the old drivers were better. sli works just fine.
 
I was already annoyed when whoever wrote up this article didn't include DIY projectors as an option for doing this. Then I got even more annoyed and stopped bothering to read on when they said that nVidia are the only company making 3D glasses and have the only driver available for it.

http://www.edimensional.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=29

Works on nVidia cards BEFORE the GTX series and works on ATI cards just fine. Way to go THG.
 
[citation][nom]nanonyous[/nom]I was already annoyed when whoever wrote up this article didn't include DIY projectors as an option for doing this. [/citation]

You want me to tell people to make their own projectors? I simply disagree that this is a good way to spend time and money.

[citation][nom]nanonyous[/nom]Then I got even more annoyed and stopped bothering to read on when they said that nVidia are the only company making 3D glasses and have the only driver available for it.http://www.edimensional.com/produc [...] ucts_id=29Works on nVidia cards BEFORE the GTX series and works on ATI cards just fine. Way to go THG.[/citation]


I am intimately familiar with edimensional's solution, but I don't think you are. The edimensional glasses and driver are not a real option. Their old proprietary driver uses interlaced output which delivers half resolution and looks like garbage. This is an old solution I reviewed two years ago and it has not aged well. The new driver they're bundling is the TriDef driver I included in this review.

Please get your facts right before commenting like you know something. :)
 
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