Connecting 3D stereo glasses?

[grafixmonkey]

I have an old pair of 3D stereo glasses that came with my brother's Geforce 2 Deluxe from Asus, and I'm trying to figure out how to connect them to my Quadro 4. The quadro 4 has this round plug with three holes in it, which I guess is the new standard plug, but the Asus LCD glasses have a plug that looks like a stereo minijack for headphones or audio or something. Anyone know where I can get an adapter or something?

I'm pretty competent with electronics so if I could just figure out what the difference is between the signals I can even make my own adapter without too much effort. It just seems like the cable format for these was complete chaos back when these were made, because I've found a couple different plug types and signal types and nothing that links any of it to these Asus glasses, and Asus doesn't even list them as a product on their site.

Any help is appreciated!
-- GM

 

[Slava]

The female jack on the card sounds like the S-Video jack. This has absolutely nothing to do with stereo. If you have no other jacks on the card chances are it does not support shutter stereo glasses. However, I recall, a few years back there was some sort of adapter that you could connect to the VGA cable which then would go into the monitor. I believe though that the connector/break-out box and the glasses were a part of the same package desigbned to work togther. It is hard to tell like this what your exact situation is but it seems to me that your glasses will not work with your card, adapter or not.

<font color=green>"The creative powers of English morphology are pathetic compared to what we find in other languages." (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct)</font color=green>

 

[grafixmonkey]

No, this is a Quadro4 750xgl, and it's most definitely not an svideo jack, it's for 3D glasses. I just don't know how to connect the "headphone jack" style glasses to this round plug with three pin holes in it... there has to be an easy way to do it, all these things do is flip flop which LCD panel gets voltage. I can only think of three possible ways to make an electrical signal to do this.

I wish replacement pairs of glasses cost a reasonable amount for what they do, or I wouldn't care about finding an adapter.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

3D glasses?

Please explain, I am intruiged!

<A HREF="http://www.tubgirl.com" target="_new">Don't Click This - Please! (NSFW)</A>

 

[grafixmonkey]

See, I don't understand why these aren't all over the place right now. When they came out, cards weren't powerful enough to deliver results unless you turned the rez way down, but nowadays these things could be awesome if the compatibility issue wasn't such a mess.

They're glasses that you wear, most will fit over any other glasses you need to see, and they attach with a cord to the graphics card (or whatever, there are lots of different competing standards that's the problem...) The graphics card renders the 3D views alternating slightly offset to the left and right, producing alternating "left eye" and "right eye" views in the game (or other application, Maya in my case.) The 3D glasses have an LCD panel in front of each eye and coordinate with the graphics card to block the left and right eye views in sync with the game.

Naturally, this has some weird consequences for framerate, since each eye sees half the framerate that the game is displaying. The two "half framerate" views are phased 180 degrees from each other though so you still have the full framerate coming at your head, it's just split between two eyes, so that is why you need a fast graphics card, and could be why these never took off because they originally came out for cards like the Geforce 2, and the only games you'd be able to use them on were the ones that came out when the only thing around was the Voodoo 2.

So that's what 3D glasses are, and I have some that came with an Asus Geforce 2 card, and I'm trying to convert the signal to work with a quadro 4. The signal itself is really simple. For this particular cable, it can only be one of the following:

<b>3 signals</b> Power, Ground, Flip: Power and Ground power the LCD panels, and "Flip" causes the eyes to swap.

<b>3 signals</b> Ground, Left Eye, Right Eye: When "Left Eye" or "Right Eye" wires get a positive voltage, the appropriate eye shuts off.

<b>3 signals</b> VCC, Left eye, Right eye: When "Left eye" or "Right eye" wires get shorted to ground, the appropriate eye shuts off.


Those are the only three possibilities I can think of to make these glasses work, and they are incredibly easy to convert between, I mean less than $2.00 worth of electronic parts here. There's gotta be someone who knows how to convert this!

EDIT: The problem here is I don't know which wire is which, don't know which protocol the different ports and plugs use, and don't have an oscilloscope to find out. :tongue: And can't find any pre-built solutions.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Grafixmonkey on 05/09/04 07:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Slava]

No, this is a Quadro4 750xgl ...

Indeed, I just looked up the model and it does specify that the weird jack is for 3D Shutter glasses. If this is the case, I would venture a guess that you need to go to Radio Shack and look for an adapter with a male connector to fit the female jack on the card on one end and a female connector for your glasses plug on the other. If you find an adapter like this (which is likely) your glasses should work just fine.

<font color=green>"The creative powers of English morphology are pathetic compared to what we find in other languages." (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct)</font color=green>

 

[coylter]

Is it possible to use those 3d glass on a 9800pro?

Athlon 2700xp+ (oc: 3200xp+ with 200fsb) , Radeon 9800pro (oc: 410/360) , 512mb pc3200 (5-3-3-2), Asus A7N8X-X

 

[Slava]

Is it possible to use those 3d glass on a 9800pro?

It is not a function of software alone. You should check the documentation to see if your hardware supports it.

Also, for stereo to work well you need a monitor which supports at least 85-86 Hz refresh rate at the desired resolution. Anything less is plain unuseable.

<font color=green>"The creative powers of English morphology are pathetic compared to what we find in other languages." (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct)</font color=green>

 

[coylter]

mine only go to 60hz

Athlon 2700xp+ (oc: 3200xp+ with 200fsb) , Radeon 9800pro (oc: 410/360) , 512mb pc3200 (5-3-3-2), Asus A7N8X-X<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by coylter on 05/10/04 10:03 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Slava]

mine only go to 60hz

Sorry to hear that. Actually, the best results with 3D Stereo are achieved when the monitor is set to 120Hz. Man, I sure LOVED Dungeon Siege with my 3D glasses on, but I used and abused my monitor constantly running it over spec and it cost me a professional grade $1800 21" SONY Trinitron I scavenged from a friend's medical office when they moved (


<font color=green>"The creative powers of English morphology are pathetic compared to what we find in other languages." (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct)</font color=green>

 

[coylter]

Ouch...

Athlon 2700xp+ (oc: 3200xp+ with 200fsb) , Radeon 9800pro (oc: 410/360) , 512mb pc3200 (5-3-3-2), Asus A7N8X-X

 

[grafixmonkey]

Mine only goes to 60Hz

You know, I bet that's the reason the glasses aren't popular anymore. It's gotta be those LCD screens. Not only can those not refresh fast enough, but the glasses and the screens both use polarization so you wouldn't be able to look through glasses at the LCD screen at all. (try it with polarized sunglasses.)

About those cables. I know that the signals have gone through a few changes. I know that some cards use the "VCC, Ground, Flip" signal type while some others use one or the other of the other two choices. So it probably won't be a matter of just connecting this wire to that wire unless I know for sure that the signals are identical.

I'm not going to do trial and error on this, because it's an expensive graphics card and I can't afford to have to get a new one yet. If I know what the signals are though, I can make it work with enough confidence that I won't have to worry about the card.

Looks like nobody really knows how these work, back to Google for yet another round.... :tongue: