Wall-Sized 3D Displays: The Ultimate Gaming Room

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
So, how much depth do you actually perceive with the stereoscopic glasses while playing a game?

Say a grenade is tossed by your face, does it seem to physically brush past your head? Or does it appear to remain further back as if it is still part of a distant screen?

I realize nothing can appear to escape the outer boundaries of the screen... but when running through a forest in Far Cry, does the foliage brush up against your face...? And when you peer over that cliff, to you get vertigo?

Or is the 3D perception a little more subtle... like when you cross your eyes and look at a 3D poster. Because no matter how much depth the poster scene is supposed to have, it really only seems like the picture has extended by a few inches.
 
Far cry in 3d... wall sized... is very dramatically 3d.

Everyone I've shown it to has been floored. It's not subtle at all.

Once you've tried it, taking the glasses off and playing in 2d seems very, very pale in comparison.
 
Excellent article!

Can you please post how you got Company of Heroes to work?

What level of detail?
Anti-alias on/off?
Resolution?
DirectX version?
Refresh rate?

I have been trying to get this to work, but it doesn't look as good as other games, for example, Far Cry, as you mentioned, which looks awesome. Also AOE III looks amazing. I was really hoping to get Company of Heroes to work. Please let me know, thanks!

Someone mentioned stereovision.net
Also, mtbs3d.com is another great site as a stereo3d resource.

Again, thanks for the great write up, I have been using stereo3d for a few years on CRT and love it.

-Nate
 
Very cool...

I've never thought of 3D gaming before. Can it be done for console games as well?

I already have an InFocus DLP LP500 (800x600 native), and a Radeon 1550 Pro - it's old equipment, I know... but do you suppose if I get some 3d specs, the Nvidia stereoscopic driver and an inverter, then I'm just a couple hundred away from an entry level 3D gaming experience?!
 
nathansteinke:
All games were tried at 1024x768, 85 Hz, with AA disabled. (the Nvidia stereoscopic driver hates AA, even low levels of AA create a slideshow)


dawgma:
Console games won't work because you need a stereoscopic driver, which no console has unfortunately.

The Nvidia stereoscopic driver won't work with your Radeon X1150 PRO... you'd either need to use eDimensional's buggy driver, or get an Nvidia card and stereo inverter like the one used in the article.

Not sure if your projector will work, check the specs... if it'll do 75 Hz or higher at 800x600, it should be OK.
 
I've been using a stereoscopic setup for some time now and wanted to clarify a few things I've seen here so far.
First with regards to the DLP, Aud1073cH is spot-on in his description of where the rainbow effect comes from and how to defeat it.
Next, to address the LCD issue. The problem is the ammount of time it takes for a pixel to to switch between colors. On a CRT the phosphor glow decay rate is high enough that it is back to nearly black long before the next refresh actually occurs. With LCDs, the color of the pixel never returns to a neutral value. So, when the shutter activates you are likely to be seeing a blending of the previous colour and the new one. This leads to bad ghosting/blurring/artifacting effects.
To address SLI, yes it can be done. I currently use a dual 7900GTX setup. There appear special settings within the advanced section of the drivers when the stereo driver is installed which permit you to select you GPU rendering mode for stereoscopy.
Not sure on the 7950GX2 question, but I don't see anything that should really be problematic about it.
I have not run the most recent 3DMark programs but I can confirm that 3dMark 2001 and 2003 looked great. If you can find it, try ATI & Animusic's PipeDream. :wink: I think it was originally designed for the Radeon 9k series, but plays nice on nVidia hardware anyway.
A few other notes of interest. Excepting when the pixels are very large (like wall projection) AA is not necessary for stereoscopy because your brain automatically performs interpolation between the 2 images to form a new image. This is because the "jaggies" are in different spots on the left and right images. Exception to this is when a 2d object is drawn.
Also, the non-beta drivers provided by nVidia do not always play nice with multi-core CPUs, but there is a documented workaround.
 
Monopolising the tv is always a bone of contention in my household! What about using glasses instead of a screen?

I know Sony boasted of LCD glasses which appeared to be 60" screens to the user?
 
Hi guys
I have already a projection setup based on Epson TW600 (called PowerLite Pro Cinema 800 in the USA) and Geforce 7600GS based HTPC.

The specification of my vpr (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Specs&oid=63064237&category=Products)
says refresh rate for LCD 50 or 60 hz based on input signal, and up to 85 hz for "Effective scanning frequency range (analog)"

So it would be suitable or stereoscopic for LCD projection is a no-go?
Anyway since the glasses shutter cut frame rate into half, I think that the rainbow effect on single chip DLP would be more evident.
Even if my vpr got only 60hz refresh, there is no rainbow effect since it uses three LCD matrixes...
 
If the Epson TW600 (and sony's LCD glasses, for that matter) are LCD based and not DLP based, I doubt it would work.

As pyricblade mentioned, LCD pixels don't decay fast enough to go back and forth between separate points of view.

On a side note, I don't think LCD based projectors can have a rainbow effect, can they? I thought it was just DLPs that use the color wheel.
 
yes you're right, LCD matrixes are so cheap that even entry level projectors uses three of them. and you can have a 1080p 3xLCD projector for less than 3000$... a tri chip DLP, even only 720p costs much more... it's simple to expalin, Texas Intruments have DLP technology patent and it's the only producer, with virtually no competition...
LCD are much better than a few days ago thanks to improvement and smart tricks like the iris.. too bad that have still slow response time..
 
If I recall correctly, the seperation of colours for LCD projectors is two-fold. Firstly, it permits for standard (black/grey) matrices with a filter that actually applies each of the three requisite colours. This used to be a cost saving measure I believe. Secondly, the colours are truer this way because of the colour filters and full separation. Some colours are simply unattainable from modern LCDs.
DLP (and it's progeny) are in fact the only ones that fall prey to the rainbow effect because of the colour wheel. Again this only applies to single-DMD DLP devices, not the triple-DMD ones.
 
Very cool article. I have a Benq PB6200 DLP projector with a 7600GS and tried to it a while back (right now my glasses are at tech service) but thought it just didn't work as I didn't saw any 3D effect on the projector while I saw it clearly at my CRT monitor.

So, if it is just it needs a signal inverter as stated in the article: "the Nvidia drivers don't work with projectors unless you purchase an inverter. This is because a projected image inverts the 3D effect, so that the right eye will see what the left eye is supposed to see."... will it work if I just turn the glasses upside down? i.e. rotate the glasses 180º around the face, so the glass for each eye is switched.
 
I am in the simulator building business and also as an ex airline pilot always interested in simulation technology. Stereoscopy certainly has a role to play in a 3D experience. However, you are suggesting that standing/sitting in front of a large screen using a front projector is immersive.

I wonder at what distance you can stand in front of the wall. Maybe a very wide angle lens would allow the projector to stand in front of you but then you are forced to be at least 6 - 8 foot away from the wall thus reducing the FOV.

The other point I want to make it that there is another technique which is far more powerful that stereoscopy. When viewing a 3D Image your eyes are focusing on the wall/screen on which the image is displayed. Your brain knows and heavily depends on the focus distance you are looking at and combines this with a lot of other inputs one of which is stereoscopy.

My current simulator project makes use of 3 42" 1024 x 768 plasma screens providing a horizontal FOV of 200 deg. I was able to build this thanks to TH articles on multiple screen configurations. Also this simulator suffers from focus distance which is far too close. I need to use large Fresnel lenses mitigate this problem.

Culminating screens reflect the light of the image in parallel lines thus creating an image that can be observed when the eye is focussed in the distance. Flight simulators where all imagery (Cockpit is real) is far away make heavy use of this technique and you would swear it is stereoscopic (Which it is not). It would be interesting to see what could be achieved with curved projection screens. They culminate the image giving a focus point that lies beyond the actual screen while also increasing the amount of light observed (Resulting in a much brighter image). This company http://www.iceav.co.nz/ sells curved screens which also have an incredible gain. I suggest these would be perfect for large screen 3D gaming.

Like the Z buffer in a graphics card, humans don't have a usable depth perception further than 100 feet. After that depth perception is there but only for very large depth differences.

Another way a human uses to obtain depth data is movement of the body. Moving left to right causes perspective changes which are again adding to the depth perception. I am experimenting with TrackIR to translate motion in such a way that the monitor frame turns into a window frame through which you can look into the 3D world. Leaning sideways will allow you to look further around the corner too.

Also queues such as color saturation, size and perspective are very important but these are already considered by the graphics engine.
 
This article reeks of the old Toms articles. Glad to see that the editors are trying their best to impress us finiky forumerz. I wish I could do this 3D thing...

One problem though - the Oblivion screenshot showed the screenie from CoH.

Great article!
-cm
 
The article and my own response prompted me to do some experiments with Fresnel lenses. Check this out: http://www.rickleephoto.com/rlcoll.htm

May people think Fresnel lenses just make your screen bigger. Yes it does that too but a much more important feature is the fact that it collimates light thus making you focus further away that the screen actually is.

I did a little experiment with two dirt cheap and nasty Fresnel lenses on a multi screen simulator program I am developing and I was blown away by the effect. You'd swear the image is stereoscopic (Which it is not)

So I ordered a bunch of higher quality Fresnel lenses from 3DLens.com which I hope to receive next week.

The little experiment I did proved my point though. Having said that, there are of course powerful effects that can be achieved with stereoscopy only.
 
So, if it is just it needs a signal inverter as stated in the article: "the Nvidia drivers don't work with projectors unless you purchase an inverter. This is because a projected image inverts the 3D effect, so that the right eye will see what the left eye is supposed to see."... will it work if I just turn the glasses upside down? i.e. rotate the glasses 180º around the face, so the glass for each eye is switched.
Click to expand...

Exactly! if you turn the glasses upside-down, you will see the sdame thing you would if you used an inverter. :)
 
I wonder at what distance you can stand in front of the wall.
Click to expand...

Another option is to put the projector in FRONT of you, pointed towards you... and to put a semi-opaque screen between you and the projector.
Then you can sit very close to the screen.

This is something flight sim fanatics are into, you can read more about it at www.3dflightsim.com
 
Yes, back projection is an option but it needs a dedicated room and a large one at that. 3 meters behind the screen (Unless you use expensive mirror system) and 3 meters in front to stand.

Point is, You don't want to be close to the screen because your eyes focus on something nearby which totally destroys the immersive effect.

however, using a collimation system such as curved mirrors or a Fresnel lens solves that problem now you can put your face very close to a screen while focussing far away.
 
Theoretically it is possible but you'd need really huge fresnel lenses. Their magnification will make it impossible for you to even see the entire screen since you are so close to it.

However, you would have to do a rear projection because the lens needs to be between 7 and 12 inches away from the screen surface therefore you need a fresnel lens as large as your screen!

So basically a fresnel lens goes between your eye and the display. Not between the projector and the screen.

It is far more efficient to project your DLP image onto a curved screen which will have the same effect. www.iceav.co.nz I actually worked with this guy building a simulator screen once. Pretty good stuff but I have to say that the effect I get with Fresnel lenses on a 19" monitor are superb and possibly better than that of a dlp on a 100" screen. It is all about screen perception
 
Pretty good stuff but I have to say that the effect I get with Fresnel lenses on a 19" monitor are superb and possibly better than that of a dlp on a 100" screen. It is all about screen perception
Click to expand...

Don't fresnel lenses blur and distort the image a bit though?

If a fresnel/19" monitor combo could even come close to equalling the 100" 3d/DLP experience, i'd be very impressed. i find it a bit hard to believe but I'd love to try it out and see.
 
Yeah, that risk is surely there with cheap lenses. That is why there is such a huge price range $5 - $50000

No need for you to try because I already ordered 3 19" lenses for a 3 monitor setup of 19" WXGA LCD monitors. I hope to receive those in a few days.

I am getting mine from 3DLens.com I ordered three F550 lenses. These lenses are $26 each and have a high resolution of 0.2 mm (cheap fresnel lenses are usually 0.5 mm groove pitch). I am sure that image sharpness suffers and that fine text is hard to read though.

I think a Fresnel lens setup is great for simulator scenery. The moment you start to introduce HUD like information on such screens it all turns to custard quickly.

In the case of FSX you'd use a separate monitor without Fresnel lens for your instruments.
 
Wow! It's been along time since this site has had such an excellent article. Really well done with detailed instructions and pictures. I hope you write more stuff along this line of converging high tech with multimedia entertainment. It certainly makes me want to try something like this out. Thanks again.
 
Games work because they are built on a 3d engine and the driver allows each frame to view that 3d world from a different perspective for each eye. However, movies are shot from one perspective so a driver can't make them 3d.

From what I understand, there is hardware out there that will do it - but I haven't looked into it. I also believe there are movies available that are 3d capable, but they are quite rare. I don't know much about it.
Click to expand...

eDimensional sell some sort of software that will convert DVD movies into 3D - no idea how that works but thats what they advertise. They also sell IMAX and other 3D Dvds.

But what I want to know is where do you get an inverter? Any brands in particular? What and where can you get the emitters? eDimensional don't have them!
 
Just a thought for those of us with less than 20/20 vision, can any spectacle wearers comment on the results of glasses on glasses or is this a contact lenses only affair time?

thanks optical10

p.s. How do I add an avatar?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom