The Future of Stereo 3D Part I: Nvidia Geforce 3D Vision

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Performance

Performance

In order to test the actual performance loss associated with running Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision, we wanted to make sure that we illustrated what a middle of the road setup would accomplish. Nvidia recommends a minimum of an 8800 GT or 9600 GT but we didn’t want the framerates to completely tank either. To accomplish this, a 9800 GTX+ was used along with a more pedestrian system which is listed below.

System Used

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q 9450 @ 2.67Ghz
Memory: G.Skill 2x 2GB DDR2-1000 @ 800Mhz DDR
Motherboard: ASUS P5E Deluxe X48
Disk Drive: Pioneer DVD Writer
Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 320GB SATAII
Fans: 2X Yate Loon 120mm @ 1200RPM
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000W
Monitor: Samsung 305T 30” widescreen LCD
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1


In addition, V-Sync was enabled for both the runs for the simple reason that it must be enabled when for 3D Vision to function properly. The following was used for each game:

Left 4 Dead: 15 minutes on Roodtop Finale
Far Cry 2: 20 minute action sequence
Fallout 3: 15 minute walkthrough on the way to Megaton
COD World at War: 15 minute gameplay sequence during Allied campaign

Ouch. Even with a 9800 GTX+ 512MB card, not one of the games was playable at settings which were more than acceptable without 3D Vision enabled. What we are looking at here is an approximate 50% reduction in average framerates across the board which will definitely have a negative impact on your gameplay experience. The minimum framerates are particularly brutal.

What this shows us is that when you buy a 3D Vision kit you will be forced to make some serious concessions to image quality to achieve performance you will be happy with. You may be used to using higher instances of AA and detail settings in newer games with your high-end cards but that will definitely have to be cut back. Basically, if your current settings cause performance to hover around the 60FPS mark in games you normally play; expect a borderline unplayable experience once stereo 3D is enabled. However, remember that all you will have to do to rectify this is to decrease the IQ settings a bit.

 

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The Good the Bad and the Wish List

The Good the Bad and the Wish List

As the old saying goes: you have to put your money where your mouth is. Lately, we have seen far too many companies talking up their upcoming technologies without actually making good on promises of widespread availability or delivering a properly functioning product. Nvidia has had their fair share of pet projects over the past few years that have for all intents and gone bust; remember Hybrid SLI and ESA? Neither do I. That is why when Nvidia first briefed me about GeForce 3D Vision, I started setting myself up for a disappointment while a voice in the back of my head screamed: maybe they’re onto something here.

Fast forward to the current timeframe and believe it or not, I find myself really believing in 3D Vision. I want it to succeed for the simple fact that it is trying to expand the way we perceive the games we love. Trying to introduce what used to be a niche product to the masses isn’t going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but if there is one company out there who is willing to put their money where their mouths are, it is Nvidia.


The Good

There is so much to like about GeForce 3D Vision but to list it all here is next to impossible. Let’s just say that when a game properly supports it, Nvidia’s product can simply blow your expectations out of the water. To be honest with you, I really wasn’t expecting much so the first time a booted Left 4 Dead in stereo 3D, I was stunned. Before I go on, I do actually have a cautionary note; if you expect to see your favourite game character to dance a jig on your desk, you can forget about it because at this point, out-of-screen effects are virtually nil but according to Nvidia, they are coming. Until then, this system will breath new life into games you had forgotten and new games like Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2 are worth buying just to see how well they utilize 3D Vision.

Click on image to enlarge​

Personally, I think that the greatest achievement of GeForce 3D Vision is how easy it is to set up and use right out of the box. This in turn makes it infinitely accessible for people who have never even heard of stereoscopic 3D since it seamlessly integrates itself into the drivers. From the Nvidia Laser Sight to the on-the-fly-adjustments, everything about its software implementation oozes polish. Not once did I experience a driver crash and that is definitely saying a lot for a product that was introduced a few short months ago.

While the whole stereo 3D experience may be a bit too much for you at first, Nvidia has included real-time adjustments for separation (depth) and this is a godsend. At first I wasn’t able to use anything above the bare minimum depth setting but after about a week, I was puttering away at around 20% and have now graduated to 40% in some games. Nvidia’s helping hand in games with their pop-up tips and tricks is also well appreciated since they can be turned off with a quick button press and offer the pointers needed to get 3D Vision functioning at its best.

The products themselves also have a high-end look and feel to them. To begin with, the Samsung 2233RZ is one of the best monitors I have laid my hands on. It has no discernable input lag, ghosting is a thing of the past and its color saturation and contrast is just awe-inspiring. The only thing it really lacks is height / pitch adjustment and VESA mounting holes. The glasses also feel like a well-tailored piece of kit since they fit perfectly on nearly everyone who tried them and are ultra comfortable.

 

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The Good, The Bad and the Wish List cont.

The Good, The Bad and the Wish List cont.

The Bad

As with every new piece of technology, there are always some speed bumps on the road to total, unqualified success. With 3D Vision, one of those speed bumps is and probably always will be the price of admission. Not only do you need to spend a good $250 for the active shutter glasses but you have to pair the whole thing up to a 120Hz monitor that will put you back another $500. When many people take a step back and see the sub-$300 asking price of most other 22” monitors, justifying $500 isn’t an easy thing to do. Make no mistake about it though; with high-end optics and wireless operation, active shutter glasses don’t come cheap. That also means if you accidentally destroy your shiny glasses, you will be forged to fork over a good chunk of change for a replacement.

The fact that 3D Vision is only available for Nvidia cards will also alienate a large portion of their potential consumer base, especially with ATI’s cards pulling down some impressive performance as of late. This is an unfortunate trade off but it is a necessary one since there is no way I can see ATI giving Nvidia early access to their drivers.

Nvidia claims that their solution is the “brightest” out there since it lets through the most light without completely washing out the contrast in games. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid the reality that shutter glasses do tend to block out a portion of the visible light spectrum. This is noticeable in games like Far Cry 2 that already has a washed-out, decidedly brown feeling to it which the polarization on the glasses just ends up enhancing until it looks like someone smeared mud over the screen. Pop on a pair of polarized sunglasses and look at your monitor; that’s the light output you will need to become accustomed to with these glasses on.

Another nagging issue that popped up from time to time was stereo 3D text rendering in certain games. In games with a lot of on-screen text which is rendered on a 3D plane, you will either see the text in double or misrendered. This becomes distracting to the extreme when you are trying to get a bead on your enemy.

Convergence. Get to know it because it's the the term used to denote the amount an image projects beyond the plane of the screen when viewed in stereo3D. In my opinion, it is an essential tweak which you may want quick access to when you become a more advanced user. Unfortunately, Nvidia's 3D Vision has this option buried in the Advanced Menu due to the fact that there are preset profiles for convergence built into the drivers for each game. While I find 3D Vision performs admirably without adjusting this setting too much I think it is imperative that Nvidia makes it a point to tell users a bit more about it and its importance to bring their solution to the next level. On that same note, it should be noted that adjusting convergence can have a seriously negative impact on your gameplay experience as well and has been known to cause headaches and serious eye strain if improperly adjusted. Even though we have this in the "Bad" column, for the majority of users convergence should be left at default.

Then there is the performance hit. On the 9800 GTX+ we used, performance dropped like a stone due to the fact that 3D Vision forces the card to render two images at once. This results is an approximate 50% hit in framerates that will leave you scrambling around trying to find settings which will reduce the load on the graphics card. Just remember that the performance will scale in a linear fashion so a slightly higher end GPU like the GTX 260 216 would allow for higher IQ settings at a perfectly playable framerate. Usually, it will be the AA settings that will suffer and this can have a huge impact on overall image quality.


The Wish List

After staring down the barrel of a nearly $700 price tag, there are still things I find myself wanting from this kit. No, I am not looking for jumping leprechauns and Star Trek holosuite-like effects. Heck, I don’t even need stereo 3D porn (or do I?). However, it is time to put myself in the beta tester’s boots and start talking about things Nvidia should add to future revisions of this kit.

First and foremost, placing a single LED at the very top rim of the glasses to tell you the battery’s charge strikes me as a half-assed solution. This thing has three states: green means there is more than 2 hours of charge left, red means there is less than 2 hours and no color means you are screwed. Overall it works quite well…until you play a game for 4 hours after forgetting to charge the glasses. In that case, when you turn the glasses on you will be greeted with a green light (indicating more than 2 hours of charge remains) but you have no way of knowing if green means 3 hours or 6 hours. Plus, most gamers won’t be bothered to take off the glasses to check if the LED has gone from green to red. To alleviate this battery crap-shoot, I would love to see Nvidia implement an on-screen display tied to a hotkey that can tell you exactly how much gaming time you have left with the current charge.

There is also no good way to distinguish one TV from the next when it comes to compatibility with 3D Vision. Granted, there aren’t many of them on the market yet but from what I can see things aren’t starting off too well. This is mostly because LCD manufacturers seem to all have a different idea of what constitutes a “3D Ready” product as most lack the VESA 3-pin connector needed for 3D Vision. Heck, even though Nvidia has a “3D Vision Certified” logo, to this date Mitsubishi isn’t even using it on their LaserVue DLP minisite. Is this a question that Nvidia is charging too much for the right to carry their logo? If so, we will find out soon since we have an interview with Samsung coming up which will shed some light on some aspects of certification. To help consumers make the right choices, Nvidia needs to aggressively push manufacturers to make use of the certification logos or the 3D Ready logo that Samsung is using. If this doesn't happen, choosing a 3D Ready panel will become even more of a crap shoot and potential customers will become needlessly frustrated.

While it won’t be too big of a deal right now, a user-replaceable battery would go a long way to selling me on Nvidia’s product. As it stands, the competing solution from iZ3D (which we will take a look at in Part II) doesn’t need to worry about batteries due to its use of passive glasses. Unfortunately no battery technology is perfect and even though Nvidia’s battery life claims are amazing, I would rather have the option to replace my battery if it dies prematurely.

Speaking of batteries, it might be slightly too much to ask for but a wall charger for the glasses would be a welcome accessory. Charging them directly from the computer isn’t necessarily a horrible option but there will be plenty fo cases when all of your USB ports are being used and you are left with nowhere to plug in the glasses.

 

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The Future of Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision / Final Words

The Future of Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision

So where do we go from here and is there even a future for Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision? The short answer is yes, there is a bright future for this technology but only if Nvidia wants there to be. There are no two ways about it; if 3D Vision ever hopes to break out of the niche market it is currently in and make its way into the arms of the unwashed masses, Nvidia MUST continue to support it. Without constant driver updates to support the newest games, it will be forgotten in no time.

On the flip side of the coin, Nvidia has shown every indication that they can take the challenge of integrating a new technology into their lineup without missing a beat. The driver updates have been taking place regularly, their knowledge base is expanding and the number of supported games is increasing with every new revision. They are also aggressively marketing 3D Vision at LAN parties, industry events and even at some brick and mortar stores. It really does seem like Nvidia is hell-bent on getting the ball rolling and that can only be taken as a good thing for early adopters.

It is also extremely important for game developers to be on board as well since without their support, Nvidia will be relegated to using band aid solutions to force stereo 3D in games. Here too Nvidia seems to have the ball rolling quite nicely since their The Way It’s Meant To Be Played program has made sure that developers are actively using 3D Vision hardware. The results of this can already be seen with Blizzard’s release of a patch for their insanely popular World of Warcraft that includes the graphical tweaks necessary for some out-of-screen effects when using 3D Vision. I am sure that there will be additional announcements like Blizzard’s in the near future so stay tuned.

If Nvidia succeeds in continuously evolving this platform over the next few years, then I can in all honesty say that it has the potential to forever change the way we all look at PC gaming. After watching people’s comically giddy reactions to 3D Vision at CES, it is obvious that it struck a cord with gamers and journalists alike. We are all used to the usual naysayer mentality that told us the PC gaming industry was dying a slow death and needed a serious shot of adrenaline. Well, 3D Vision seems to have done just that but it is now up to Nvidia to ride the wave of publicity and sell enough kits to get the price down to an amount were everyday gamers will be able to snatch it up.

However, the PC gaming industry is just the tip of a very large iceberg since it isn’t hard to see the possibility of using 3D Vision within professional fields as well. Considering Nvidia’s newfound focus on the medical imaging field through CUDA applications, I can see 3D Vision playing an integral part in their expansion into 3D CT scanning systems and many other areas. On the more personal side of things, coming from an architectural background I can see this technology making its way into everything from AutoCAD to virtual walkthough software. Trust me; there is nothing I would like more than to give a client the opportunity to see a flythrough of a proposed project in full stereoscopic 3D. If Nvidia gets this system working with their Quadro cards and drivers, that may be a possibility in the near future.

Let me tell you, there is a laundry list of things Nvidia needs to do right in order to make GeForce 3D Vision a success but the most important aspect will be proper integration through manufacturer support. As it stands, there is a grand total of two 120Hz LCD monitors, a few DLP TVs and a lone projector which are compatible with Nvidia’s solution. To sustain any kind of growth for this product, that list has to expand by leaps and bounds in the coming years. We need to see pure 120Hz monitors and televisions make a larger break into the market in order to drive costs down which will in turn drive down the overall price of 3D Vision. Without this one step, Nvidia’s innovative product may continue on in a niche market but will never make its way to widespread acceptance.

Final Words...and on to Part II

To sum this all up, there is one question I am sure you have been asking yourself from the getgo: is 3D Vision ready for prime time? Yes, it is. It is remarkably stable and easy-to-use, has a huge (and expanding) list of supported games, gets regular driver updates and actually works very well. Those are all the essential goals every new product has before it and Nvidia hit every one of them. But, how does it compare to the competing solution from iZ3D? You’ll have to wait until Part II to hear about that since it really does deserve its own article. Stay tuned.

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