[CP5670]

Descent 2 had some kind of VR headset support built in IIRC. It would have been cool to be able to use that.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Nuke
there are stereoscopic flat panel displays out there. it splits the colums of pixels up into 2 screens and vectors th light to one eye or the other. half the pixels for left and half the pixels for right. it does it all without glasses and the effect is toggleable, so it works as a 2d display as well. it also works wth most any dual output video card under both d3d and ogl. the problem is the idiots filed a patent, and now the technology wont be developed untill that patent expires in 20 years (infernal patent office, protects inventors, by screwing everyone else). i want a stereo system just to make wireframe modeling easyer. vr wold be cool on flight sims, give you better situational awareness and make the whole game more realistic.

Yeah, I'm pretty well aware of all the 3D display technologies out there. They cost $$$. Crossing eyes doesn't.


But I'm not speaking specifically about something for FS2... more like something like the ATi Omega driverset.

[Fearless Leader]

So who wants to join my project?

[Styxx]

Huh, the VFX3D, a relatively old HMD, comes with presets for Freespace 2 on its launcher. Don't know if the game actually supports free view when using it, but the driver does a neat trick to simulate stereo images by alternating a slight rotation to each side. If you watch the screen without the HMD it's a mess, but using it you barely feel the rotation and the depth sensation is much better.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Bobboau
no that would requier specal codeing and isn't something you could just pack into a driv..er... your jokeing... never mind.

It is, in fact, exactly something you can pack into a driver. And has been for about four years now.

http://www.stereo3d.com/nvidia.htm

[Fearless Leader]

ZylonBane!!!! Whare did you find this? You should post that on the upgrade project forum!!

[ZylonBane]

Uh, why? The stereoscopic support in nVidia drivers is common knowledge, and old news.

[CP5670]

One of the very recent drivers broke it. I'm not sure if they have fixed it yet.

[Fearless Leader]

Well its new to me

[ZylonBane]

Yeah I heard there's a problem with SLI configuration. Like, only one card runs in stereo mode.

[Nuke]

nvidia doesnt udate there stereo drivers nearly as much as there standard drivers. probibly cause not many people use stereo. i know theres a way to set up stereo with a pair of video projectors with cross-polorized filters, and  view it with cross-polarized glasses.  another cool setup is a 360 setup that has a projector pointing at each wall, allowing you to look in any direction without needing head tracking or a headset.  id like to combine the two, it would require an 8 projector minimum and a 4 sli card array. but it would be really cool.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Nuke
another cool setup is a 360 setup that has a projector pointing at each wall, allowing you to look in any direction without needing head tracking or a headset.  id like to combine the two, it would require an 8 projector minimum and a 4 sli card array. but it would be really cool.

That's called a CAVE system, though the stereo is provided by frame interleving instead of polarization.  Look it up.  My school has one and I've had the privelidge to play around in one once (played a little CAVE Quake... that was interesting to say the least); it's really a very cool setup.

[Fearless Leader]

We should make a FS2 arcade style simulater.

[Nuke]

Originally posted by StratComm


That's called a CAVE system, though the stereo is provided by frame interleving instead of polarization.  Look it up.  My school has one and I've had the privelidge to play around in one once (played a little CAVE Quake... that was interesting to say the least); it's really a very cool setup.

well the polarized system i saw was set up for higher resolution 3d presentations. interleave essentially halves your resolution, is less natural,  and tends to cause more nausea. going polarized is twice es axpensive, and then you need filters, glasses, and a dual out video card.  i saw a 6 projector "cave" system as part of a conrtol tower simulator for aspiring air traffic controllers. none of the screens were stereoscopic though. are the cave systems driver supported like stereo, or do they require your games be codeed specifically for them?

[StratComm]

That's not a CAVE system.  A proper cave is full stereo across a minimum of four screens with frame interleving and shutter glasses.  User position is tracked within the cube and the perspective on each screen adjusted accordingly, so you don't actually see the corners of the screen when you're inside.  It's a much more advanced system than any of the simulators you're refering to.  And resolution isn't compromised at all with frame interleving, for the record.  

The processing unit on the one I got to mess with was a Silicon Graphics mainframe of some kind.  You've got to write applications specific to the environment as there's a lot more going on than just setting a second POV.

[Nuke]

i thought you meant scanline interleave, by bad, none the less frame interleave can be quite nausiating if the refresh rate is too slow. so its more of a proprietary thing then. sounds rather cool.

[StratComm]

It's not "proprietary" in the strictest sense of the word, but yes.  It's a custom setup from the CPU to the apps it's running to the environment it's running in.  A multimillion-dollar ordeal given all of the equipment involved.  The high-refresh rate projectors alone have to be rediculously expensive, if not custom-built.

[Sandwich]

Is it so hard to render a screen split vertically in two, with each POV coming from either side of the game's POV?

[Nuke]

i think he means the current equivelant of a holodeck, it tracks the person inside and adjusts teh view accordingly. the stereocopy and tracking is probibly what makes cave so expensive. i wish they had a scaled down desktop version that wasnt so expensive. the projectors in the control tower simulator i saw had 6 of what looked like $8000 units, mind you this was a long time ago that i saw this thing. the screens each had a 60 degree feild of view in a full 360 environment. i also like the systems that flight simulators use having a screen in every window. my favorite sim was the space ship one simulator with 13 independant screens each with its own rendering computer. i was reading about it on the scaled composites web page.