3D Vision Mega Evaluation – Gimmick or Gaming’s Future?

Installing 3D vision

Installing 3D Vision drivers is now completely painless for someone with a GeForce card.  If you have the latest drivers, the 3D Vision drivers are already included and there are no longer separate downloads for 3D Vision drivers and for GeForce drivers.  When installing the latest drivers from Nvidia’s site, you might consider using a “clean install”.  And it is always wise to keep your drivers up to date as 3D Vision improvements are often made from one driver release to the next.

After the driver installation is complete, go into Nvidia’s control panel and launch the 3D Vision Wizard which will take you step by step through setting up 3D Vision.  In just a few minutes, you will be playing your first game in 3D – assuming you can tear yourself away from the 3D sample demos and images.

Of course, it is step by step – select your emitter and plug it in; select the display and then the glasses … and now the 3D Test.

It will not let you proceed until everything is working smoothly.  You next get to choose from 100Hz, 110Hz or 120Hz for your display; 120Hz gives the least flicker and this is what we chose.

Then you get to the eye test to make sure that you can even see 3D properly.

There are a very small percentage of people who simply cannot perceive S3D and if you are one of them, Nvidia suggests that you do not use 3D Vision until you consult with your eye doctor.  If you can see the 3D image then you get a Congratulations and you can make a desktop shortcut for it and head right to the demo that Nvidia provides to help your adjust depth, or even watch a slideshow of impressive-looking 3D images.

Well, we passed the test and we will give our first impressions of 3D Vision after we tweak the settings.

Tweaking the 3D settings

In the same tab of Nvidia’s Control Panel where you set up Stereoscopic 3D, you now can set the keyboard shortcuts to adjust not only the depth but the convergence so that you can minimize crosstalk/ghosting.  After you tweak the game to your liking, you can even save the in-game changes so you do not have to do this more than once for each game.

If you are looking for advice on how to tweak specific game settings, Nvidia’s 3D Vision blogs are a wealth of information as are their 3D Vision forums.  Below are the hot keys, the most important of which is to adjust convergence and depth.  Alternately, you can press and hold the on-off switch on the emitter and use the wheel to adjust convergence.  Be aware that some games have locked the convergence and you cannot adjust it manually at all.

You also have the option to “Change the 3D Laser Sight”, the crosshairs for targeting.  As we learned, often the developers take shortcuts with the HUD or crosshairs that still look fine in 2D but are a bit confusing in S3D.  These sights will work with most games that Nvidia has drivers for, so that there is no depth confusion on what you are targeting.  And of course, most games allow you to turn off the supplied in-game crosshairs.

Tips for adjustments:

Convergence controls at which distance the left and right views will convergence into a single view. When this occurs, your eyes are focusing directly into the screen surface and viewing objects that are said to be at “screen depth”.  Ideally the objects at screen depth should be at a similar distance to the viewer from the screen.  In other words, if you sit two feet from your display, the objects in the game that are two feet from the camera converge into a single view at screen depth.  If you sit closer, the objects will “pop out” and if you sit nearer, the objects will recede into the screen

A rough rule in shooters is to walk your character as near as possible into a wall and change the convergence – without glasses – until you see the wall textures are not ghosting.  Then add a bit of convergence until the wall moves forward toward you.  Too much convergence will strain your eyes and if you force them to focus you will get headaches; lower the convergence in this case or adjust the depth and the separation.  Each game is different one from the other and you will want to save your settings when you have got them adjusted to your personal preference.

Pop out or Pop in?

If you are brand new to 3D Vision, it is wise to stick with the default settings until you get used to it.  If your have a game with a large GUI, you do not want pop-out; if you do, you will introduce confusion.  Your eyes may be telling you that an object is close to your face but covered by the GUI that is further away.  This is a way to get a headache very quickly as your brain tries to resolve an impossible situation.

Usually a good way to adjust this is to focus on distant objects – a landmark is better than the sky, however.  As you look at your landmark in the distance, increase the depth until the object really looks distant without looking out of place.  Your goal is to find the point at which your eyes are looking at the image in parallel without getting further apart than where your eyes would focus normally in the real 3D world.

There is a lot of trial and error at first – especially if you want more than just the default settings, which are really conservative.  In time. it becomes easy and natural to adjust your settings accurately for your within the first few minutes of starting a game.  Then save your settings so you don’t have to repeat the above steps.

Well, we are ready to play our first games with 3D Vision and will give you our first impressions.