Stereoscopic (aka Virtual Reality) SH3!

[Darkbluesky]

Hello,

I'm new here. This is my first post. I have recently discovered SH3, and I'm impressed and wishing to have time to play with it.

At side of this I must say that I use to play all games in stereoscopic mode, i.e. true 3d (with true depth) using shutter glasses (not the red-blue ones, although possible too).

I have test SH3 with them and it works. When adjusted correctly I feel just inside a close environment like an U-boot was. Really, really impressive, as usual with 3d streosocpic vision.

But this vision (so deep) is not possible to use because all the menus are set (programmed) in a high depth (they are the bottom of the screen) instead of be put in fornt of all, i.e. at screen depth (screen glass depth :p ), this limits the maximum depth effect, becasue when adjusted to get the wow effect, the menus are not readable (you see two images too much separated), the important question is:

I wonder if it is possible to mod the SH3 menus so the depth will be over all the rest of things.

Is it hardcoded or could it be adjusted? I don't know what things can be done via mods.

Thank you and congratulations for this site and forums. I like them.

Regards,

PD
I'll try to post some screenies of what I try to explain. For the moment, for these people interested, this is a link to a post where you can see this effect working without need of glasses http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...irtual+reality

[Drebbel]

I never knew this was possible. I would love to see some screenies to see the effect myself.

[VipertheSniper]

Woah the screenies on nvnews forums take quite a lot of eye crossing, so much it hurts, but the effect is there, I wonder how you can take screenies of left and right eye feed seperatly tho... would like to see what SH3 looks like with stereoscopic vision tho.

[irish1958]

You need a megamachine to run this. I tried it with a fairly good machine and my frame rate was in the single digits at best.

[Tuddley3]

You can use red and blue glasses ? How ? I have red and blue glasses, what do I need to do to run SH3 in 3D ?

[Darkbluesky]

You can use red and blue glasses too, but the depth effect is quite reduced due to color distorsion, it is better to use shutter glasses but it is more expensive. red-blue glasses are free ot almost, shutter glasses about 40 euros or more.

As I am pretty new to SH3 I don't know how to show framerate. If someone tells me how I could post framerate differences in SH3 with and without stereo, in my P4 3.6 Gh prescott and Nvidia 5900XT, 1 Gb DDR, I have it running smooth; I do not feel any difference, but better to check fps counter, becasue there are always a fps hit.

Ususally I got a 35-40% fps loss, but the effect is SO wonderful that it does not matter to me. And additionally, when in stereo there is no need for AA or AF because the brain makes some kind of antialiasing.


I'll try to put some screenies of SH3 in 3d, although some of them will show the problems mentioned in my first post.

Thanks to the stereo driver from Nvidia you can capture 3d screenies.

[Tuddley3]

Originally Posted by Darkbluesky

You can use red and blue glasses too, but the depth effect is quite reduced due to color distorsion, it is better to use shutter glasses but it is more expensive. red-blue glasses are free ot almost, shutter glasses about 40 euros or more.

As I am pretty new to SH3 I don't know how to show framerate. If someone tells me how I could post framerate differences in SH3 with and without stereo, in my P4 3.6 Gh prescott and Nvidia 5900XT, 1 Gb DDR, I have it running smooth; I do not feel any difference, but better to check fps counter, becasue there are always a fps hit.

Ususally I got a 35-40% fps loss, but the effect is SO wonderful that it does not matter to me. And additionally, when in stereo there is no need for AA or AF because the brain makes some kind of antialiasing.


I'll try to put some screenies of SH3 in 3d, although some of them will show the problems mentioned in my first post.

Thanks to the stereo driver from Nvidia you can capture 3d screenies.

Can't wait to see the screenies. You forgot to mention what I can do to got the 3D to work with red & blue glasses. I can't afford the shutter glasses right now, so even if red & blue is kind of cheezeball, I'd still like to try it.

What do I need to download ?

[Darkbluesky]

Hi,

Finally I have taken the screenshots, and managed myself to reach internet (wireless problems here... )

First of all,

-They are all crosseyed shots, so you need to follow the corsseyed technique to see them without glasses (http://www.angelfire.com/ca/erker/freeview.html)

-Just in case, I explain a few words about the 3D effect. As you know, the 3d effect in real life is obtained thanks to two images of the same, seen from slight different perspectives. As more distant are the two points of view (i.e. eyes) between them greater is the effect (it is like when you see a miniature of a car, for example; the 3d is more evident).
The Nvidia drivers generates two frames for each original one, from two different perspectives, and they allow you to adjust this separation on the air when running the game, to your preferences.
But they also allow to adjust convergence. Convergence is, in a simple way, the plane of the 3d world created by the PC that you want that will be the screen plane (monitor glass), so all objects placed by the software below (deeper) this plane will be inside the monitor, and the rest outside the screen "floating in the air". Low convergence, the world is farer from you, high convergence the world is nearer to you. The combination of both, lead to the depth effect.

-I have made two series of screenshots, and I have tried that they were more or less the same ones, in order to compare.
a. The first serie is what I think it should be, they have higher convergence and thus the effect is GREAT. You are really inside the SH3 world. BUT, as you are going to see, in SH3 they show the bad placed menus, and double mouse pointer. Will see later about solutions... (?)
b. The second one is with low convergence, so you can use the menus, at the expense of part of the depth effect.

Notes:

1.As with the books of "The Magic Eye", at first the stereo effect for beginners is harder to see, but quickly you are used to it, and then you can focus without effort (at least to most of people). For this reason, at first, someone could find the High Convergence screens harder to focus. If so, you can try to begin with the Low convergence and then go for the rest.

2. The 3d effect is weakened because you are seeing them with a small size, greater is the size greater the effect, so you may need to put a bit of imagination to reach the reality. As a rule of thumb we could say that the effect you will see for the High Convergence screnshots is near to what you sould see for the Low Conv. ones at fullscreen.

Said that, I guess I can put the screens :p

[Darkbluesky]

All the screenies are from the Academy (sorry I am a SH3 newbie)

They are quite dark in my monitor, I suggest to increase brightness/contrast to see all details, if not many of the depth effect is not seen.

Imageshack is not the best one to show stereo pics because the resize it smaller than the screen or the show in fullscreen without option to adjust it. I recommend to see them exactly as big as teh screen allows, if possible.

High Convergence ones 1/2:

[Darkbluesky]

High Convergence ones 2/2:

[Darkbluesky]

And here the Low Convergence ones (but menu more or less, well placed) 1/2:

[Darkbluesky]

Low Convergence 2/2:

[Darkbluesky]

About what is needed:

-NVIDIA gfx card. ATI or others can't do stereo like Nvidia, the only chance with them is using drivers sold by edimensional.com together with their glasses, but I have test these drivers and produce loss of half resolution. They work only in interlace mode (i.e. half horizontal lines shows the left image and the rest the right one, so loss of half resolution. Not too bad, but it have no comparison with page-flipping mode of Nvidia drivers)

-CRT monitor. LCD are not still supported (except by edimensional drivers, but people report it is difficult to make them run ok). Some home video projectors work also. I'm looking on this too. To play SH3, or IL2 at 1:1 in 3D would be unforgettable...

-Nvidia drivers + Nvidia stereo drivers. http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
At the same link where you can download the nvidia drivers you can find also the Consumer 3D stereo drivers. The only thing to watch, is that the version number of the normal drivers and the stereo ones must match. Currently the normal are 91.47 and the stereo 91.31, so you need the normal ones 91.31; you can find them in the stereo driver page itself. Nevertheless, in guru3d.com (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=22) you can find beta stereo drivers from time to time. Currently you can find the 91.47 stereo betas (which I am running now together with the normal 91.47)
First install normal drivers and then stereo ones (remember using driver cleaner pro or similar if you need to uninstall old drivers, otherwise you will prolly find problems)

Once you have installed both, you should change the interface to the old one, because stereo options appear only in the classic interface. There, you will find a tab about stereo with sub-tabs. In the first tab you will find the type of stereo to use, there you can choose red-bue glasses (anaglyph) or DDC (shutter) etc.

Also you can find there some other options, like a new crosshair override just for games, that like SH3 the pointer or crosshair is bad z-placed and therefore is affected by the convergence settings, so duplicating it and forcing to aim between both. Unhappily this does not work in SH3.

As well, you can find the hotkeys to adjust stereo ingame. They are shared between two tabs, one of them shows some basic ones, but if you go to the games profiles and click advanced (or similar) in any of them, you will see advanced adjustments hotkeys (they are the same keys for all games, if you don't change them). Take note, though, that some functions (like adjust back and front plane) does not work with all games, unhappily.

I have taken some screenshots at fullsize with anaglyph mode (red-blue glasses), once time more, the depth effect is somewhat reduced.

[Darkbluesky]

The High Convergence anaglyph screenshots 1/2,

[Darkbluesky]

Anaglyph High Convergence 2/2