Hi all,

I keep reading about the latest wheel or high end graphics card but nobody seems to take any notice of the fact that their racing is missing an entire dimension! I know some of you will have heard my banging on about stereo 3D before but here I am getting all evangelical again.

For those who haven't a clue what I'm on about, there are various ways to get stereo 3D vision from your PC but all of them rely on showing two images. One for each eye. Google for Stereo 3D and you'll find a host of sites explaining it. There is a set of Nvidia drivers dedicated to producing perfect 3D.

My own setup involves two projectors, each with a polarizing filter, used in conjunction with polarized glasses.

The result is that from my view point I feel as though I am actually sat in the cockpit of my race car and the track is stretching off into the distance. It really is so good that you feel as though you could touch the mirrors or the dash. You actually forget that there is a screen there at all.

The problem is that there's no screenshot that I can show you. It's one of those things that you have to try so I'm considering having an 'open day' (in Oxford) for anyone who wants to have a go.

Maybe in return you can teach me how to drive fast!

Let me know if you're interested

Dave (AKA 'SCULPTOR' in the FOX with the smarties skin)

If I could afford two projectors, I'd certainly go for this. But for that kind of money, I'd be tempted to just get a proper pair of VR goggles. They're getting quite good these days.

http://www.vrealities.com/hmd.html

I was shopping for a cool factor to add to the sim systems I was building and decided to get the emagin Z800 and found that vrealities site as well. After talking to them they steered me to their house brand...the vreal viewer 3d for a couple hundred more saying the emagin was essentially cheap garbage. So what they don't tell you on their site anywhere is they have a no return policy and customer satisfaction is not in their vocabulary. They will even call you a liar and hang up on you more than once even when they finally agree to an exchange. After months we are still in process of dispute for, at this point, the $814 charge to our credit card after sending the HMD back. I can say that if you think head mounted big screen viewing is a 17" monitor from 3-4 feet away is big then your in luck with that product. The 3-d did work decent but the LCDs get hot and the color get wierd after a while not to mention you get a numb head because no matter how you adjust the head band tension its still not comfortable for very long. The "only we have eye cups pitch" is a joke because they are small and uncomfortable and don't do much anyway. As far as the headphones they add to the bundle for around $50...nothing more than $15 koss headphones you can get at Target. Very dissapointing product and company to NEVER do business with again. Don't take all their business name drops they list on their site too seriously because it means nothing even if it's true that they actually sell to universites etc. Here is the number he gave me to get my tracking number on the "exchanged product" he never sent. 409 727 3044 Yep its a BS # to an answering machine all the time anytime. Thanks for posting their link so I could warn everyone about them. See you guys on the track Sorry it's so long but it's important!

I have an lcd so I guess my choise is red-cyans with nvidia drvs, but where to get the glasses?

I've tried the emagin z800 and have to say that it's really good. The thing you don't get however is the wide field of view that you can have with the projection setup. 2 projectors is not as expensive as you might think - just look on ebay. The cost is bumped up though by the non-depolarizing screen and the filters and glasses.....but it's worth it!

Did you use the built in head tracking in the z800 when you tried it. If it's anything as good as TrackIr then the fov issue is not as big a deal. I use an IceTec VX-2 Fresnel with my DIY cabinet I made on my home system with a track ir 3pro and vector expansion. Best way to go with a single screen and an older HP17" CRT at that. I will probably get the edimension shutter glasses to take it all the way to the full 3d and my single screen deskpit will be complete. I stuck my vector clip on top of my headphones band intead of the hat and it works great too. While i'm off on a hardware tangent...actually shifting and using a clutch with the G-25 is so much more fun...two thumbs up for the new Logi wheel.

No, I didn't use the inbuilt tracker, I also used the trackIR. I stuck the vector clip onto the z800. I'd love to try the G25 too but after buying the two projectors, my money box is a bit low!

Quote from Funnycat :

I have an lcd so I guess my choise is red-cyans with nvidia drvs, but where to get the glasses?

http://www.photo3-d.com/3DGlassesPage.php?session=

Sounds interesting. I wonder how track-side objects look in 3D, that are not modelled voluminous, but that are just flat structures with a texture on it (for performance reasons). I think trees and spectators are often realized that way. Doesn't this look pretty strange, if you have a real 3D look at it? And did you run your setup also with other racing games than LFS?

edit: and one more question: Isn't it extremely tricky to align those two projectors? I guess the two projected images have to match exactly to avoid nasty artefacts.

Can we see at least a picture of how do you put your two projectors to get the two projection match perfectly ?

i can honestly say this is the first time in my entire life that i wished i would live in oxford

I too have always wondered how to have two projectors and not have washout in the middle

I bought projectors with an in built image positioning feature so it is quite easy to align the two images. It's also possible to make a rig to hold two non adjustable projectors. Interestingly, it's not essential to have them perfectly alligned as the brain aligns the images received from each eye anyway. (aren't we amazing creatures?) Track side objects such as spectators are noticeably flat, but to me they are in the 2d view aswell. Here are a couple of images. One showing the hole I made in my wall to seat the projectors (I have an understanding wife!) and the other showing how the view looks without the glasses on.

Quote from Funnycat :

I have an lcd so I guess my choise is red-cyans with nvidia drvs, but where to get the glasses?

What do you mean?

If anyone has an LCD screen, can they use the red/blue style 3D? How do you do this? I'd love to give it a go.

Quote from Christofire :

What do you mean?

If anyone has an LCD screen, can they use the red/blue style 3D? How do you do this? I'd love to give it a go.

me 2

Yes, anybody can use red/cyan glasses with the nvidia stereo drivers. It should be noted that you need to install the video driver and then the stereo driver and both need to be the same release number. At the moment this means you can't use the very latest video driver. Better still is to use a crt monitor and a pair of shutter glasses. Then you don't lose the colours. www.stereo3d.com is a very good resource for info about this.

The nvidia 91.31 stereo driver works fine with my xtreme-G 92.91 nivida graphic card driver, offering very good image qualitity and performance.

So you don´t have to use the buggy 91.31 nvida driver to get the stereo effects! The colors are slightly washed out, because red and blue are filtered, but it´s far away from being monochrome.

At which resolution do the projectors run?
(-> price class)

Vain

Quote from goode400 :

Yes, anybody can use red/cyan glasses with the nvidia stereo drivers.

Oh well, that'll be me not playing in 3d then. I've got an ATI card.

what type of projectors are those ? i guess lcds wont work

I was browsing to see how much the 2 projectors would cost and saw this http://www.edimensional.com/pr ... PSs9qO3hIoCFQMkggodFTyBQQ InFocus®DepthQ® 3D Video Projector

Quote from Vain :

At which resolution do the projectors run?
(-> price class)

Vain

My projectors are wide screen ones running at something like 1200 by 720
It's still pretty good with 600 x 800 though. I'd swap resolution for depth any day.

Quote from Hurts2bStock :

I was browsing to see how much the 2 projectors would cost and saw this http://www.edimensional.com/pr ... PSs9qO3hIoCFQMkggodFTyBQQ InFocus®DepthQ® 3D Video Projector

I tried this one at inition in London. It's basically a modified X2 running at 600 by 800. the only difference is that it has a much higher refresh rate so it can be used with shutter glasses without noticeable flicker. For less money you can get two XGA projectors, the non-depolarizing screen, the filters and glasses. I made my choice!

Quote from Shotglass :

what type of projectors are those ? i guess lcds wont work

They are LCDs!
Panasonic PT-AX100E

Bloody hell they're expensive.

You had me all hyped up to go crazy with the gaming rig until I saw the price.