Final verdict: XP and Stereo Glasses?

[Socrates]

That Russian patch solves the problem of having to run the Stereo propeties in it's own window. But all the other problems with cutting out or flashing on and off remain.

I am starting to wonder if maybe I am having a two problem scenario: 1. driver support si weak, 2. the glases actually have a little problem and need to be exchanged.

I am going to try an exchange of hardware and see if it makes a difference. Now that I have seen a minute or tw of true 3D in the aquarium and a couple of games, I don't know how I ever played them without these things!!!

[Jim Sachs]

I think what's happening here might be caused by a bit of insanity which Microsoft put into Win2000/XP. Previously, the OS kept track of which buffer was being displayed, the front or back buffer. For no good reason at all, this was removed, destroying my ability to bring up requesters on top of the main screen (half the time they would appear on the wrong buffer underneath the main screen, making them invisible).

3D glasses rely on the ability to know which buffer was which for left-eye/right-eye display. All you can do now is guess which buffer you are writing to, paint a frame, and tell the OS to switch buffers. Then you assume that it actually did switch buffers and start painting to the other one, but this is not a fool-proof assumption. If they didn't get switched, then the left and right eyes would get reversed, maybe for a frame or two, maybe for a long period.

I haven't had a chance to play with DX9 yet, but I'm hoping that it fixed this problem.

[Jav400]

Jim,

You might want to check out the forum I posted the link for above. It is solely about 3D and so on. They seem to be fairly heavy into that aspect of anything. There are discussions about everything from shutter glasses to VR gear. Under the General 3D discussions section there are posts about DX~ and it's lack of support for anything in the stereo realm, and how they go about getting things to work. You might find some info that would help you in efforts to make everything in your SS 3D applicable. Then again you might not, but extra information can't hurt.

[Socrates]

Does what Jim is talking about have to do with the painting of the CRT, or the darkening of the glasses. Throughtout this, the CRT gets split without any trouble. The problem I have is with the glasses only darkening for short periods of time and then cutting out. What is on the screen itself is no problem at all.

[Jim Sachs]

Jav - Thanks, I'll check it out.

Soc - We are probably talking about 2 different problems. I have 3 brands of 3D glasses, all of which work fine with Win98. Two of them will sort of work with Win2000/XP, but they can't decide which eye is right or left. It may go for 10 seconds outputting perfect stereo, then switch eyes for a few seconds, then jitter between the two positions. One system came with a manual switch for reversing right/left, so I can always switch it back when it flips, but it's very annoying.

[hpman77]

I haver Terminator H3D lcd shutter glasses (wireless) and they work fine under w98, but there's no driver working fine on Wxp. Nvidia's driver won't support those models, as it seems to support only the models you actually have to switch them on/off.
(at least, that's what I've found anywhere).

I also get those 3d-effects for a couple seconds, then nothing, then another couple of seconds... it's annoying, so my great shutter glasses are now resting on a drawer darn!

[Socrates]

Do they make kinds that you can turn on your self?

Because that would definitely solve the problem.

[Socrates]

I just played an hour of Age of Mythology in full 3D with no problems at all.

Not sure why it worked.

As soon as I was miserably defeated, I fired up the Aquarium, and poof the glasses stopped working.

Oh well.

[Jim Sachs]

Were you using the same exact video settings for the two programs (bit depth, refresh rate, screen size)? Which operating system and version of DirectX are you running?

[Socrates]

I don't think there's much to read into it.

This is the first time any program ran with the lenses on for more than 3 minutes. I think it was just a fluke.
I am running the Aquarium in 1152x864 at 16bit.

I usually run games in 32 bit 1024x768.

I run XP with DX 9, and the 41.09 Nvidia driver.

I just ran AoM again and got on/off lenses again.

[Franklin J. Flocks]

To view the fish stereoscopically, you need a video card
with nvidia chips. nvidia doesn't have stereo support
for their latest drivers (version 41.09) - but you can still download
version 30.87 from www.nvidia.com They support XP as
well as Windows 98 and ME - and they have both an
anaglyph (red-blue) setting as well as setting for page flipping.
They work great in anaglyph and should work fine in page flipping.
- But I have had the same problems that others have had with
MSI stereo glasses - (See post above) -

[Jav400]

Franklin,

They might work great if you are using drivers in the 30.xx series, but with the latest drivers you get bupkess. I have been watching the nVidia site for some time now hopeing that they will update the stereo drivers to work with the 41.xx series which works very well for me so far, and I don't want to change them back. I used the wicked 3D drivers, before I reformated and changed everything, but it's so smooth running now changes are just not worth it at this point. So here I sit waiting.

PS. Welcome to the forum, and in addition, you don't need to worry about cutting off your lines to match the text box. They will automaticially space and wrap themselves so that your text will cover the whole area.

[Franklin J. Flocks]

I just purchased some wireless Elsa Revelator glasses and had pretty much the same problem as with the MSI glasses - They blink then stop - But today I had great sucess - using Winx3d and VRCaddyPro - Winx3D is free, and you can download a trial version of VRCaddyPro - VRCaddyPro is for Win 98 and ME and VRCaddyXP, which also can be downloaded in a trial version is for XP - Go to google to get the URL. - You can use the latest nvidia drivers for your card with this software - There is no need to install the nvidia stereo drivers. - The only problem I have had was that I had to turn my glasses upside down to get the left right orientation correct - the software hot key to shift left right did not work with the aquarium. I am using win98SE and an Arcade FX Geforce 4 MX400-8X video card.

[Jim Sachs]

Thanks for the info -- I'll give it a try.