eDimensional 3D glasses?

[ChrisOquist]

Has anyone ever used them? When I first heard of them I found it almost laughable, but was surprised to read almost all very positive and enthusiastic reviews - users and articles calling them "excellent" or "incredible." Now they are available for LCDs so I might get one - has anyone used them? If so, could you tell me about the effect the drivers have on framerates, how "worth it" the added effects of speed, distance, and three-dimensions are, and whether or not they give you a headache..

Thanks! It seems really cool I'm just still a bit aprehensive - after all, they do cost $100..



Chris

[lalex]

OK. Here it goes.

I bought the glasses for using them with the LCD monitor, after they announced that they now support LCD.

Got the glasses, installed the latest Nvidia drivers + stereo (61.77). Tested them and NOTHING worked. One email away was the answer - you need to use their own ED SPECIAL drivers (beta?). OK downloaded the special driver and things started to get interesting.

I had to make a lot of permutations (I would say convolutions) to get them work at all. First they do not kick in as soon as you load the intended software. I had to turn them on "manually" using their own "testing utility". Second, I managed to activate only two of the four games. Here is the short list:

1. Comanche 4 - sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. When it works, I have to start the glasses "manually".
2. Virtual Sailor - does not work at all. It freezes the computer and I have to do a hard reset. Sometimes I have to even shut down the PC as the graphic card stays in the "interleave" mode. Don't ask!
3. Firestarter (Doom-like). "Works" like Comanche 4 above.
4. FS2004. Does not freeze or anythung but... it displays a black screen. No scenery, no cockpit, nothing! Menus are functional and everything seems OK, but no simulation graphics - nothing!

WHEN and IF it works the 3D effect is stunning - and no flicker at 75Hz refresh rate. That's good!. Saying that,  it's still not ideal since it uses interleave mode for the LCD display and as it is usual with this technology (half the screen active at one time + polarizing light) you get exactly half the usual brightness, so you really must play in the dark to see well - or increase the screen brightness and play with the Gamma. That's hardly a solution if you do other things on the same PC beside gaming.

The trouble is that for me it does not work at all - I bought it primarily for FS2004 and Virtual Sailor and both fail.

What's more annoying is that Comanche 4, Virtual Saior and FS2004 are officially supported. And even more annoying than that is that after I explained them the problems in much detail - even more than in this post - they went on radio silence. No support, no suggestions, nothing! Not even a "we got your mail and we're scrambling for a solution" email!

Bottom line -  for me it's a lousy product with a lousy support. Can you tell that my  frustration gauges are off-scale?  >:( :-/

In case anybody wonders, my PC system is:

AMD 64 3500+
Gigabyte K8NS Ultra
512 MB RAM
Gainward GEForce 6800, 128MB, AGPx8
Win XP Pro SP1
Nvidia driver 61.76 (went back one generation)

Sincerely,
Al

[Jared]

Well I don't have the LCD version, but I do have the standard ones that I bought about a year ago.  

I can make them work on my monitor, but the quality sucks.... not because of the glasses, but because the monitor that I'm running doesn't support refresh rates high enough to get it "flicker-free".

Recently tried them on a friends monitor though without any problem.  Just waiting for some extra cash, or a bad monitor so that I can sue mine again.. :-)

[TacitBlue]

My "dream" computer would use several monitors positioned around the chair for multiple views and so forth. I always wondered if those glasses would work on more than one monitor. But I doubt it, since all the monitors would have to refresh at the same rate and same time exactly.

[Jared]

hmm...

Have you considered a projector with wrap around view?

the full-image would be projected exactly the same all full 180* or whatever the projector would take.. :-)

[lalex]

OK - here are some updates:

Somehow ED support woke up and sent me new drivers. The situation has improved but not too much. FS2004 still has problems which makes ED Glasses unusable. So does Freelancer (tried that too). There seems to be a problem with the bottom half of the screen - it flashes randomly in FS2004. In Freelancer it does not show 2D items in the upper part of the screen (cockpit, cursor, etc) disappear - it's strange. The 3D effect in Freelance is quite good - if only the screen could be brighter, and that annoying bug fixed!

Virtual Sailor is much better now - it does not lock but the 3D effect is not "quite there". Something to be expected from a generic 2D->3D "converter" that ED uses. Sometimes this simply does not work unless the game is designed specifically for the glasses.

ED are working on fixes. What worries me is the FS2004 thing. The glasses seem perfect for flight simmers but they do not work with the most popular FS.

I must emphasize that this is true regarding the LCD version. I don't know how the CRT version fares - and I don't intend to ge back to CRT to test that.

Regarding some ideas on this thread: multi monitor works with FS2004 BUT the glasses won't support a multi-monitor setup. That's because they have an adaptor which comes between the LCD/CRT screen and the VGA card. The glasses are directly connected to that device - for the wired version. In the wireless version, an IR transmitter conects to thebox and the glasses themselves have self-contained IR receiver + battery.

Anyway, you cannot connect more than one monitor to that adaptor. Why do the glasses need that adaptor in the first place? Well, that box will synchronize the glasses LC "lenses" with the L, R interlaced views so that each LC shows only the image intended for it. There is no way that it can be done without that sync box, and I imagine that it does other things too.

Actually I asked them this very question before buying. The only way that can be done is to have a box with multiple VGA/monitor I/O, but I have no idea whether they plan to support that configuration or not. The same is true of course for a multi-projector setup - same problem, same answer, different display device :-)

OK - so that's it for now. I'm waiting for the next driver sw to see if they fixed that annoying bottom screen flicker in FS2004.

Until then, have fun,
Al