Sorry if someone already posted something like this (the system won't let me search for 3d...)
Completely bored this weekend, I got on one of those tangent link tracks and eventually ended up on this site that offers a "3d experience" for a crt monitor. Eventually, this got me thinking, and I realized that it should be reasonable to make a 3d projection system.
NVidia currently has driver support for stereoscopic imaging for three d applications. Looking at edimensional's site (www.edimensional.com) it appears that these drivers work for 99% of the 3d games out there.
It really wouldn't be that hard to make the system, I guess. All you need is two projection systems, polarized at perpendicular angles, and then you need those special polarized glasses at the movie theaters.
The only hangup is how to get the signal coming out of the graphics card seperated into two different signals... but that's been done already.
Thoughts anyone?
Completely bored this weekend, I got on one of those tangent link tracks and eventually ended up on this site that offers a "3d experience" for a crt monitor. Eventually, this got me thinking, and I realized that it should be reasonable to make a 3d projection system.
NVidia currently has driver support for stereoscopic imaging for three d applications. Looking at edimensional's site (www.edimensional.com) it appears that these drivers work for 99% of the 3d games out there.
It really wouldn't be that hard to make the system, I guess. All you need is two projection systems, polarized at perpendicular angles, and then you need those special polarized glasses at the movie theaters.
The only hangup is how to get the signal coming out of the graphics card seperated into two different signals... but that's been done already.
Thoughts anyone?
Update
Following up to my previous post, it turns out that vrex(www.vrex.com) has a converter box that takes a sterescopically encoded signal and converts it into two seperate streams. The amazingly low price for this box (the low end) is a mere $9,995. At that price, by not buying, you'd lose money. Unfortunately, to my knowledge they are the only makers of such a converter, so my idea is put on hold. 🙁
Following up to my previous post, it turns out that vrex(www.vrex.com) has a converter box that takes a sterescopically encoded signal and converts it into two seperate streams. The amazingly low price for this box (the low end) is a mere $9,995. At that price, by not buying, you'd lose money. Unfortunately, to my knowledge they are the only makers of such a converter, so my idea is put on hold. 🙁
Heh
I'm sure no one really cares, but since this thread got bumped up from that last link. Thanks for the link btw.
After just being in college, I've learned that the thing I'm trying to make is called a CAVE (don't remember what it stands for.) Last week I went on a tour of the university's cave system. Its a neat little 3d conceptualizing thing, basically it has 2 10x10ft square walls and 10x10 ft floor. Each wall/floor had a CRT projector assigned to it. Each CRT projector was hooked up to a Intel Box (our school uses Intel Boxes, everyone else uses SGI workstations) and synchronized over a network, can represent three dimensional things like you're actually there. I imagine that if it was a complete system with four walls and a ceiling and a floor it would have been quite impressive, but this thing was just ok. Anyway, the thing that makes it close to what I'm talking about is that it uses the same technology in the shutter glasses, so it produces a 3d image.
I talked to the guy in charge and he said that DLP and LCD projectors are very close, but aren't practical yet for CAVE uses. I don't really believe him because the cost of the three CRT projectors were about a quarter of a million, and that just seems hefty. And it was slow.
Anyway Going.
Paza
I'm sure no one really cares, but since this thread got bumped up from that last link. Thanks for the link btw.
After just being in college, I've learned that the thing I'm trying to make is called a CAVE (don't remember what it stands for.) Last week I went on a tour of the university's cave system. Its a neat little 3d conceptualizing thing, basically it has 2 10x10ft square walls and 10x10 ft floor. Each wall/floor had a CRT projector assigned to it. Each CRT projector was hooked up to a Intel Box (our school uses Intel Boxes, everyone else uses SGI workstations) and synchronized over a network, can represent three dimensional things like you're actually there. I imagine that if it was a complete system with four walls and a ceiling and a floor it would have been quite impressive, but this thing was just ok. Anyway, the thing that makes it close to what I'm talking about is that it uses the same technology in the shutter glasses, so it produces a 3d image.
I talked to the guy in charge and he said that DLP and LCD projectors are very close, but aren't practical yet for CAVE uses. I don't really believe him because the cost of the three CRT projectors were about a quarter of a million, and that just seems hefty. And it was slow.
Anyway Going.
Paza
Another update + more info
I have some time to explain what the hell I'm talking about, although I don't really plan on actively researching this anymore.
I'll just elaborate to those who don't know about this technology (I didn't know about it till about a month ago when I clicked on an ad). It turns out this technology has been in existance for quite some time. Remember those old cheesy red and blue films that you had to wear those special glasses to get a picture that "jumps out at you"? This is basically the same thing. It allows you to see images in 3d.
The way that your eyes perceive depth is that each eye sees an image, which is slightly different than the image seen in the other eye. The amount that an object is offset in the other eye suggests its closeness to the person. Now for regular CRT monitors and LCD, CRT, and DLP projectors, the eye perceives basically the same image, nothing is offset. So you perceive it as flat (which it is).
Now the idea is to 'trick' your eyes into seeing two different images. The two different technologies I'll talk about is with polarizers and with shutter glasses (there are some other things like headsets, but I won't go into those).
The inexpensive technology is shutter glasses. Shutter glasses work by basically 'turning on and off" each eye very rapidly by putting a shutter in front of it, working in conjunction with the monitor, so when the left shutter is on, the monitor displays the image for the right eye, and when the right shutter is on, the monitor displays the image for the left eye. In this way the shutter glasses artificially creates an offset, making an imaginary depth. Right now you can buy these glasses on various sites, the link provided by that other dude has a lot of good reviews on them. (the main site I was looking at was e-dimensional.com) and they work with your good old fashioned CRT monitors. However, the main problem with this technology considering projectors is that because it the screen is rapidly switching between what the left and right eye should see, it only works with CRT projectors. (DLP and LCD cannot change their image fast enough).
Now the much more expensive technology which I mention in above post uses polarizers. Instead of switching between what the left and right eye should see, you have two projectors, one for the left eye, and one for the right. This is more similar to the red/blue, red/green set ups with the monocolor 3d films. For the red/blue set up, the red color filter in front of one eye blocks out all the incoming red light, so you can only see the blue light; for the blue color filter the same thing, so red light comes through. Now in this updated setup, we use polarizers instead of color filters. If we polarize each projector at ninety degrees to each other, we can have glasses which block out one projector for each eye. This blocking out lets the correctly polarized image come through to the appropriate eye. I remember seeing something like this when I was a kid visiting disney world (Some mike jackson video). This technology should work for DLP, CRT, and LCD Monitors.
It should be noted that LCD Monitors are inherently polarized, so polarizing them again must be done carefully.
Ok..... Sorry to have completely bored/confused anyone who's still with me, but there's more! How, you may ask, do you get 2 different views for the eyes in the first place?
Nvidia has provided us with stereoscopic drivers. Anything that uses Direct3d or OpenGL to display 3d images should be able to use Nvidia's stereoscopic drivers to get two different pictures for each eye. Note that these WILL ONLY WORK WITH 3D APPLICATIONS. They will not magically turn your DVD's into something 3d(Although e-dimensional has claimed to have produced a technology that does this :-/).
However there is a problem if you wish to use these without shutter glasses: the signal is encoded to flip back and forth between the left and right eye, and it is difficult two seperate both into two different signals. V-rex has introduced a technology which takes the signal and translates it into two different vga signals for projectors, however as mentioned before, it is Prohibitively expensive.
I recently e-mailed N-Vidia to see if it was possible to have it directly output its two different sources out through the card (as there are two vga outs on my card). I have yet to get a response.
On a completely different note, I finally Got My LCD system working. Its an OHP + LCD (Sharp QA-1100). and its humming along nicely.
Sorry for the longwinded post, but I just wanted to dump everything I knew down somewhere.
Paza
I have some time to explain what the hell I'm talking about, although I don't really plan on actively researching this anymore.
I'll just elaborate to those who don't know about this technology (I didn't know about it till about a month ago when I clicked on an ad). It turns out this technology has been in existance for quite some time. Remember those old cheesy red and blue films that you had to wear those special glasses to get a picture that "jumps out at you"? This is basically the same thing. It allows you to see images in 3d.
The way that your eyes perceive depth is that each eye sees an image, which is slightly different than the image seen in the other eye. The amount that an object is offset in the other eye suggests its closeness to the person. Now for regular CRT monitors and LCD, CRT, and DLP projectors, the eye perceives basically the same image, nothing is offset. So you perceive it as flat (which it is).
Now the idea is to 'trick' your eyes into seeing two different images. The two different technologies I'll talk about is with polarizers and with shutter glasses (there are some other things like headsets, but I won't go into those).
The inexpensive technology is shutter glasses. Shutter glasses work by basically 'turning on and off" each eye very rapidly by putting a shutter in front of it, working in conjunction with the monitor, so when the left shutter is on, the monitor displays the image for the right eye, and when the right shutter is on, the monitor displays the image for the left eye. In this way the shutter glasses artificially creates an offset, making an imaginary depth. Right now you can buy these glasses on various sites, the link provided by that other dude has a lot of good reviews on them. (the main site I was looking at was e-dimensional.com) and they work with your good old fashioned CRT monitors. However, the main problem with this technology considering projectors is that because it the screen is rapidly switching between what the left and right eye should see, it only works with CRT projectors. (DLP and LCD cannot change their image fast enough).
Now the much more expensive technology which I mention in above post uses polarizers. Instead of switching between what the left and right eye should see, you have two projectors, one for the left eye, and one for the right. This is more similar to the red/blue, red/green set ups with the monocolor 3d films. For the red/blue set up, the red color filter in front of one eye blocks out all the incoming red light, so you can only see the blue light; for the blue color filter the same thing, so red light comes through. Now in this updated setup, we use polarizers instead of color filters. If we polarize each projector at ninety degrees to each other, we can have glasses which block out one projector for each eye. This blocking out lets the correctly polarized image come through to the appropriate eye. I remember seeing something like this when I was a kid visiting disney world (Some mike jackson video). This technology should work for DLP, CRT, and LCD Monitors.
It should be noted that LCD Monitors are inherently polarized, so polarizing them again must be done carefully.
Ok..... Sorry to have completely bored/confused anyone who's still with me, but there's more! How, you may ask, do you get 2 different views for the eyes in the first place?
Nvidia has provided us with stereoscopic drivers. Anything that uses Direct3d or OpenGL to display 3d images should be able to use Nvidia's stereoscopic drivers to get two different pictures for each eye. Note that these WILL ONLY WORK WITH 3D APPLICATIONS. They will not magically turn your DVD's into something 3d(Although e-dimensional has claimed to have produced a technology that does this :-/).
However there is a problem if you wish to use these without shutter glasses: the signal is encoded to flip back and forth between the left and right eye, and it is difficult two seperate both into two different signals. V-rex has introduced a technology which takes the signal and translates it into two different vga signals for projectors, however as mentioned before, it is Prohibitively expensive.
I recently e-mailed N-Vidia to see if it was possible to have it directly output its two different sources out through the card (as there are two vga outs on my card). I have yet to get a response.
On a completely different note, I finally Got My LCD system working. Its an OHP + LCD (Sharp QA-1100). and its humming along nicely.
Sorry for the longwinded post, but I just wanted to dump everything I knew down somewhere.
Paza
Sound interesting. I have seen Michael Jackson's "Captain Eo" at Disneyland. They replaced it w/ "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" which is the same thing. There's also a Muppet 3D one in the California Adventur Park. Anyways...
The device that splits the signals sounds complicated and is probably expensive for a reason. It's taking the analog signals and splitting them "after the fact". It would seem that using software to send two different signals to two different video cards would be a much simpler process. I wouldn't know the first thing about writing the software (or any software for that matter). I'd imagine that someone with programming skills who's familiar with the way the signals are seperated could acomplish something. It'd just be a matter of hacking into the Nvidia drivers to see how the signals are split. Then writing a driver that sent the signals to two seperate video cards (or a dual display video card like yours). Maybe hacking into whatever driver is used for Windows dual desktop would help. I dunno, this isn't my area, but in theory it sounds like it could be done.
The device that splits the signals sounds complicated and is probably expensive for a reason. It's taking the analog signals and splitting them "after the fact". It would seem that using software to send two different signals to two different video cards would be a much simpler process. I wouldn't know the first thing about writing the software (or any software for that matter). I'd imagine that someone with programming skills who's familiar with the way the signals are seperated could acomplish something. It'd just be a matter of hacking into the Nvidia drivers to see how the signals are split. Then writing a driver that sent the signals to two seperate video cards (or a dual display video card like yours). Maybe hacking into whatever driver is used for Windows dual desktop would help. I dunno, this isn't my area, but in theory it sounds like it could be done.
Actually...
Hey, I just remembered on my tour in the CAVE, that for each wall was projected by a different computer... they all ran together through a network
Now if I'm not mistaken, each wall/floor was just the same data looked at a different angle. (specifically on each of the axis). Instead of having the angles be so severe as being a different axis, and instead they are at slight angles, imitating the way the eyes work, that has potential. A plus is that all the software used is freeware. A downside is that the software is only compatible with VRML models (i.e. Nothing) and you need a seperate workstation for the other projector. oy. But that is a start and is way cheaper than a $10,000 converter.
And Lifter: yeah, I've been tossing that idea back and forth in my head for quite some time. I'm not extremely familiar with 3d programming very much (I did a lil), but I'm pretty sure you have to specify a certain graphics card to be the "main" card, and because of this one monitor has to be the "main" monitor. I don't know how this works or how it can be hacked, but when I'm bored enough again I'll look into it. Those who are interested and/or masochistic, I suggest going to slashdot.org and scouring info on Cave. (sorry if it turns out to be a waste of time).
- Paza
Hey, I just remembered on my tour in the CAVE, that for each wall was projected by a different computer... they all ran together through a network
Now if I'm not mistaken, each wall/floor was just the same data looked at a different angle. (specifically on each of the axis). Instead of having the angles be so severe as being a different axis, and instead they are at slight angles, imitating the way the eyes work, that has potential. A plus is that all the software used is freeware. A downside is that the software is only compatible with VRML models (i.e. Nothing) and you need a seperate workstation for the other projector. oy. But that is a start and is way cheaper than a $10,000 converter.
And Lifter: yeah, I've been tossing that idea back and forth in my head for quite some time. I'm not extremely familiar with 3d programming very much (I did a lil), but I'm pretty sure you have to specify a certain graphics card to be the "main" card, and because of this one monitor has to be the "main" monitor. I don't know how this works or how it can be hacked, but when I'm bored enough again I'll look into it. Those who are interested and/or masochistic, I suggest going to slashdot.org and scouring info on Cave. (sorry if it turns out to be a waste of time).
- Paza
With two graphics cards or a dual moniter graphics card, there's primary and secondary displays. It doesn't seem like using two computers would be necesary.
just as an update, out of boredom I've done some more searches, and it seems it is possible to have a video card output the two stereoscopic images through both monitor out ports. Although I've only seen it in reference to nVidia quadro workstation cards and geowalls, I'm sure there could still be some applications to regular GeForce's and homebrew projection systems.
I'll probably post sometime for another update. So far I've just been doing google searches for "quad buffered stereo mode" with "nview".
- Paza
update: http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/howto/geowall/1.0.1/GW-Book.pdf pretty much describes how to do it...
I'd love to try it, except I don't have two projection systems... looks fun though. I think it should work on the GeForce4 Ti cards, although the tutorial isn't too specific (should definitly work on the GeForce 4600)...
fun notes about it is that it uses the nvidia driver, which means it should work with practically every 3d game on the market. Something is eerily awesome about playing counterstrike on a 150" screen in 3d...
please if anyone tries this, post some picks and or updates
I'll probably post sometime for another update. So far I've just been doing google searches for "quad buffered stereo mode" with "nview".
- Paza
update: http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/howto/geowall/1.0.1/GW-Book.pdf pretty much describes how to do it...
I'd love to try it, except I don't have two projection systems... looks fun though. I think it should work on the GeForce4 Ti cards, although the tutorial isn't too specific (should definitly work on the GeForce 4600)...
fun notes about it is that it uses the nvidia driver, which means it should work with practically every 3d game on the market. Something is eerily awesome about playing counterstrike on a 150" screen in 3d...
please if anyone tries this, post some picks and or updates
eDimensional £D and 'The Cave'
http://forums.stereovision.net/viewtopic.php?topic=1059&forum=2&start=15
I also have a reply from Nathan there offering to test on ny homebrew set up.....a stripped down Benq on a OHP but beta testing on projectors has not started yet.
Check out
http://planetjeff.net/ut/CaveUT.html
http://www.stereo3d.com/discus/messages/21/2465.html?1081319404
for more gaming excitment.
Combine with the right drivers and whooooh...
Immersive VR here we come.
http://forums.stereovision.net/viewtopic.php?topic=1059&forum=2&start=15
I also have a reply from Nathan there offering to test on ny homebrew set up.....a stripped down Benq on a OHP but beta testing on projectors has not started yet.
Check out
http://planetjeff.net/ut/CaveUT.html
http://www.stereo3d.com/discus/messages/21/2465.html?1081319404
for more gaming excitment.
Combine with the right drivers and whooooh...
Immersive VR here we come.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.