Stereoscopic 3d With Dual Projectors, For Gaming.

[nubie]

I am going to be trying to get a 3D digital projection set-up in my room. 84" 16:9 screen with 2x lumenlab.com eVo Projectors and polarizing filters and glasses.

The deal is that you can have depth perception in games (ooh, my favorite: driving sims!) with full color at 80" diagonal.

http://www.lumenlab.com/ for the projectors. Warranty for a year including the bulb and they only cost $30 anyway. 6,000 hour bulb life .

http://www.berezin.com/3d/3dglasses.htm#Polarized for the polarizers and glasses.

Video card is a Geforce 7900GS with 0.25 over-volt and overclock to 650mhz. Zalman Cu/Alu 700 with ramsinks Stable and cool.

VGA will leave the card from 2 ports, the view for each eye will be sent to a different projector, I will have polarizers over the lenses and they will offset the picture 45 degrees from vertical, left and right. If you wear the glasses you should see the 3D effect, it should be pretty cool.

Has anyone done this? What do you think? Doom3(D) anyone?

 

[sand_man]

I am going to be trying to get a 3D digital projection set-up in my room. 84" 16:9 screen with 2x lumenlab.com eVo Projectors and polarizing filters and glasses.

The deal is that you can have depth perception in games (ooh, my favorite: driving sims!) with full color at 80" diagonal.

http://www.lumenlab.com/ for the projectors. Warranty for a year including the bulb and they only cost $30 anyway. 6,000 hour bulb life .

http://www.berezin.com/3d/3dglasses.htm#Polarized for the polarizers and glasses.

Video card is a Geforce 7900GS with 0.25 over-volt and overclock to 650mhz. Zalman Cu/Alu 700 with ramsinks Stable and cool.

VGA will leave the card from 2 ports, the view for each eye will be sent to a different projector, I will have polarizers over the lenses and they will offset the picture 45 degrees from vertical, left and right. If you wear the glasses you should see the 3D effect, it should be pretty cool.

Has anyone done this? What do you think? Doom3(D) anyone?

You have too much time and money on your hands.

 

[PokeParadox]

What he said.
Give me your money!

Anyway great idea, let us know the results!

 

[Fishbong]

So lets see if i got this right:

Two projectors are projecting their image at the same spot, but you can only see one projection with each eye due to the glasses. And you have some special software/driver running on your comp that gives out a different image for each one. Is that how it works?
Must be hella awesome to have your games in real 3D, but i´d take some projectors with higher resolution. If i had the money.

 

[Jarska333]

I tried nVidia's 3D drivers with plain old blue-red glasses. Didn't work too well. I'd wager shutter glasses might work better.

 

[sam fisher]

I tried nVidia's 3D drivers with plain old blue-red glasses. Didn't work too well. I'd wager shutter glasses might work better.

Polarised glasses aren't shutters. They haev tiny little grids that only allow light waves along a single plane to enter. That way you can control which light goes into each eye. Quite cool actually.

 

[Steve-O]

I have 3D Shutter Glasses and they work great and make it feel like things are comming out of the screen

have you been to the 3D cinema at Disney Land Paris?? it kicks ass

 

[efegea]

I'm going to make my own DIY projector, perhaps I should make two

But it seems that on linux with nvidia drivers you only can activate the stereo on quadro cards, at least that's what I read on the readme :huh:

 

[charlieb]

Has anyone done this? What do you think? Doom3(D) anyone?

I remember reading about this idea quite a while ago and one of the big issues with it is that modern projection screens are designed to scatter the light that hits it because the image won't get bright reflection spots. The problem with this is that it will disrupt the polarisation of your two projected images. Apparently old style silver screens don't have such an issue with this. I don't know if a plain white wall would suffer from this, maybe it would depend on the type of paint. Just something to bear in mind.

Charlieb

 

[Fishbong]

Hm, that could turn out to be quite an issue. In the worst case you would barely see anything because the reflection surface breaks the polarisation. Have you heard of anyone doing a similar project? I wouldn´t spend all that money without knowing if it works...

Another question: Does this work with every 3D game? The old ELSA shutterglasses did only work with a handfull of games.

 

[charlieb]

I can't find the original link, it was like 2-3 yrs ago. I would guess that you could do a simple test with a flashlight and a 2 pieces of polarizing material.
First check that I'm not full of it by putting one piece of polarizer over the light and rotating the other in front of your eyes to see how well it blocks the light.
Then test the screen: shine polarized light on the screen and rotate the eye piece to see if it still/to what extent it blocks the light. You could try other screen materials like a gloss painted wall, matte walls and maybe different brands of projection screens. I'm sure if you were to find the right nerd at an office supply store they would let you compare some different brands of screen.

Charlie

 

[Vimacs]

I read a article sometime ago on how to build a good projection screen, basicialy they just use a wood panel with linen over it and paint it white....

 

[ste_167]

A superb project, nubie, and not over-expensive for some hopefully amazing results.

I love going to see IMAX 3d-films! Does anyone know if shutterglasses would work with a projector?

 

[nubie]

You have too much time and money on your hands.

Not anymore Dead broke.

And you have some special software/driver running on your comp that gives out a different image for each one. Is that how it works?
Must be hella awesome to have your games in real 3D, but i´d take some projectors with higher resolution. If i had the money.

Not "really" special, Nvidia has had the drivers for years. Since each eye can see a 800x640 it winds up like 1600x480 resolution . Less pixels means the video card won't get bogged down doing a double-render. Until the 8800/8600 series from nvidia get the 3d drivers (Damn @!#$^&* Vista, 2 million lines of code for 4 drivers 32-b 64-b and DX10 and DX9, no resources to do 3D drivers) you need an expensive 512mb card with 1.x Ghz ram and that is a 7900GT/GTX 7950GTX. The 8 series do more work and a $179 8600 Ultra with 512MB of ram and 64 stream processors @500mhz will murder 7 series in benchmarks, on the leaked photo there isn't even a PCIe power cable :blink: , so it draws under 45 watts? Impressive.

I tried nVidia's 3D drivers with plain old blue-red glasses. Didn't work too well. I'd wager shutter glasses might work better.

?? Do you mean you saw ghosts? I always see the "blue" bleeding through my red lens. I expect it is because my monitor is turning out true blue and it has some red to it, or my glasses are crap. I tried shutter glasses. ICK. They suck, the timing gets out of sync and the 3D reverses all the time, and the flickering, not good.

have you been to the 3D cinema at Disney Land Paris?? it kicks ass

Been to Disney Land CA once when I was like 5 or 6, didn't do anything.

I'm going to make my own DIY projector, perhaps I should make two

But it seems that on linux with nvidia drivers you only can activate the stereo on quadro cards, at least that's what I read on the readme :huh:

Wow, that is sucky, maybe the guys who hack the drivers have a way to fool the linux drivers into thinking your card is a quadro . It is always the same silicon. The 440mx is faster at autocad than the ti4200, it is the drivers and the support for the "autocad" rendering in the core. It is amazing how stunted the 4 ti series was, didn't even have a proper movie accelerator or TV-Out integrated into the chip like the MX series.

I remember reading about this idea quite a while ago and one of the big issues with it is that modern projection screens are designed to scatter the light that hits it because the image won't get bright reflection spots. The problem with this is that it will disrupt the polarisation of your two projected images. Apparently old style silver screens don't have such an issue with this. I don't know if a plain white wall would suffer from this, maybe it would depend on the type of paint. Just something to bear in mind.

Thanks, I found that out, there is a guy with 2x 19" DIY Projectors in South America and he is using his wall painted silver. I guess I am going to find some silver paint and something to paint and hang on the wall.

Hm, that could turn out to be quite an issue. In the worst case you would barely see anything because the reflection surface breaks the polarisation. Have you heard of anyone doing a similar project? I wouldn´t spend all that money without knowing if it works...

Another question: Does this work with every 3D game? The old ELSA shutterglasses did only work with a handfull of games.

Not every 3D game, but like 90% of them. NFS Carbon, Evolution GT, Oblivion (kooky water effects and obviously you need a Monster card, 7900gs OC ). If it doesn't so the 3D, I still have 2x projectors. I can game in 1600x480 and have a really wide-screen picture 12'x4'. Try D1X-Rebirth on your PC, if you edit the aspect ratio and the resolution it will run at 3072x768 (3 monitors full-screen), if I have projectors then I can stay on one video card and play more demanding games really big because there won't be a gap between the monitor screens. The beauty of super-wide-aspect games is that people aren't sneaking up on you because you now have peripheral vision.

Then test the screen: shine polarized light on the screen and rotate the eye piece to see if it still/to what extent it blocks the light. You could try other screen materials like a gloss painted wall, matte walls and maybe different brands of projection screens.

Silver screen, I just am not quite sure how to buy ($xxx) or make ($xx) it, and haven't a huge bdget right now :lol:.

I read a article sometime ago on how to build a good projection screen, basicialy they just use a wood panel with linen over it and paint it white....

Yep, but silver for the polarization. And there is an anti-shine additive to keep down the hot-spots you can add to the paint. Maybe I should paint the back of my commercial screen silver? Like a 2-in one screen.

A superb project, nubie, and not over-expensive for some hopefully amazing results.

I love going to see IMAX 3d-films! Does anyone know if shutterglasses would work with a projector?

Yes and no. There are some DLP (~$1200) Projectors that go at 140hz and can be shutter-glassed. But for that price you can get 2x cheaper DLP Projectors and don't need the expensive shutter-glasses. And you will have 2 projectors.

I have never seen an Imax movie , but I did get 2 of their DVD's from netflix once, very nice stuff. I didn't watch the one on space because Tom Cruise narrated it and he gives me crawling skin (OT I know, but he can literally drain your intellect, you get stupider and stupider as you listen, me I get filled with seething rage, he ruined Mission Impossible, but I read the book like 4 times before I saw the movie, knowing what emotions he was SUPPOSED to be displaying really shows up how bad of an actor he is).

 

[Steve-O]

have you been to the 3D cinema at Disney Land Paris?? it kicks ass

Been to Disney Land CA once when I was like 5 or 6, didn't do anything.


Well it must not have been setup properly .. The one in Paris was Amazing with snakes and things comming out the screen and right up to you (I was at the back and I saw a plane flying from the front of the theater right upto my face etc... )

 

[andius]

Honey I shrunk the kids 3d ride? Is that the one your talking about, if so, yeah that was good, when the snake gets loose and there is some air thing that blows on your legs like a snake is going by...ahhh memories B)

 

[nubie]

I found a silver screen on eBay for $142 total with shipping and everything.

The screen needs to be silver to reflect the light and maintain the polarization.

Update on LCD panels, they are polarized at 45 degrees, and then reverse 45 degrees on the back side.

The upshot is that you need to put one one of the projectors through a mirror to get the polarized light to switch for the other eye. There is a way to do it that involves stripping the existing Polarizers off of the LCD panels, but I am not that hard-core yet. Plus a front-surface mirror (shiny on the surface, doesn't go through the glass, no ghost from the glass that way) is only like $20, and high-quality polarizer material is $75.

So it is all shaping up great. The screen I bought is a new 70x70 inch unit, that will allow me 80 inches diagonal at a 15:9 screen aspect ratio (800x480 pixels).

Imagine your favorite video game on an 80 inch screen that looks like it is right there!! I really want to get all of this stuff together and try it out. The bonus is that you can let a ton of people watch the thing with $1 paper glasses and they can all see how cool it is.

I think there is also software to convert DVD's to 3D , that might be really fun.

 

[ste_167]

If the Wii continues to be successful, I wonder if there'll be spin off controllers for the PC? You'd then have the closest thing to the fabled 'virtual reality'! When do you think you'll have all the equipment and begin setting it up?

 

[efegea]

If the Wii continues to be successful, I wonder if there'll be spin off controllers for the PC? You'd then have the closest thing to the fabled 'virtual reality'! When do you think you'll have all the equipment and begin setting it up?

You can use the wiimote on the pc. Well, you can use it also on the GP2X now

 

[nubie]

If the Wii continues to be successful, I wonder if there'll be spin off controllers for the PC? You'd then have the closest thing to the fabled 'virtual reality'! When do you think you'll have all the equipment and begin setting it up?

You can use the wiimote on the pc. Well, you can use it also on the GP2X now

I know, I would have to go buy a Wiimote, and then I would have to buy a Bluetooth, and then and then.

I think it would be awesome to control Descent with a 6 degrees of freedom controller (seriously why hasn't Descent been ripped off or emulated or anything yet? It is a brilliant concept.)

Finally a proper way to control it.