Is 3D possible at 30Hz? ie on a 60Hz LCD Monitor?

RedRaven

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2000
Messages
151
I've seen a number of articles popping up regarding the use of 3D in various games, but they all state that it requires a 120Hz monitor for it to work (the newer Samsung display I believe).

Is there any real reason why it can't be done on a normal 60Hz LCD monitor?
ie the vid card calculates two perspectives at 30Hz each, alternating each perspective each frame?

Yes I know the effective image frame rate would only be 30fps maximum, but you're still seeing 60Hz refresh from the monitor... how can this be any worse than simply playing a game that sits around 30fps anyway?

Possible problem with potential ghosting? (on lower/older spec LCD's))

Discuss.
 
It might not happen fast enough... (The perspective changes) so the illusion gets killed when you start to notice each frame on/off.

It's hard to say without trying it out / seeing it in person for sure though.

I have wanted to try out the 120hz stuff without 3D and with... along with Eyefinity / Triple monitor setup (that would be an interesting combination... Nvidia 3D with Triple-head-2-go... not sure if it'd work)
 
True, it wouldn't be as immersive at 30Hz max than it would be at 60Hz max,

Buuut... you're watching Avatar in the cinema in 3D at 24Hz effective frame rate, and that looks bloody fantastic!

Lets simplify it by saying your vid card can handle a good solid 60fps ina game...would 30fps in 3D still be worth it?

Surely the synchronisation rate of the nVidia etc 3D glasses could remain at 60Hz? You'd just see two frames the same before each image changed.

You'll still see 60Hz refresh... the'll be no flickering. But you'll see 30fps.
 
No, this is not at all like watching film at 24Hz or playing video games at 30Hz. With LCD shutter glasses operating at 60Hz, you are flashing bright lights alternately into each eye at 30Hz, and doing that in the 10Hz to 30Hz range causes nausea, giddiness and even seizures. It may be possible to do what you want, but the puking and migraines won't be worth it.
 
these systems were fairly common in the 1990's and had driver support from ATi and nVidia for some of the original Radeon and GeForce cards, Guru3D should still have archives of its reviews and impressions of said stereo 3D systems

the other alternative was anaglyphic 3D (the blue and red glasses are an example)

and yeah they're about as horrible as evilsofa describes (god don't make me remember it...)

as far as "30 FPS" vs 60hz and all that, bringing FILMED movies into this is an unfair comparison, because with a FILMED movie you've got something working for you, film "naturally" applies temporal anti-aliasing, in simple terms:

when the film goes through the camera its exposed to light for however long the shutter is open and captures light for that entire length of time, which means you've got "variations" in there even if you're shooting with a Konica at 1/12,000, so your 24 FPS movie means each frame equals 1/24th of a second of whatever the camera is looking at, however when you've got a 3D rendering system for whatever game, the card is rendering "instantaneous" points, 30 or 40 or however many times per second, they're instantaneous dots and motion is achieved via stroboscopic effect, much like digital audio, it isn't a continuous waveform, just a ton of samples "strung together", however unlike digital audio we're also generating the samples in real-time based on user input and trying to play it all back with much slower hardware (consider that the average D/A converter deals in terms of tens of thousands of samples per second, the very best rendering systems deal in terms of 80 to 120 samples per second)

for stereo 3D, the idea is simply to render more frames, lie to your eyes about what they're seeing, and the brain not only perceives motion, but also depth, its quite a bit different than your filmed 3D movie (even if its filmed with digital cinema cameras, they're still capturing 1/24 or whatever they're set to do)

as far as eyefinity/softTH/TH2G with stereo 3D, I don't know if it'd actually be compatible, but if you did manage to get it to work, the results would be less than desirable for a few reasons:
- calibration between the monitors and your POV would need to be perfect
- you don't have the same viewing angle with each monitor, changing their effectiveness
- the rendering power required to sustain >120 FPS into even 5040x1050 with modern games is generally unavailable

however, multi-head stereo 3D systems DO exist, they're very expensive and require loads of precision calibration, they also usually use projectors (CRT or DLP), and usually have some form of head-tracking/body tracking to maintain the 3D immersion, and on top of all of that, they're almost exclusively OpenGL based rendering solutions running on proprietary or quasi-proprietary hardware solutions (yes, you can just ignore everything and understand that it means $texas)


enjoy some reading:
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/66/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroboscopic_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaglyphic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_blur
http://www.guru3d.com/stereo/

expensive/proprietary VR (somewhat related to the ultimate goal of this thread):
http://www.barco.com/en/virtualreality
http://www.cs.utah.edu/research/areas/ve/
http://www.virtusphere.com/ (yes its like the lawnmower man, why nobody thought of this until recently, even though that movie is like 20 years old, I have no idea)

::edit
ok I'm gonna hurl, after writing this I thought "HEY, lets dig out the old anaglyhphic glasses and reminisce", was cool until I actually put them on and switched to red/blue images...
 
Last edited:
While watching Avatar in 3D IMAX (polarized glasses), I felt that the framerate definitely wasn't high enough for faster moving scenes. I'd imagine that 30 Hz/eye would work but that 60 Hz or better per eye would give a much better experience.

I definitely wouldn't mind watching a 3D movie with 100 Hz/eye or so on the Plasma HDTV downstairs :)
 
While watching Avatar in 3D IMAX (polarized glasses), I felt that the framerate definitely wasn't high enough for faster moving scenes. I'd imagine that 30 Hz/eye would work but that 60 Hz or better per eye would give a much better experience.

I definitely wouldn't mind watching a 3D movie with 100 Hz/eye or so on the Plasma HDTV downstairs :)

I've heard talk that they will be releasing 3D Blu Ray Players later this year. You might just get your wish.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3249
 
I've heard talk that they will be releasing 3D Blu Ray Players later this year. You might just get your wish.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3249

Yup, heard it as well. Supposedly any type of glasses (active, polarized, etc) can be used with it. Would be active-shutter type for the Plasma HDTV, I guess, since it doesn't do the polarization required :)

Might be the first good reason I have heard for buying a BR movie over the DVD version.
 
I am deeply skeptical that the whole 3D shutter glasses thing will ever go mainstream, because the mainstream doesn't want to wear dorky geek glasses. Especially those who already wear glasses.

The alternative is developing 3D TVs that require no glasses of any sort. James Cameron was interviewed in a recent Newsweek article about these systems (because of who he is, he gets to see some stuff we haven't even heard about) and the current state of that is there are about three methods in development - one of which costs $9000, and all three of which cause headaches in 10 minutes. They have a long, long way to go before that goes mainstream.
 
Interesting, thanks for the info fellas.

I think it may in fact be easier for people with glasses to go mainstream 3D... it's a relatively simple matter to incorporate the LCD shutter into an existing set of prescription glasses.

cCurrently you'd end up with a battery/radio receiver 'lump' on the side a la the IMAX glasses but hey, 3D everywhere you look wouldn't be so bad.

I'm intrigued by the apparent inability to generate stereo 3D at 30fps and not be affected by disorientation/headaches/nausea etc. I agree, Avatar would be improved by a higher frame rate. Currently I understand its rolling 48fps, obviously you're only getting 24 effective fps. I have heard some were affected by the film (slight nausea), though noone visibly suffered in the sittings I went to.

I understand what you mean about the 1/24th second open shutter effectively 'antialiasing' a captured frame - its what causes motion blur - must read some of those links and see if there's any more useful info in them. I wonder if any of the stereo demo's /driver still work?

But the cynic in me just can't leave the niggling suspicion of 'forced obsolescence' - where someone thinks it'd be a good idea if everyone upgrade to 120Hz monitors just for the hell of it when 60Hz could possibly do just fine.
 
The 3D used in theaters isn't the same as what you're using on a PC. Its actually two different projectors, and each of your lenses can pick up either one. Its not a "refresh rate" thing, where one lens is blacked out while the other is viewable (shuttered). The reason why you need 120hz is so you don't notice the flicker/shutter. While it can be done with 60hz on LCDs, the effect is quite shitty.
 
The 3D used in theaters isn't the same as what you're using on a PC. Its actually two different projectors, and each of your lenses can pick up either one. Its not a "refresh rate" thing, where one lens is blacked out while the other is viewable (shuttered). The reason why you need 120hz is so you don't notice the flicker/shutter. While it can be done with 60hz on LCDs, the effect is quite shitty.

Avatar was actually done using Real3D, alternating frames at 144Hz (according to wikipedia).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_Cinema
 
^ Seems as though there are multiple methods of the tech in theaters, Avatar in IMAX though uses dual projectors. RealD is just one of the methods.

To create the illusion of three-dimensional depth, the IMAX 3D process uses two camera lenses to represent the left and right eyes. The two lenses are separated by an interocular distance of 64 mm (2.5"), the average distance between a human's eyes. By recording on two separate rolls of film for the left and right eyes, and then projecting them simultaneously, viewers can be tricked into seeing a 3D image on a 2D screen. The IMAX 3D camera is cumbersome, weighing over 113 kg (250 lb). This makes it difficult to film on-location documentaries.
 
That's one of the things I was getting at, but didn't clarify clearly enough.

It was watching Avatar that got me thinking. I've watched Avatar in an IMAX Digital cinema, (so I've been shown 48 frames of alternating 2D viewpoints = 24fps 3D frame rate) looks fine to me, although I'd acknowledge a faster frame rate would help to eliminate shuddering in fast-camera-pan scenes.

I can understand the benefit of runnning 120Hz for a max possible 3D frame rate of 60fps, but the Question remains...if 30fps 3D is possible (and exceeds that being shown in many theatres today), why is it being restricted to the newest 120Hz monitors, when so many other 60Hz LCD's exist?

I'm still somewhat surprised by some of the previous answers... (I'm not saying you're wrong guys), but restricting your target audience to those with the newest monitors doesn't make sense.

Even if the effect was not as smooth as rendered at 60fps/120hz - its the same argument as for low-end video cards - why drop 90% of your possible buyers by only offering the GTX285 or (insert top ATI card model) only video card?

Profit, of course - some gamers are content with a lower frame rate because of the reduced cost. Same probably goes for low-end 3D users?

Surely there'd be more profit available by making 30fps 3D available on existing, conventional hardware??? :confused:
 
you're still comparing apples to oranges and insisting that you know how the oranges taste because you've had expensive apples, it doesn't work like that, please, read and re-read the responses you were given for an explanation of why what you want, isn't the best idea, you'd also see that it has already come and gone in the consumer sector, because not too many people were buying it

to further drive this IMAX nonsense into the ground, IMAX refreshes twice per second and as previously stated has its TAA built in, any shuddering is the result of TMB on the frame, if you re-filmed at a higher sample rate, you could reduce that and move towards a more stroboscopic input
 
I can understand the benefit of runnning 120Hz for a max possible 3D frame rate of 60fps, but the Question remains...if 30fps 3D is possible (and exceeds that being shown in many theatres today), why is it being restricted to the newest 120Hz monitors, when so many other 60Hz LCD's exist?

I'll say it again. The 24FPS you are seeing in the theatre is not the same as the 30FPS per eye you get from LCD shutter glasses. The theatre 24FPS is being received in both eyes at the same time - no problem. The LCD shutter glasses at 60FPS (30FPS per eye) is being received one frame in one eye, then one frame in the other eye - puke city. Altnernating frames per eye needs to happen at speeds higher than 50FPS per eye to prevent the negative effects.
 
It was watching Avatar that got me thinking. I've watched Avatar in an IMAX Digital cinema, (so I've been shown 48 frames of alternating 2D viewpoints = 24fps 3D frame rate) looks fine to me, although I'd acknowledge a faster frame rate would help to eliminate shuddering in fast-camera-pan scenes.
[/B]

Shutter glasses, dude. Theatres don't use shutter glasses, Nvidia 3d Vision does. You really want to have your screen blacking out and coming back on at 30Hz? Think of a CRT at 30Hz, that's pretty much what 3D is like on a 60Hz monitor.
 
OK, fair enough, I was just exploring the profitability side of things.

I know its been released before, but back then, 3D hardware was not so capable as it is now, not by a long shot.

I have read all the links posted and so far and its interesting to see the different 3D technologies used do in fact make a big difference... initially I did not believe this would be the case. I figured viewing 24fps is 24fps no matter which way it is displayed to you, persistence of vision would do the rest.

Damn, well I hope 3D takes a bit longer to get to the game mainstream... I only just upgraded to a 27" LCD (60Hz, doh!). :D
 
So is shutter glasses a better technology to display 3d? Sure seems to be the more expensive alternative... You recycle those 3d glasses from real d 3d movies, and those shutter glasses are quite expensive.

Sounds like reald 3d glasses will be used for the new blu-ray spec. So will shutter glasses like nvidias work on real d movies when they come out on your pc with 3d vision?
 
Last edited:
I am deeply skeptical that the whole 3D shutter glasses thing will ever go mainstream, because the mainstream doesn't want to wear dorky geek glasses. Especially those who already wear glasses.

I wish people would stop spouting this. I've tried to see Avatar in 3D on three seperate occasions which requires driving 45 minutes to a nearby city in its 3rd week of playing and Avatar 3d was sold out on all three 3D screens the theatre has! Literately, the show has been selling out in 3D everynight for 3 weeks straight, multiple showings across three theatres. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people in my area have gone to the theatre and worn the 3D glasses, in public, in the theatre. Never once, have I seen(while I was forced to go see other shows like Invictus) did I see someone complain about wearing 3D glasses on an account of 'dorkyness' or choose to give up their ticket to go to plane avatar without 3D to avoid dorkyness.

If 3D glasses were really a huge problem, I don't think avatar would have passed the 1 billion dollar mark for theatre sales worldwide. At least 10-20% of the public has been wearing 3D glasses and appears not to mind 'at-all'. Let's not forget about other hit movies too like Up, Cars, etc that were filmed in 3D that tons of people watched. 3D glasses are not keeping people from watching movies and won't keep people from watching tv imo.
 
So is shutter glasses a better technology to display 3d? Sure seems to be the more expensive alternative... You recycle those 3d glasses from real d 3d movies, and those shutter glasses are quite expensive.

Well, the passive 3D glasses require two sources of light with different polarizations, so we can use the cheap throwaway ones just as soon as someone comes up with a way to do that with LCDs. Thing is, that basically means you need two displays in one monitor, like the iZ3D monitor. You're going to pay for it either way.

If 3D glasses were really a huge problem, I don't think avatar would have passed the 1 billion dollar mark for theatre sales worldwide. At least 10-20% of the public has been wearing 3D glasses and appears not to mind 'at-all'. Let's not forget about other hit movies too like Up, Cars, etc that were filmed in 3D that tons of people watched. 3D glasses are not keeping people from watching movies and won't keep people from watching tv imo.

Shutter glasses are different from cinema 3D glasses. Basically, they are a lot worse.
 
Well, the passive 3D glasses require two sources of light with different polarizations, so we can use the cheap throwaway ones just as soon as someone comes up with a way to do that with LCDs. Thing is, that basically means you need two displays in one monitor, like the iZ3D monitor. You're going to pay for it either way.



Shutter glasses are different from cinema 3D glasses. Basically, they are a lot worse.
I see thanks for the explanation. So when 3d hits blu-ray you will most likely have to go with shutter glasses i'm assuming since there are more displays with 120hz than there are with two displays in one monitor/television. So 3d vision wouldnt be a bad investment for the future.

As far as technology goes are they on par as far as visual performance?
 
Theoretically shutter glasses are better than polarization ones, because you avoid all the polarization artifacts and don't have to keep your head level all the time (if you hold your head at 45 degrees, you see both images in each eye, at 90 the images are switched between eyes). It does require a display with a fairly high refreshrate (120 Hz or better), but movies have been 24 FPS for literally centuries and nobody has ever complained about this. 48 FPS should suffice for shutter glasses if you look at it that way.

Or maybe 24 FPS is just too darn slow for realistic movement and detail during fast panning these days and we've all been conned all these years :)
 
I wish people would stop spouting this. I've tried to see Avatar in 3D on three seperate occasions which requires driving 45 minutes to a nearby city in its 3rd week of playing and Avatar 3d was sold out on all three 3D screens the theatre has! Literately, the show has been selling out in 3D everynight for 3 weeks straight, multiple showings across three theatres. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people in my area have gone to the theatre and worn the 3D glasses, in public, in the theatre. Never once, have I seen(while I was forced to go see other shows like Invictus) did I see someone complain about wearing 3D glasses on an account of 'dorkyness' or choose to give up their ticket to go to plane avatar without 3D to avoid dorkyness.

If 3D glasses were really a huge problem, I don't think avatar would have passed the 1 billion dollar mark for theatre sales worldwide. At least 10-20% of the public has been wearing 3D glasses and appears not to mind 'at-all'. Let's not forget about other hit movies too like Up, Cars, etc that were filmed in 3D that tons of people watched. 3D glasses are not keeping people from watching movies and won't keep people from watching tv imo.

I think the general public doesn't mind wearing dorky 3D glasses in a dark theater for a 3D movie where everyone else is doing the same. However, I think what evilsofa is getting at is that people don't want to constantly wear dorky glasses for watching every show on TV. I wouldn't mind wearing the dorky glasses for a movie in a theater or at home. However, I don't want to have to wear them every single time I turn on the TV. I don't want to have to put them on while watching the game at the bar. The public is willing to wear them for certain occasions, but I don't think they'd tolerate wearing them all the time, especially if you're talking about the ones containing shutter devices rather than simple polarized lenses.


It does require a display with a fairly high refreshrate (120 Hz or better), but movies have been 24 FPS for literally centuries and nobody has ever complained about this. 48 FPS should suffice for shutter glasses if you look at it that way.

Or maybe 24 FPS is just too darn slow for realistic movement and detail during fast panning these days and we've all been conned all these years :)

You too seem to be confusing movie 24fps and computer game 60fps. As each frame of a movie is a picture lasting 1/24 of a second, there's motion blur recorded into each frame (1/24 of a second's worth). With a computer generated sequence, it's an instantaneous "snapshot" with no motion blur. Each frame is perfectly crisp and clear with no blur at all. The motion blur adds to the fluidity, which is why a lower framerate still seems smooth. Without that blur, you need a higher framerate for it to look just as smooth.

48fps with shutter glasses should suffice for current movie filming techniques (i.e. using the current 24fps x 2, one for each eye). However, 48fps shutter glasses for PC gaming would look as smooth as your game running at only 24fps right now.
 
I see thanks for the explanation. So when 3d hits blu-ray you will most likely have to go with shutter glasses i'm assuming since there are more displays with 120hz than there are with two displays in one monitor/television. So 3d vision wouldnt be a bad investment for the future.

As far as technology goes are they on par as far as visual performance?

AFAIK most of the 120Hz TVs in homes today aren't 3D compatible. As far as availability, consumer awareness and market penetration go 3D is a fucking mess right now.

Shutter glasses are worse than simple polarized glasses, at least for movies. The flickering effect is more likely to make people ill than the stereoscopic effect, especially on LCDs instead of projectors. I don't know if there's a difference in actual quality of the effect, though I would suspect shutter glasses also fare worse there.

It does require a display with a fairly high refreshrate (120 Hz or better), but movies have been 24 FPS for literally centuries and nobody has ever complained about this. 48 FPS should suffice for shutter glasses if you look at it that way.

Or maybe 24 FPS is just too darn slow for realistic movement and detail during fast panning these days and we've all been conned all these years :)

Shutter glasses don't just require a high refresh rate so the 3D effect is stronger. They also require a higher refresh rate because they black out each eye eye for a half frame, which at low refresh rates makes most people think they are having a fucking seizure. 48FPS with shutter glasses would be unbearable within seconds.
 
Shutter glasses don't just require a high refresh rate so the 3D effect is stronger. They also require a higher refresh rate because they black out each eye eye for a half frame, which at low refresh rates makes most people think they are having a fucking seizure. 48FPS with shutter glasses would be unbearable within seconds.

hahahahaha.

think? more like induce ;)
 
It does require a display with a fairly high refreshrate (120 Hz or better), but movies have been 24 FPS for literally centuries and nobody has ever complained about this. 48 FPS should suffice for shutter glasses if you look at it that way.

/facepalm

Way to read the thread. I'm not going to repeat myself for the third time, other than to say that 48FPS on shutter glasses (24FPS per eye) WILL MAKE YOU PUKE.
 
Theoretically shutter glasses are better than polarization ones, because you avoid all the polarization artifacts and don't have to keep your head level all the time (if you hold your head at 45 degrees, you see both images in each eye, at 90 the images are switched between eyes).

Real3D like Avatar uses circular polarization, not linear polarization like a pair of sunglasses. So you can rotate your head and you wont see both images in both eyes.
 
Real3D like Avatar uses circular polarization, not linear polarization like a pair of sunglasses. So you can rotate your head and you wont see both images in both eyes.

They didn't use that at the IMAX theater I went to then :)

And I know about motion blur in movie frames. I was mostly referring to watching movies, not playing video games. 60 Hz per eye with the current nVidia 3D tech is indeed the lowest you want to go at this point.
 
They didn't use that at the IMAX theater I went to then :)

I know that's what used in the cinema I went to because I purposely tried rotating the glasses thinking it was linear polarization and being surprised the image didn't change ;)
 
I know that's what used in the cinema I went to because I purposely tried rotating the glasses thinking it was linear polarization and being surprised the image didn't change ;)

When I did it the image most definitely changed :)
 
i was looking around the net for a solution to use my old nvidia 3d glasses that worked with 30/60 Hz. in my opinion a game running in 30 fps back then (i think 10 years ago) like XIII was ok to play in 3d. it was a lot of fun. of course 30fps are not 40 or 50 fps, but many people today have graphics adapters that only give them about 30 fps in modern high end gfx games. i even play games in full hd with only 30 fps when moving the head around in first person games and use vsync. thats not a too big problem for me.

in the end i think it is very arrogant of nvidia to not support their old 3d glasses with 30 fps in the newer drivers. about 6 years ago they took out the 3d drivers off the official drivers, and you had to use old drivers to be able to use 3d.

i guess it should not really be that hard to modify the latest drivers to make them work with half the fps in games and let them shutter at 30 fps each eye.

if anyone knows where i can get such a modified driver or patch please let me know.

sadly the old glasses had to be put into the graphics card, and newer cards dont support this output anymore. but i guess any pulse generator would do fine that can be set to 30 hz sqaure waves (even an audio out port with an audio signal would work i guess).
 
It might not happen fast enough... (The perspective changes) so the illusion gets killed when you start to notice each frame on/off.

It's hard to say without trying it out / seeing it in person for sure though.

I have wanted to try out the 120hz stuff without 3D and with... along with Eyefinity / Triple monitor setup (that would be an interesting combination... Nvidia 3D with Triple-head-2-go... not sure if it'd work)

I use to have an Eyfinity setup with my old 5870's. I also had the NVSurround setup as well with the 3D glasses. While the monitor setup was really cool in theory, it def takes some getting use to. Plus I do not like the bezal display inbetween each monitor. I was using 3x120MHz Acer 23 inch displays. the 120MHz was really the best thing about those monitors.

I ended up going with a big 30 inch monitor. I am very very happy with my decision. I would rather look at one big display than look at 3 monitors. Way to busy for MY gamining situation.

Others may differ, I am sure. It depends whether you want to deal with the hassle of a triple monitor setup or not!

P.S. The 3D glasses are neat to play with, but I end up taking them off after an hour because that annoy my eye sight and my eyes start to strain.
 
OP, you obviously havnt played a lot of games in 3D... I just got out of 2Hrs of playing BC2 with 3D vision. And my head is banging! It hurts, a lot. But, i love the look of the effect so much, but i take breaks. But if it was LOWER then 60Hz each eye, it SUCKS. There are times when i look down a scope and the smoke rapes my FPS and i see 35fps, my brain gets sharp pains. It seriously effects the game. So i normally have the settings set to peg 60HZ 3D/120Hz at a constant. And i normally can get a good hour out of gaming and be totally immersed. Lets bring out the 240Hz monitors now.... I'm already seeing 120Hz not keeping up :p
 
Back
Top