eDimensional Wireless 3D Glasses Review - by Brian "Nomad" Morris
Did you ever sit in a movie theater as a kid to watch a 3D special feature? I bet you sat through the whole movie wearing those horrible red-lens/blue-lens glasses just waiting for the 5 seconds of actual 3D film to surface. Don't feel bad - I did it, too.
The good news is you don't have to do that anymore to get 3D! Enter eDimensional's 3D Glasses, available in both wired and wireless versions. I used the wireless ones in this review.
First off, how do the Wireless glasses compare to the Wired ones?
That's easy - they render exactly the same. The only difference is the wire. I paid the extra money for the wireless ones and I'm glad I did but I think most people will be satisfied with the wired version. My reasoning behind this is that the wireless ones don't offer any extra mobility. You still have to have your head centerline to properly render the 3D image. If you tilt too far to either side or look away at even a small angle the image appears "out of synch". For me it's still nice to not have a wire leashing me to the PC and the ability to take them off and set them down anywhere is great. A wire is just one more thing to get in my way and annoy me.
Another consideration in going wireless is that the glasses require 2 CR2032 lithium batteries to operate (included). Nothing in the documentation states how long they are supposed to last. Changing them out is simple though, as they are held in place only by a slip cover. CR2032's are a common wristwatch and pocket organizer battery so they are easily found.
Installation of the glasses is pretty straightforward and doesn't require going inside your PC. If you run into trouble there is a full User Manual on the CD that comes with it. The only hardware issue I encountered was that the wireless transmitter needs to be centerline to you and I had a webcam and secondary keyboard in the way. A little rearranging covered this. The only issues with the software installation are that the Stereo Driver defaults to a "Disabled" status and the refresh rate defaults to only 70hz; you will need to manipulate these. The driver shows as an add-on to the Advanced tab of your Dispaly Properties screen and is very easy to follow and manipulate once you understand the terminolgy and different functions.
As you follow the installation guide you come to a point where you run a small application to test the 3D output. It has "nVidia" spelled out in mobile 3D block lettering as well as the nVidia "swirly" logo floating around. After a few seconds that swirly comes OUT of the screen to a point that is equidistant to you and your monitor. This absolutely blew me away! This means that with enough industry support we may soon have "holographic" games that are played outside the monitor! Millenium Falcon Chess, anyone?
Let's get to how the glasses affect games. Namely our favorite, Falcon 4.0:
After you have the glasses configured and you crank up Falcon 4.0 (my test was with the SP2 patch and the glasses in Page-Flipping mode) get ready for a painful eye-ripping scene. The default setting of the Stereo Driver is 28% scene separation and this is way too much for F4. However, the driver has hotkeys built into it and after I adjusted the separation down a few notches I had a nice, usable image. Before I go any further it's worth noting that in the "Game Configurations" area of the driver F4 is listed as "NOT RECOMMENDED FOR STEREO GAMEPLAY", citing that many of the textures are not drawn at the correct depths. I say bollocks to that!
Once I got the separation where I wanted it I literally had a new cockpit - one I'd never seen before. It had depth! It's not an earth-shattering difference but it certainly is neat to see the gauges inset and the edge of the cockpit actually having a visually relative point to you. Another plus is that the HUD isn't adversely affected or harder to read in 3D. This leads to the shortfall of these glasses in F4, though: like the HUD, not many things change. The ground is still 2D as are most other aircraft, explosion graphics, etc. Some of the buildings seem a little 3D, however.
In other words the glasses are certainly usable in F4 but I would not purchase them solely for use in F4. This shouldn't be a concern though, as every title I tested was positively enhanced by the glasses. Not one game was unaffected or adversely affected while using them.
Now for a quick look at other games:
Tachyon - The Fringe: Decent. Ships and objects are 3D but the colors used are extremely high-contrast.
Everquest: Decent. The world is still 2D but characters and NPC's are 3D.
Madden 2002: Awesome. The stadium, players and setup screens are all 3D.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Decent. The world is still 2D but the NPC's are 3D.
Quake III Arena: Awesome. The world and everything in it is 3D.
Tribes 2: Decent. The world is still 2D but the NPC's and some objects are 3D.
In each game you play you will need to adjust your resolution setting and tweak the hotkeys a bit to get the best stereo setting. You may also need to boost the gamma up a bit to compensate for the dimness caused by the page flipping function (it darkens and lightens each lens, alternating several times a second). I experienced minimal framerate loss on my GeForce 3 Ti200, with 11% being the worst drop while playing Madden 2002. Framerate loss is fully tweakable though, as you can actually play many games at 640 or 800 resolution and not notice the impact. This is because the glasses pretty much redraw the screen in stereo for you and this gives many things a totally new look anyway.
An important thing to realize is that there are not yet any games on the market that have been written purely in 3D. The glasses and their driver do their best to make your games become 3D but the only "holographic" out-of-the-monitor effect I have found is in the driver test. I sincerely hope this changes. Purely out-of-the-monitor games are something I would pay premium prices for and I bet I'm not alone in this.
There is a major issue with the Stereo Driver that I'd like to mention. If you run Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP your PC may "hard reset" itself when you attempt to run incomplete or poorly-written D3D/OpenGL applications. This happens to me when I run Earth & Beyond (beta) and one of the downloads eDimensional links to on a Finnish site (Kozmik). Also, your Detonator XP 23.11 drivers may not handle miniature 3D apps well but this is corrected by installing the 27.20 drivers. If you need to run apps that will crash you (like I need to play Earth & Beyond beta tonight to get my Stress Tester T-Shirt - hehe) simply remove the Stereo Drivers and do an "overlay" installation of your current video drivers. Reinstall the Stero Drivers afterward to get right back to 3D gaming.
Overall these glasses are a very innovative toy and well worth the money. They bring a whole new element to the games you have (especially if you also have 3D positional audio) and if the gaming industry embraces them there will someday be out-of-the-monitor titles available. Wireless is the way to go for convenience and Wired is for you if you're on a budget. Whichever model you choose be ready to invest some time and hard disk space because you'll find yourself getting your old games out of the closet just to see what they look like in 3D. :)
