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Which graphic card for stereoscopic rendering


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Hi,

 

I just downloaded the evaluation kit to start evaluation.

 

I can run the anaglyph stereo demos, but I would like to run the demos on a frame sequential or passive polarized monitor.

What graphic card would I need for this?

I know that even when the NVidia cards support 3D Vision, it does not mean they support native 3D.

So which cards from NVidia or AMD would be preferred?

I want a powerfull card, but prices are important because I probably need more in the future.

 

Is AMD or NVidia better for Unigine?

 

I did see the iZ3D monitors are supported, but are other line alternated polarized monitors supported too?

 

Any help is welcome.

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NVIDIA cards are better for stereo 3D, especially with support of 3D Vision.

 

But can I use a Geforce model? Or do I need one of the professional cards like Quadro cards?

I believe the Geforce models do not support the OpenGL quad buffering which is needed for native stereoscopic rendering.

Is native stereoscopic rendering supported for the Geforce when using DirectX?

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But can I use a Geforce model? Or do I need one of the professional cards like Quadro cards?

I believe the Geforce models do not support the OpenGL quad buffering which is needed for native stereoscopic rendering.

Is native stereoscopic rendering supported for the Geforce when using DirectX?

 

The fermi based Geforce cards at least seem to support stereoscopic rendering. Here we are finding that the 2GB GeForce 460 is a good card for development we are hoping they bring out out a 3GB 570.

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The fermi based Geforce cards at least seem to support stereoscopic rendering. Here we are finding that the 2GB GeForce 460 is a good card for development we are hoping they bring out out a 3GB 570.

 

Are you sure about that? I got this message from a Nvidia Customer Care:

 

"I am sorry to inform that the Quad buffered is only supported only with the Quadro graphic cards, they are not supported with Geforce graphic card."

 

So are you using quad buffer? And how did you do that?

 

I would like to buy a fermi based card, but I need to be sure that quad buffer will work.

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Are you sure about that? I got this message from a Nvidia Customer Care:

 

"I am sorry to inform that the Quad buffered is only supported only with the Quadro graphic cards, they are not supported with Geforce graphic card."

 

So are you using quad buffer? And how did you do that?

 

I would like to buy a fermi based card, but I need to be sure that quad buffer will work.

 

If you need hardware support of stereo 3d rendering, you need Quadro cards (it will be available in OpenGL only), Unigine supports them.

However Unigine can do stereo 3d renreding even on lower cost GeForce cards.

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If you need hardware support of stereo 3d rendering, you need Quadro cards (it will be available in OpenGL only), Unigine supports them.

However Unigine can do stereo 3d renreding even on lower cost GeForce cards.

 

Sorry, but I do not understand this.

Do you mean Unigine does 3D rendering without using quad buffers?

And what do you mean with "hardware support of stereo 3d rendering"? The quad buffer support? Or the IR transmitter and shutter glasses?

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3DVision API allows to use GeForce with shutter glasses and 120Hz monitor under Direct3D9/10/11.

 

OpenGL quad buffer requires Quadro solution.

 

We have both implementations.

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All of the supported by Unigine stereo 3D modes are available with GeForce cards:

* anaglyph

* iZ3D

* 3D Vision

* separate images

 

However using Quadro will give you better performance.

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This is getting very confusing. Lets try to make things more clear.

 

As far as I understand you will need quad buffer support to be able to create the left and right eye images yourself (using game engine).

Using quad buffer you can have full control of the rendering for left and right eye image. I'm not sure if this is also called quad buffer

when using DirectX (can anybody confirm?). So therefore I will use the term native-stereo.

 

The 3D Vision driver however can change a none stereo image into a stereoscopic image automatically. The game engine (you) defines one

camera. The driver adds one camera, modifies camera positions and does the rendering twice. Is this right?

Therefore using this 3D Vision technique, you will have less control over the left and right images.

Because 3D Vision is often related to the nVidia shutter glasses, I will use the term driver-stereo for this.

 

The used stereo output mode, (anaglyph, iZ3D, shutter glasses or separate images) is independent of the choice native-stereo or driver-stereo. Right?

Although for anaglyph maybe you need to do the special coloring yourself (for native-stereo). I Do not know this.

 

Questions for binstream:

When you say "All of the supported by Unigine stereo 3D modes are available with GeForce cards", I assume you refer to driver-stereo?

And when you say "However Unigine can do stereo 3d rendering even on lower cost GeForce cards." do you mean native-stereo here? I hope so.

 

Question for danni.coy:

When you say: "The fermi based Geforce cards at least seem to support stereoscopic rendering", I'm affraid you mean driver-stereo here?

 

I hope to get this 3D confusion out of the way, because native-stereo is important for me and I want to start a Unigine native-stereo (performance)

test as soon as possible.

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Question for danni.coy:

When you say: "The fermi based Geforce cards at least seem to support stereoscopic rendering", I'm affraid you mean driver-stereo here?

 

 

I think you might be right about that. I was just reading off the graphics card box that happens to be next to my desk.

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The 3D Vision driver however can change a none stereo image into a stereoscopic image automatically. The game engine (you) defines one

camera. The driver adds one camera, modifies camera positions and does the rendering twice. Is this right?

Therefore using this 3D Vision technique, you will have less control over the left and right images.

Because 3D Vision is often related to the nVidia shutter glasses, I will use the term driver-stereo for this.

 

Yes, 3D Vision driver can do the job, but Unigine-powered applications can work both ways: by relying upon 3D Vision driver and by doing all the stereo stuff internally.

 

The used stereo output mode, (anaglyph, iZ3D, shutter glasses or separate images) is independent of the choice native-stereo or driver-stereo. Right?

Although for anaglyph maybe you need to do the special coloring yourself (for native-stereo). I Do not know this.

 

Unigine stereo rendering doesn't relies on a special driver, we perform true stereo 3D rendering (with some optimizations) inside the engine (native stereo).

 

Hardware support of quad buffer makes stereo rendering faster, that's why Quadro cards is better in terms of performance. However, quad buffer support isn't a strict requirement so GeForce cards can be also used to render stereo 3D (we internally use only GeForces, for example). Moreover you can get almost all (excluding 3D Vision, which is a NVIDIA proprietary technology) stereo 3D modes available with ATI cards, running with standard video drivers.

 

 

Summary:

* Unigine provides stereo 3D rendering out-of-the box with all supported cards (GeForce, Quadro and Radeon), no special drivers needed.

* If a GPU has hardware support of stereo 3D (quad buffers in Quadro), Unigine will utilize it to make the rendering faster.

* You don't need to perform any special steps to make your Unigine-powered application stereo 3D ready, just add stereo settings to your UI.

 

You can see all of this in action by simply running any of Unigine-powered benchmarks (e.g. Heaven) from our website: http://unigine.com/download/

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Unigine stereo rendering doesn't relies on a special driver, we perform true stereo 3D rendering (with some optimizations) inside the engine (native stereo).

For anaglyph, line interlaced and side by side formats I can imagine that you do not need the quad buffer. But I think for frame sequential you will need the

quad buffer technique. You could render alternatively for left and right eye at a 120 Hz rate. As long as you glasses are in sync all is ok. But as soon as you

miss a frame because the rendering could not keep up with the 120Hz (very likely), the glasses will be out of sync.

When rendering at a low rate (e.g. 30 fps), you still want fo alternate left and right at 120 Hz. This can only be done with quad buffer support as far as I know.

Or am I missing something?

 

Hardware support of quad buffer makes stereo rendering faster, that's why Quadro cards is better in terms of performance.

Can you tell me why quad buffer makes stereo rendering faster? And how much faster? So that I can make a good hardware choice.

 

(we internally use only GeForces, for example).

What stereo format do you use? I guess it is not frame sequential.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello binstream,

 

Could you please comment on the my previous post?

I really would like to choose and buy the hardware to start a good evaluation.

 

Regards, Cor.

(And a happy new year to the Unigine team, and all forum members!)

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What stereo format do you use? I guess it is not frame sequential.

 

We use anaglyph and 3D Vision glasses internally with GeForce cards, they work for us. If you need faster stereo and can afford buying a Quadro card - it will render faster (less than 2x boost).

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We use anaglyph and 3D Vision glasses internally with GeForce cards, they work for us. If you need faster stereo and can afford buying a Quadro card - it will render faster (less than 2x boost).

 

Thanks binstream.

Can you explain how you can render good stereo without the quad-buffer technique?

Or did you modify the nVidia driver which I think can be done with some older cards.

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Thanks binstream.

Can you explain how you can render good stereo without the quad-buffer technique?

Or did you modify the nVidia driver which I think can be done with some older cards.

 

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_stereo_technology.html

 

Our stereo implementation works without special driver version, the job (rendering scene from two different viewpoints) is done inside the Unigine engine.

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http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_stereo_technology.html

 

Our stereo implementation works without special driver version, the job (rendering scene from two different viewpoints) is done inside the Unigine engine.

 

Yes I understand you support native stereo.

But my point is that for native stereo using shutter glasses (frame sequential stereo) you will need quad buffering.

You wrote: "We use anaglyph and 3D Vision glasses internally with GeForce cards". While Geforce cards do not have the quad buffer technique.

So how can you do good frame sequential stereo without using the quad buffer technique??

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Please explain me so that I can buy the correct card and start evaluation.

My plan was to evaluate in Januari so that I could buy a license this month.

I'm affraid that is not possible anymore.

 

The choice of support for quad-buffering is a very important one.

It will influence the cost of the final solution a lot (need several cards).

I think quad-buffering is needed for frame sequential 3D. So please convince me that it is not.

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Please explain me so that I can buy the correct card and start evaluation.

My plan was to evaluate in Januari so that I could buy a license this month.

I'm affraid that is not possible anymore.

 

The choice of support for quad-buffering is a very important one.

It will influence the cost of the final solution a lot (need several cards).

I think quad-buffering is needed for frame sequential 3D. So please convince me that it is not.

 

Frame sequential stereo 3D is available in DirectX with GeForce cards. If you don't have a weird stereo 3D output device which requires proprietary driver working on Quadro only, use GeForce then.

Frankly speaking Quad buffer support is an over-hyped marketing feature.

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Frankly speaking Quad buffer support is an over-hyped marketing feature.

 

That is an interesting statement.

So Direct X does use same other technique? Writing the two pictures side by side into one buffer or something like that?

 

Anyhow, thanks for explaining. I will go for a Geforce card.

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