Passive 3D

[andybird123]

active gives me a raging headache after 30 minutes, passive doesn't

had active, never used it, now have passive, use it often, both on nvidia

 

[Blackbadger]

for the consumer, active is far superior.
The only time passive really shines is when using 2 projectors. Unfortunately the cost is prohibative, and it's not easy to setup.

As far as support goes, NVidia have the strength. ATI do not provide any 3D functionality. this is all provided by 3rd party's such as tridef and iz3d, whilst both have there merits they do not perform as well as the NV solution. They do however work just the same on NV and ATI hardware.

Pro's for passive - for the consumer
It's cheaper.

Con's for passive -for the consumer
The 3D effect is not as pronounced.
Ghosting is useually more of a problem
Viewing angles are more restrictive.
Driver support is very limited.
Eye straign / headaches happen to some users
Lower resolution

Pro's for Active
The 3D effect is better.
Driver support is much better (from NV)
120hz Monitors are used so when not using 3D you get a smoother experience
Your monitors full resolution is available

Cons for Active
It costs more
Eye straign / headaches happen to some users
Does not work with ATI hardware due to no 3D support from them.


Neither solution is perfect, however the active is better. Both solutions put the same strain on the CPU/GPU. A different picture needs to be renderd for each eye.

Both active and passive are improving gradually. Mostly though it's the source that's the issue. Games need to either be real 3D (often post fx are 2D and don't translate to 3D well). Or patched/specially supported by the 3D driver. Films need to be shot by pro's with specialist rigs, photo's need to be taken with real 3D rigs, not consumer ones.

 

[ALXAndy]

for the consumer, active is far superior.
The only time passive really shines is when using 2 projectors. Unfortunately the cost is prohibative, and it's not easy to setup.

As far as support goes, NVidia have the strength. ATI do not provide any 3D functionality. this is all provided by 3rd party's such as tridef and iz3d, whilst both have there merits they do not perform as well as the NV solution. They do however work just the same on NV and ATI hardware.

Pro's for passive - for the consumer
It's cheaper.

Con's for passive -for the consumer
The 3D effect is not as pronounced.
Ghosting is useually more of a problem
Viewing angles are more restrictive.
Driver support is very limited.
Eye straign / headaches happen to some users
Lower resolution

Have you used Tridef?

I take exception with the "Driver support is very limited" line of that. Especially given Tridef ignition supports about 500 games.

 

[Gregster]

I have Active and love it...no headache, no nausea no game or film worries. My wife has no interest. My 2 girls have no interest. I am a boring **** who plays for a couple of hours on my tod and am very very happy. I have no intention of putting down passive 3D and if you are happy with what you have, then happy days all round.

I will say though the "Active shutter" I have no idea what is going on in those galsses and don't realy care TBH, all I know is, I can't see any flickering or hear any flickering. I just know it works and I love the 3D effect.

Lets not jump on the "My spectrum is better than your C64" let the reviews make peoples minds up

 

[eyetrip]

Lets not jump on the "My spectrum is better than your C64" let the reviews make peoples minds up

Agreed.

While I am sure Active offers a better overall 3D experience (not tried active), I simply didn't like the idea of how active shutter 3D works. I am happy for those who like it.

I am very happy with passive 3D, and am simply looking forward to passive 27" IPS screens, which will do a lot to alleviate my issues with viewing angles on current TN panel.

 

[Caracus2k]

Passive 3d may become more relevant when 4k TV's become the norm due to the effect passive 3d has on resolution. I looked at both when buying a 55" TV and for me the active 3d on the UE5D8000 beat the passive stuff on the LG hands down.

For PC only use a passive set-up looks tempting due to the massive price hike to get an active 120mhz monitor cant say I have had a go myself to see whether the drop in resolution is a killer though

 

[smilertoo]

The active flicker seems to be a personal thing, i could see it like a strobe in my peripheral vision that made it unusable.

 

[Mercutio]

In contrast, if you got a monitor that does 3D via dual-link DVI or displayport (which have much more bandwidth than HDMI) then you can play in 3D at 1080p@60Hz (per eye), so achieve a better gaming experience so long as your graphics card can keep up (a GTX 480 should do well).

Could you recommend a few screens? This seems like the best solution and i'd guess i'll be going up a size rather than down one (as around 27" you start seeing dual link).

If I track down a passive 3d displayport i'm basically golden though yes?

The nvidia setup can be made to play nice with passive from what I read here too? (did have a little look at it and it was offering a few different setups)

 

[cmndr_andi]

As far as I know there aren't any modern passive 3D PC gaming screens (apart from those zalman ones from a few years ago that use DVI), all the current ones just seem to be HDMI 1.4 models.

I think this is because of the negative aspects of the passive 3D technology for PC use. By this I mean that passive 3D tech works by splitting up two images (one per eye) into hundreds of slices and displays them alternatively on the screen - which then works in conjunction with the screen technology and the polarising glasses so that each eye sees a completely different image (each made up of one of the two sets of alternating slices) - hence you see a 3D image when your brain recombines these two slightly different images.

The problem with this is that each eye only sees half of the total resolution (in effect 1920x540 per eye) this means the onscreen detail isn't as good compared to an active 3D system (which uses a 120Hz monitor to show alternate full-resolution 1080p images - with the shutter glasses used so that each eye only sees the images meant for it - hence the refresh rate seen by each eye is half the monitor refresh rate). Since PC games (unlike console games) render a game at native resolution then this resolution difference between passive 3D and active 3D can be noticed when playing PC games, though with console games (which are usually upscaled after being rendered at sub-720p resolution) the difference isn't as apparent.

Also, passive 3D monitors only use 60Hz panels, so the other selling point of active 3D monitors, namely: 120Hz "2D" mode, isn't possible.

For these reasons we can expect the market of 3D PC monitors to be largely dominated by active 3D monitors for the time being.

On a side note, please bear in mind that only AMD cards are currently setup to make use of Displayport for 3D, with an nvidia card you really need a dual-link DVI connection. So if you are looking for a passive (or active) 3D monitor that isn't hamstrung by HDMI bandwidth and works with an Nvidia card then you would need one that does the 3D via a DVI connection.

As for some monitor recommendations, the only ones I could give you (as explained above) are active 3D ones. For a 27in Nvidia 3D vision monitor, the best option seems to be the Asus VG278H, though there does seem to be some backlight bleed issues. If you ever plan to shift to an AMD graphics card, then I would look at the monitors that do 3D via displayport. At the 27in size the Samsung S27A750 is a really nice option.

However, I would also consider the 24in BenQ XL2420T. This is a recently released active 3D, Nvidia 3D vision compatible monitor. It is currently on a deal for £270 and looking at this in-depth review it performs rather well.

 

[Surveyor]

As far as I know there aren't any modern passive 3D PC gaming screens (apart from those zalman ones from a few years ago that use DVI), all the current ones just seem to be HDMI 1.4 models.

I basically know nothing about passive 3D but isn't this one that OcUK currently have on offer?

LG D2342P 23" Passive 3D Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black with Assassins Creed PC Game

 

[Mercutio]

The BenQ XL2420T and Samsung S23A750 were 2 i'd considered. I'm really not liking the idea of the shutter glasses though. My eyesights pretty good to be honest minus a bit of myopia (text is a bit hard to read otherwise i'm very good, probably borderline road legal without glasses) but there seems to be a lot more anecdotal evidence of eye strain and headches etc with the actives.

I know it's a "your milage may vary" type thing with different folks being bothered by different methods but the actives seemed to get a bit more of it.

 

[cmndr_andi]

I basically know nothing about passive 3D but isn't this one that OcUK currently have on offer?

lg d2342p 23" passive 3d widescreen lcd monitor - black with assassins creed pc game

good call, that one does seem to work in 3d using dvi. though looking at this write-up it doesn't seem to perform too well.

The BenQ XL2420T and Samsung S23A750 were 2 i'd considered. I'm really not liking the idea of the shutter glasses though. My eyesights pretty good to be honest minus a bit of myopia (text is a bit hard to read otherwise i'm very good, probably borderline road legal without glasses) but there seems to be a lot more anecdotal evidence of eye strain and headches etc with the actives.

I think this is one thing that varies greatly between people, if at all possible try both types out in a shop or at a someones house before buying. Though I guess you could buy one (or one of both types) online and see how you like it - if you don't want to keep it then you can get a full refund via DSR if you notify them within 7 working days of purchase.

As for more people complaining about actives, you should probably take that with a pinch of salt - as many more PC games will have bough active 3D monitors over passive ones, so you can expect more complaints purely due to a scewed sample. That's not saying that passive isn't better than active for reduced eyestrain/headaches, but something worth considering.

 

[Surveyor]

Good call, that one does seem to work in 3D using DVI. Though looking at this write-up it doesn't seem to perform too well.

At least one person seems happy enough:

http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-D2342P-PN-led-monitor

I paid £170 delivered for mine. Comes with two sets of glasses (one clip on one regular) and Tridef 3D. More on that here.

www.tridef.com

I must say I am very impressed with it. Fallout 3 and Half Life 2* in particular offer a whole new experience.

* Half Life 2 had some teething issues on early levels where if you stand too close to a wall the wall goes odd. It seemed to stop it later on though. However you can switch it from the profile 3D to virtual 3D.

I did do a write up...

http://www.tridef.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1941

It's not perfect, but then for £165 (it's gone down a fiver since I got mine) it's an absolute bargain. It does lower the resolution but I have found that setting it back to 1080p in the game's menus works fine (though it does add some slight ghosting but nothing serious).

The best part of course is that it works, really well. And only costs £20 or so more than a regular monitor.

There is a comparison here mate. Well worth a read, great article.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/tridef-stereoscopic-3d-gaming,review-32285.html

Hope you find it helpful

Quick mention of Dirt 3 - immense game. The dash looks so real you can almost reach out and stick your hand on it. Doesn't help though, I kept crashing

It's probably one of those things to try if you're interested and then make use of the DSR if it's not what you hoped for.

 

[cmndr_andi]

It's probably one of those things to try if you're interested and then make use of the DSR if it's not what you hoped for.

Yea exactly, god bless DSR.

 

[no_1_dave]

Anything software driven comes with problems, there's just no getting around it.

For the sake of the popout crew though read through my review. Crysis for example pops so much that you can't see what the heck is going on and completely (IMO of course) ruins the game.

Getting shot to death with great big blades of grass coming out of the monitor isn't a good experience IMO. Whilst it is very strange and visually impressive it totally distracts from the game itself.

I know several ex 3Dvision users and all of them say the same thing.

Yea, a lot of people like yourself don't realise you can change the convergence levels. The wheel on the back of the emitter adjusts depth (into the monitor depth) but if you go into the drivers & enable advanced 3D settings, then in game you can hold the emitter on/off button whilst using the rear wheel to adjust convergence. This adjusts how far things stick out towards your face, you can make it not stick out at all if you want.

I don't think it's fair to slate something just because you don't know how to adjust it

 

[TAC4U]

How does 3D gaming compare to 3DTV? I only ask because I have a passive 3DTV and am not really impressed by the effect; I tried active glasses in a store as well but I didn't find them as good because of the flicker and it seemed there weren't as many sweet spots. I much prefer to watch content in HD, as the image is so much sharper and much more pleasant to watch. However, I can imagine it being different for gaming as it is an interactive medium.

That said, I don't want to move to 3D until it's on a decent panel technology - I don't like the limited viewing angles of TN-panels.

 

[xsistor]

Yea, a lot of people like yourself don't realise you can change the convergence levels. The wheel on the back of the emitter adjusts depth (into the monitor depth) but if you go into the drivers & enable advanced 3D settings, then in game you can hold the emitter on/off button whilst using the rear wheel to adjust convergence. This adjusts how far things stick out towards your face, you can make it not stick out at all if you want.

I don't think it's fair to slate something just because you don't know how to adjust it

ALXAndy is pretty clueless about 3D. We owned him for his ignorance very early on for spouting utter crap and trying to spread misinformation as "advice". Now he's gone and got himself a passive 3D screen and is trying to sing its praises from the highest steeple while putting down active 3D as best he can... In the process spreading more misinformation to those who may not know much about it.

 

[ALXAndy]

Yea, a lot of people like yourself don't realise you can change the convergence levels. The wheel on the back of the emitter adjusts depth (into the monitor depth) but if you go into the drivers & enable advanced 3D settings, then in game you can hold the emitter on/off button whilst using the rear wheel to adjust convergence. This adjusts how far things stick out towards your face, you can make it not stick out at all if you want.

I don't think it's fair to slate something just because you don't know how to adjust it

You can adjust it with Tridef just as easy.

There's nothing 3Dvision does that Tridef can't. That includes all of the laser sights and everything else. And yes I do know how to adjust it but the popout on Crysis looks completely intentional. And it's off putting.

Just my opinion of course. Would be good in a porn movie !

 

[ALXAndy]

ALXAndy is pretty clueless about 3D. We owned him for his ignorance very early on for spouting utter crap and trying to spread misinformation as "advice". Now he's gone and got himself a passive 3D screen and is trying to sing its praises from the highest steeple while putting down active 3D as best he can... In the process spreading more misinformation to those who may not know much about it.

You think I am putting down active 3D. Just because you seem to feel that you must rush to its defence.

I *can not* use active 3D. It gave me motion sickness.

So, it was either passive or nothing, and I know that two of my friends are exactly the same as me. One of them got a splitting headache.

BTW. The only "owning" going on is people that are so blinkered that they will defend something no matter what. I can't use active 3D. Thus I should sit and **** it off.

Next time you feel like doing some "owning" then do it in the correct thread eh? Note the title is PASSIVE 3D.

Owned.

 

[xsistor]

You think I am putting down active 3D. Just because you seem to feel that you must rush to its defence.

I *can not* use active 3D. It gave me motion sickness.

So, it was either passive or nothing, and I know that two of my friends are exactly the same as me. One of them got a splitting headache.

BTW. The only "owning" going on is people that are so blinkered that they will defend something no matter what. I can't use active 3D. Thus I should sit and **** it off.

Next time you feel like doing some "owning" then do it in the correct thread eh? Note the title is PASSIVE 3D.

Owned.

It's hilarious how you rant about the things of which you are more guilty than anyone else. You're the one being the defensive crusader and spreading a lot of misinformation in the process. If active 3D is problematic because of your issues then state it clearly as such without making it sound like it's a universal problem. I tend to avoid replying to your posts because of the amount of tripe in them. But the the amount of misinformation sometimes gets overwhelming to the point where someone needs to step in, lest the uninformed think you actually know something.