Does AMD have a response to the 3D craze?

K

Kaldskryke

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 1, 2004
Messages
1,346
Anybody who's been following CES this year knows that 3D is the major feature that is being talked about almost-everywhere. I know that not everybody likes the 3D effect and that some feel that this just another 3D revival that will die out soon. Personally I love 3D so far, and would love to see 3D really take hold in the video game industry.

Fortunately for NVIDIA, they're ahead of the game with 3D Vision products already in the market and support in several shipping titles. There are some 'teething' issues, particularly with respect to HUD elements, but they've already got a strong start.

AMD, on the other hand, has nothing. The HD5000 series cards are compelling in a lot of ways, but without 3D support I find myself waiting for GF100, even though I don't really like how NVIDIA has been behaving lately.

Does anyone know if AMD is working on 3D support? Is it even possible, or does NVIDIA have patents that prevent development? I think the ideal solution would be for monitors themselves to provide the 3D glasses and synchronization tech, and only require 120hz input - this way 3D becomes graphics hardware agnostic, right?
 
Nvidia has had 3d support for a while now. You need a 120hz monitor and their fancy glasses. But while nvidia is focusing on gimmicks, ATi is churning out innovations.
 
I don't see this as a feature I am going to bother with until it is cheaper on top of knowing it will take off. I never really cared for 3D I guess. At least with Physx you don't have to buy the 3D display and the glasses.
 
I'd really prefer that this thread avoids discussions on whether or not 3D is worth it or a "gimmick". I can find those discussions just about anywhere on the net these days.

Can way stay OT? TIA
 
MJZ said:
2D: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/Blit_dot.gif

3D: http://webspace.webring.com/people/...ing/01_digital3d_digitaluniverse_800x600a.jpg

We've been in 3D forever.
Click to expand...

har har. We've had our games displaying a 3D scene for years, that's true, but stereoscopy is still new to gaming. Add a little bit of head-tracking and I think it could add a huge immersion factor to games. I'm more than willing to spend a premium and wear silly glasses for that.

Does anyone know if AMD has made any press statements regarding stereoscopic 3D? If the answer is "no" then /thread. Otherwise I'd like to see it.
 
I think it's very probable that AMD will have their own 3D technology eventually. The question is just a matter of when.

Kritter said:
...while nvidia is focusing on gimmicks, ATi is churning out innovations.
Click to expand...
I laughed.
 
I spent several hours with 3Dvision a few months back; it can be cool, it can be jarring, it always made my eyes tired after 30+ minutes. If we can get away from needing "shuttered" glasses I think it may gain some traction and have some relevance. As it stands now, CUDA and PhysX seem like less of gimmicks to me. But, since I have not witnessed this done on triple monitor setups obviously, I can't say it isn't the bees' knees.

AMD will likely adopt some sort of 3D standard eventually, but I don't see them worrying TOO much about it now, since this is even more niche than their current Eyefinity when we talk about multi monitor set ups.

Keep in mind, 3D has been the craze several times over the decades, yet it never really caught on. Hologram technology and this don't really have anything to do with each other, and I think hologram immersion would be The Future [tm]
 
Well considering we've been looking at freakin flat screens forever and also considering our games are 3D then it makes sense that we finally can experience the games in REAL 3D and now just stitching 10 monitors together and calling that "innovation".
I am sure AMD is going to do it eventually with the upcoming 3d bluray format etc. I left Ati back in the days when we have the edimensional glasses etc as they never supported the format.
My last Ati gaming card was a Radeon 64se. I still recall playing SOF2 on 3D...awesome stuff.
I would love for them to offer REAL 3d gaming so that I have again chocies between Nvidia and Ati when buying a new video card....in the meantime, my only choice is always Nvidia.
Regards
 
Kritter said:
Nvidia has had 3d support for a while now. You need a 120hz monitor and their fancy glasses. But while nvidia is focusing on gimmicks, ATi is churning out innovations.
Click to expand...

This ^^

AMD stated they have 3D BluRay playback coming out in drivers soon. Terry Makedon is actually at CES right now showing off that ability as well.

3D BluRay playback is only a step away from gaming 3D playback. But 3D is a very expensive and small niche market. I'd rather AMD ignore it for now and keep innovating instead on technology we can use right now.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I spent several hours with 3Dvision a few months back; it can be cool, it can be jarring, it always made my eyes tired after 30+ minutes. If we can get away from needing "shuttered" glasses I think it may gain some traction and have some relevance. As it stands now, CUDA and PhysX seem like less of gimmicks to me. But, since I have not witnessed this done on triple monitor setups obviously, I can't say it isn't the bees' knees.

AMD will likely adopt some sort of 3D standard eventually, but I don't see them worrying TOO much about it now, since this is even more niche than their current Eyefinity when we talk about multi monitor set ups.

Keep in mind, 3D has been the craze several times over the decades, yet it never really caught on. Hologram technology and this don't really have anything to do with each other, and I think hologram immersion would be The Future [tm]
Click to expand...

A holodeck would be pretty cool, no questions about that.

... getting rid of shutter-glasses is easier said than done. Movie theaters have the advantage of being able to polarize the light, and polarizing glasses are less likely to be irritating. Not sure how we could possibly switch plane-polarization at 120hz on a conventional LCD screen, especially considering that LCDs already rely on particular polarization in the first place. Getting rid of the glasses altogether is probably pretty hard. I know a lenticular surface could work, but those tend to look really bad for 2D content.

Perhaps increasing the shutter frequency to 240Hz or even 480Hz would be helpful.

vermillion said:
AMD stated they have 3D BluRay playback coming out in drivers soon. Terry Makedon is actually at CES right now showing off that ability as well.

3D BluRay playback is only a step away from gaming 3D playback. But 3D is a very expensive and small niche market. I'd rather AMD ignore it for now and keep innovating instead on technology we can use right now.
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting this. It's what I wanted to know.
 
Just ain't wearing those damn 3D glasses. 3 Hours of that in Avatar were enough for a year.
 
I have never been a fan of 3D. I think part if it has to do with my poor eyesight. But Unless it is painfully obvious 3d, it is hard for me to pick it up, most of the 3D things i look at are flat to me.
 
I'd rather AMD ignore it for now and keep innovating instead on technology we can use right now.
Click to expand...
And how is 3 flat images innovation when gamers have been doing that for years now? 3D vision is not innovation either but it IS the future. Aren't you tired of looking at 3d games on a flat screen? It just does not make sense...it is like listening to a 7.1 sound track with only one speaker.
 
Sorry but 3d by Nvidia has been done in the past. My Geforce 256 had 3d shutter glasses and it came and went.

was a fun novelty for a while but when it came down to it, it had no longevity.

Don't fall into the marketing hype, just because all Nvidia talks about is 3d this and 3d that doesn't make it a craze.

When the majority of gamers are buying Nvidia's cards solely for the 3d.. then you can call it a craze.

until then i doubt AMD will respond.

the last craze I can think of in PC gaming was the Voodoo1/2.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Keep in mind, 3D has been the craze several times over the decades, yet it never really caught on. Hologram technology and this don't really have anything to do with each other, and I think hologram immersion would be The Future [tm]
Click to expand...

I agree, the true 3D craze will begin when we have 3D holographic projections. Shuttered glasses are not the future.
 
shaolin95 said:
And how is 3 flat images innovation when gamers have been doing that for years now? 3D vision is not innovation either but it IS the future. Aren't you tired of looking at 3d games on a flat screen? It just does not make sense...it is like listening to a 7.1 sound track with only one speaker.
Click to expand...

3D will suck until the displays do it themselves. The current way it's done blows. It's a gimmick right now.
 
H-street said:
Sorry but 3d by Nvidia has been done in the past. My Geforce 256 had 3d shutter glasses and it came and went.

was a fun novelty for a while but when it came down to it, it had no longevity.

Don't fall into the marketing hype, just because all Nvidia talks about is 3d this and 3d that doesn't make it a craze.

When the majority of gamers are buying Nvidia's cards solely for the 3d.. then you can call it a craze.

until then i doubt AMD will respond.

the last craze I can think of in PC gaming was the Voodoo1/2.
Click to expand...

You are judging completely different situations my friend.
We did not have movie studios pushing for 3D back then, nor a big video card company also pushing the format, nor gaming companies and even consoles joining, nor 3d ready tvs and projectors....etc, etc....Try Batman on 3d vision on a dlp and then let me know what you think. ;)
 
TomGreen321 said:
3D will suck until the displays do it themselves. The current way it's done blows. It's a gimmick right now.
Click to expand...

Obviously you have not tried it with a DLP tv...try it THEN you would feel silly about your comment. ;)


PS just realized this is the AMD area of the forum...no wonder....
 
Vermillion said:
I'd rather AMD ignore it for now and keep innovating instead on technology we can use right now.
Click to expand...
What happens if 3D actually "takes off" this time? You can point at the past and say 3D has never caught on, or you can point at the fact there isn't a lot of content for 3D yet. But if this latest 3D revival sticks then it would suck for AMD if they were left out and NVIDIA got all the spoils. I don't even think it will take much effort to implement. But if NVIDIA has patented their product in such a way that AMD can't create their own solution then that's something I'd love to know about.
 
gimmick, release a new generation of cards already. I have no interest in needing 3d glasses, 3d card, 3d display. to make it all come together. Give me a GTX 360 already. I am sure nvidia doesn't have the patent for all things 3d.
 
TomGreen321 said:
3D will suck until the displays do it themselves. The current way it's done blows. It's a gimmick right now.
Click to expand...

How do you expect that the display will be able to know the relative depth of all the objects? Should our video cards expose the game's depth buffer to the display? Right now all of the on-the-fly 2D-to-3D software fakes the effect and doesn't do a very good job of it. Having all of the scene information available (it's a game afterall) means that we have the opportunity to render a very convincing 3D effect - just render the scene twice from slightly offset viewpoints. That doesn't add a whole lot of extra work to the rendering pipeline. But that work needs to be done by the graphics card and needs to be supported by the game. That means we need to have developers on board, we need to have drivers that will do that, we need a display that's able to somehow simultaneously display left & right eye views, and a way to make sure our eyes only see the right one.

If someday we can develop holograms that take up real volumetric space, then we'll probably switch from pixels to voxels and have a 3-dimensional "screen"buffer, but that tech is even further away.
 
shaolin95 said:
And how is 3 flat images innovation when gamers have been doing that for years now? 3D vision is not innovation either but it IS the future. Aren't you tired of looking at 3d games on a flat screen? It just does not make sense...it is like listening to a 7.1 sound track with only one speaker.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not tired of it. Stereoscopic 3D makes my eyes strain as if I just put on a new pair of glasses that had a stronger prescription. Some people get horrible migraines and nausea from stereoscopic 3D. The technology is getting better and it may be the future but not in its current form of shutter glasses or the big ass nerd polarized glasses you get with Avatar.

shaolin95 said:
Are you serious Kyle?
Click to expand...

I'm with Kyle. Enjoyed watching Avatar immensely. It's a badass movie but the 3D did not add anything to it and bugged me in the long run as stated above.

Brent_Justice said:
Agreed
Click to expand...

+1
 
Vermillion said:
I'm with Kyle. Enjoyed watching Avatar immensely. It's a badass movie but the 3D did not add anything to it and bugged me in the long run as stated above.
Click to expand...
I enjoyed Avatar too, but I think the 3D was my favorite part. I think it added a lot of depth to the scenes where they were high up (basically the whole movie). It really triggered my fear of heights to see the backdrop placed that far "behind" all of the foreground objects. It totally worked for me.

Maybe I don't mind the glasses because I wear glasses all day every day?

I know not everybody enjoys the effect, and perhaps that's a good reason why AMD shouldn't bother. I know that I love the effect and somehow I figured there were more people who did. Judging from the responses in this thread I guess not. Oh well.
 
I really hope this 3D craze doesn't catch on. I wear eyeglasses a lot and the last time I saw a movie in 3D that required 3D glasses was the utmost irritating 2 hour experience I've ever had. I wouldn't mind if they were boasting and displaying holographic technology, but we are not fucking there yet.

Improve the technology we have currently, but don't push out untested, unproven technology until there is improvement to it without causing discomfort to your customers.

I can't believe there are going to be 3D HDTV channels, 3D HDTV displays, 3D gaming... ugh... this better not be a standard and just remain a niche product. Why? I don't want this to be a mandatory requirement for anything I would purchase in the future-- HDTV display, a new video game console, subscribing to HDTV cable channels, etc. It's one, costly, and two, unnecessary.

Like I always believe: Technology is just another way of excluding between the haves and have-nots.

There is only one theatre in my area not showing Avatar in 3D, yet they're 15 miles away. I really don't want to watch movies in 3D until we get holographic technology. So, until then, companies must ditch 3D until it's proven to work without irritation where we don't need the 3D glasses or ditch them altogether or just keep it in a little corner of the market.
 
shaolin95 said:
And how is 3 flat images innovation when gamers have been doing that for years now? 3D vision is not innovation either but it IS the future. Aren't you tired of looking at 3d games on a flat screen? It just does not make sense...it is like listening to a 7.1 sound track with only one speaker.
Click to expand...

If you like the 3D vision, congratulation....

I have tried 3D vision from quite some time, and I have to disagree with you this thing is no way near the future with those stupid glass..

If you think Eyefinity is a "3 flat image" good for you, but the reality it isn't.
And the majority of people rather have 3 monitor setup than just one big "flat" screen with some weird glass on then get dizzy after 10 min of playing...

Something funny is that you keep posting the same thing over and over again for the past few month, don't you get tired of it already?
 
shaolin95 said:
You are judging completely different situations my friend.
We did not have movie studios pushing for 3D back then, nor a big video card company also pushing the format, nor gaming companies and even consoles joining, nor 3d ready tvs and projectors....etc, etc....Try Batman on 3d vision on a dlp and then let me know what you think. ;)
Click to expand...


i think you are either trying to overplay todays technology or don't understand that what was done before is pretty much the same or has been tried by Nvidia for a long time.

Nvidia when it started the 3d glasses thing was the big company next to 3dfx . and when 3dfx went under it was THE only big video card company. (This was before ATI finally stepped up). All through this Nividia has been doing or trying to do the 3d. 3D has been around this whole time on Nvidia's cards.

Back then the monitors required where even more available then they are today. Everyone had a CRT and most were capable of hitting a high enough refresh rate to look good.

Nvidia March 27 said:
Added support for NVIDIA GeForce 3D Stereo Technology for GeForce 6, 7, 8, or 9 Series GPUs, including SLI technology. GeForce 3D Stereo driver can be found here.
Click to expand...

All that is happening is Nvidia is now putting more Market hype into it than usual. Enough people are new to the scene to not known or have tried it in the past so it seems new and innovative.
 
octoberasian said:
Like I always believe: Technology is just another way of excluding between the haves and have-nots
Click to expand...
What a progressive and insightful mindset you have. Are you sure you're at the right website? Perhaps you've mistaken your keyboard for a typewriter? You're on a technology-focused forum, yet you hate technology?

This thread has completely derailed into a 3D vs no-3D argument, which I was really hoping to avoid but I suppose I should have known better. I don't want to argue. If you don't like 3D that's fine.

Thanks again to vermillion and metalsmart.
 
Kaldskryke said:
What a progressive and insightful mindset you have. Are you sure you're at the right website? Perhaps you've mistaken your keyboard for a typewriter? You're on a technology-focused forum, yet you hate technology?
Click to expand...

I don't hate technology. I read technology news everyday. I'm a geek, a tech nut, but at the same time I have sympathy for those that can't even afford these things. If technology is meant to improve our lives, then it shouldn't be catering to just a small group of people.

My only problem is if this 3D stuff becomes included in everything we do and purchase, becomes a requirement just to watch something as simple as televised shows, then it just adds to the cost of said technology. And, added cost is another way of separating those who can and cannot afford that technology.

I really do not want 3D to be a requirement or a mandatory thing in whatever we purchase, including games. I care less about 3D as long as the game is good, has a good story, good graphics, and is entertaining. If 3D is only an option, then that's fine, but I don't want to see it in everything one would purchase in the future, and I don't want it to be the future. Holographic technology I wouldn't mind, but it's not feasible or possible at this time. I'd probably be long past dead before I ever see it come to fruition or come to the level of Star Trek Holodecks.
 
Unless they figure out a way to make 3d both interesting and functional for someone with one working eye... I won't give it a second thought.
 
93690232.jpg


i felt like this pic perfectly fits this thread
 
I don't like the effect, no one I know IRL actually likes the effect and all of my friends are gamers. I'm all for the 120hz monitors, but the 3d looks like crap, is expensive, and uncomfortable. I think AMD has no reason to make a response to 3d. It's like governments not negotiating with terrorists because that gives them more legitimacy in the local region.
 
only way I could see ATi getting into the 3D stuff is if microsoft included it in a DirectX version, say directx 11. Only way I would ever use it is if they found a way to do it without those glasses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top