With a new stereo section we of course will also start a series of reviews on 3D Glasses. Today we want to bring you the first review of our Stereo section, the review of the eDimensional "E-D" shutterglasses.

We strongly recommend you to read our generic stereo article first as this will make you understand the technology a tad better.

First up, what can we tell about the company that is called eDimensional:

Founded in mid 2000, eDimensional, Inc. has been focused on providing a quality economical, yet extremely effective tool for the average PC user to greatly enhance his or her multimedia experience.

So let's see what multimedia experience you can expect with their Stereoglasses shall we ?

eDimensional has sent us the wireless version of their Stereo3D shutterglasses which is quite a nifty gadget, no more wires from your PC towards your glasses. The wireless trend is growing rapidly and we for see a good and big future for wireless products.

the whole package

The package includes the following items:

• a pair of E-D glasses

• one VGA adapter

• an infrared transmitter (DIN-3 IR-emitter)

• a power adaptor for older video cards

• the "quick start instruction guide"

• two sets of bows for big and small heads :-)

• two CDs with

  • 400MB of 11 different game demos
  • 100MB drivers and tools: several NVIDIA Stereo control panel versions (23.11, 26.50, 28.32), NVIDIA Display drivers, the Guru3D Detonator Destroyer :) and HZTool
  • the Wicked3D "H3D" driver CD, for use with non-NVIDIA videocards

We found it very interesting to find unofficial drivers on the CD, which we don't see as a bad point btw :) It simply shows they stay up-to-date.

The minimum system requirements to use the gear are:

- 233MHz CPU
- Win9x/ME, Win2k/XP
- CRT monitor
- standard 3-D accelerator vga card

 

Installation of the glasses

The installation really is not that difficult, their installation guide shows it clearly:

(click to show full guide)

Connect the VGA connector to the VGA card, then connect the transmitter to the dongle.

That's all (for wireless glasses) ..

For compatibility with old cards (e.g. Voodoo2) they've added a power adaptor that gets extra energy from the PS2 port of your computer to deliver the necessary power.

Once everything is connected correctly it should look like this:

ehm please, just ignore that dust on the case...

Finally you can mount that IR transmitter somewhere in your field of view (the best is to place it upon your monitor):

Infra Red transmitter

Two different drivers

The driver installation review needs to get divided into two parts, because of one reason: there are two possible drivers that you can use.

• The NVIDIA Stereo3D driver (which works with all NVIDIA cards from RivaTNT up to GeForce 4)

• The Wicked3D "H3D" driver version 4.11 (which works with: 3Dfx Banshee, 3Dfx Voodoo2, 3, 4, 5, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128 & 128GL, ATI Rage 128 Pro, Intel i740, Intel i752, Intel i810, Matrox Millennium G200, G400, G450, NVidia GeForce 256, GeForce 2 GTS, GeForce 2 MX, NVidia RivaTNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, TNT2 M64, PowerVR Kyro I, S3 Savage2000, Savage 4, Savage 3D)
  or version 5.02 beta (Added support for NVIDIA GeForce2 Integrated GPU, GeForce3; ATI Radeon RV200, Radeon RV100, Radeon Mobility, Radeon M7, Radeon U1, Radeon A3; PowerVR KYRO)

Both H3D driver versions came with the package, we went for the 5.02 here.

The easiest way towards Stereo3D - only for NVIDIA cards

If you own a NVIDIA card (RivaTNT or better) then the Stereo3D driver installation is very easy.

Just install a current Detonator driver (at least version 10.xx for Win9x/ME, and 22.xx for Window 2000/XP). That's all.

There's no need to install any other "driver", because the Stereo drivers are already included in the Detonator driver.
(If you want to search for a separate stereo driver file, you will not find that. The Stereo driver is included within the OpenGL and Direct3D driver.)

The only thing you still need is a configuration tool to set up the stereo properly, and of course that is where we come in.

For this you can either use our homegrown GeForce Tweak Utility which can do all the necessary things to set up your stereoglasses.

Or you download the NVIDIA Stereo Control Panel. (NVIDIA falsely calls this software a "driver", but it is no driver, it's just a tool to configure the stereo mode).

Driver installation (continued)

At first we need to install the control panel from the driver cd.
We used the version 28.32 ("StereoE28.32.exe") for the next tests.

Once it's installed and the pc was restarted, we can begin to configure the glasses. Mind you that the author of this article is German and therefor you'll notice some German items in the tool.

The main points to take note of here are:

1. At first the Stereo Separation slider needs to be set to a value of our choice. Later it will definitely be necessary to change this value again, but for now, it doesn't matter.

2. Our glasses are "Page Flipped" so we need to set this too.

3. Finally, we enable the stereo mode by clicking on "Enable".

Yes, that's basically all, simple wasn't it ? :-)

Now the driver is set up and will use the Stereo mode with the next OpenGL / Direct3D application.

Let's do the first test:

By clicking the "Medical Test Image" button we can check if everything works.

But we also have to turn the glasses on to see stereo:

Of course the glasses will not turn on if they don't find the IR trigger signal, so now we can see if we found a good place for the IR transmitter. After a second or two the glasses will respond and turn on.

Voilà ---> Stereo!

This of course was only a shortened way to enable stereo, you can control much more of the stereo feature. But this is to be discussed in another article ;-)

Installation of the Wicked3D "H3D" Stereo drivers for non-NVIDIA cards

The H3D driver comes from the company Wicked3D, they are working on stereoscopy for several years now. AFAIK Version 5.02 was the last driver that was released by Wicked3D.

You want to know more about H3D? Just look here.

The eDimensional glasses are "H3D enabled", but it is highly recommended not to use the Wicked3D driver if you have a NVIDIA videocard ! Otherwise you should be able to use the driver with no problems at all.

Due to the lack of a non-NVIDIA videocard we will do this test with a GeForce 3.

The Wicked3D driver installation is quite simple. We put the CD into the drive and the installation begins.

Select the videocard of your choice:

Version 4.11 works with: 3Dfx Banshee, 3Dfx Voodoo2, 3, 4, 5, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128 & 128GL, ATI Rage 128 Pro, Intel i740, Intel i752, Intel i810, Matrox Millennium G200, G400, G450, NVIDIA GeForce 256, GeForce 2 GTS, GeForce 2 MX, NVIDIA RivaTNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, TNT2 M64, PowerVR Kyro I, S3 Savage2000, Savage 4, Savage 3D
Version 5.02 beta also supports NVIDIA GeForce2 Integrated GPU, GeForce3; ATI Radeon RV200, Radeon RV100, Radeon Mobility, Radeon M7, Radeon U1, Radeon A3; PowerVR KYRO)

After you've chosen the videocard and went through the small rest of the installation you will be asked to restart the pc.
When Windows starts the next time then the real configuration will begin.

After the last step you will be shown a test application, which instantly worked well with my Geforce 3.

But we also have to turn the glasses on to see stereo:

Of course the glasses will not turn on if they don't find the IR trigger signal, so now we can see again if we found a good place for the IR transmitter. After a second the glasses will respond and turn on.

Voilà ---> Stereo!

There was no noticeable difference between the NVIDIA Stereo driver and the H3D driver at this time.

But later, when we wanted to play some games,we noticed that with the H3D driver the Stereo3D did not work AT ALL with the GeForce 3.
Only the test application worked.

So I installed my old Voodoo2 (combined with a 4MB S3 PCI videocard) to see if that really was a "GeForce-only" problem.

And indeed - on the Voodoo2 the Wicked3D drivers worked well as planned.

Performance

Of course the stereo mode is a quite a hit in your performance when we measure it in framerate. We did some tests to reflect this.

First of all, bare in mind that the performance does not depend on your stereoglasses, but on the driver you use. We did some quick benchmarks on Windows 98, because the NVIDIA stereo driver sometimes still has problems with Windows XP. (The Wicked3D driver also does only support Windows 98.)

We will do a separate article about NVIDIA Stereo drivers soon, that's why we only made tests with 3DMark 2001 SE at 1024x768x32.

Test system:

- Athlon C 1.4 GHz @ 1.4 GHz
- Abit KT7A mainboard @ 133MHz FSB
- 256MB of Tonicom PC-166 SDRAM
- SB Audigy Player
- Windows 98 SE

Drivers:

- NVidia Detonator 28.32, no FSAA, no AF
- Via 4in1 4.39beta

We used the following videocards for testing:

- Elsa Erazor X (GeForce 256 SDRAM)
- MSI Starforce 822 (GeForce 3)
- Creative Labs 3D Blaster MX 440 (GeForce 4 MX 440)

As you can see in the above charts the stereo mode is a huge hit for the performance. In 1024x768x32 the stereo mode drains the performance down by 60% here (with all tested videocards!), you definitely need a GeForce 3-class or better videocard to keep all current games playable at this resolution with full quality.

But don't let you impress by these examples, in several games the performance drop will not be that big.

If you want to see some benchmark details then click on the thumbnails below.

- Elsa Erazor X (GeForce 256 SDRAM)
  standard: 120MHz / 166MHz, overclocked: 133MHz / 175MHz

no stereo

stereo

stereo + overclock

- MSI Starforce 822 (GeForce 3)
  standard: 200MHz / 460MHz, overclocked: 250MHz / 550MHz

no stereo

stereo

stereo + overclock

- Creative Labs 3D Blaster MX 440 (GeForce 4 MX 440)
  standard: 270MHz / 400MHz, overclocked: 300MHz / 450MHz

no stereo

stereo

stereo + overclock

 

Some technology and background

Before we want to come to a conclusion we have to talk about some other things.

• eDimensional are producing their glasses in Hong Kong.
  In earlier days the E-D glasses were based on the H3D/Wicked3D glasses, but now they're different in several parts:
  - the dongle is different from the old H3D adapter
  - it supports more modes of 3D
  - it supports different kinds of media
  - the design has changed for better reliability and functionality

• The glasses use a technology called "sync doubling" to create the stereo effect. (here you have the reason for the huge performance drop when you use Stereo3D)

  Sync doubling arranges the left and right eye images up and down. It will render two images at the same time. (which should be the "two slightly different pictures" that are necessary to create the stereo effect)
  
  One image is situated on top of the rendered frame, one is on the bottom. The trick of sync doubling is to place an additional v-sync between each of the "subimages". That's where "sync-doubling" got its name from: because of the additional v-sync the whole sync rate gets doubled.
  
  Now these two subimages are being interlaced and then drawn synchronized to the refresh rate. (the shutterglasses are synced to this too)

  Be sure that you have a monitor that supports at least 100Hz in your preferred resolutions.
   

• The dongle and IR transmitter get their power from videocard via the monitor connector. (You cannot use the DVI connector for this!)
  
  If you have one of the older videocards that do not support this then you have to use the power adaptor. Otherwise your pc might not boot because the videocard cannot be initialized.

 

Conclusion

Remember, on the first page of the review you could read:

Founded in mid 2000, eDimensional, Inc. has been focused on providing a quality economical, yet extremely effective tool for the average PC user to greatly enhance his or her multimedia experience.

After playing games with the E-D glasses for hours now, in all honesty we can say "Yes, they really enhanced my multimedia experience",
Stereo3D with the E-D glasses surely is a fine thing to own.

The glasses work very well and they are good and comfortable to wear (the size is adjustable, there are two sets of bows coming with the package). They even are good to wear when you already have to use eyeglasses, you simply put the E-D glasses over your eyeglasses.

The ghost effect nearly can't be noticed (even though you can make it noticeable with a trick, but during gaming you won't notice it), they are even better than my 3D Revelator glasses. At least with some driver tweaking you can get rid of this effect.

But before you get your pair of E-D glasses you should be aware of the following facts:

1. Your monitor should support at least 100Hz in your preferred resolutions. The best would be that it can do 140Hz.

2. Your videocard should be powerful enough to play current games at reasonable resolutions.
   At least a GeForce 2 Pro / Radeon 7500 or similar should be yours.

   For older games or smaller resolutions the required MHz power is not that big. (I'd think a RivaTNT2-like videocard with a 600MHz CPU should be rather okay for games like Counterstrike)

3. Your monitor should either use no DDC signal or the DDC2 signal, because the E-D glasses will be controlled by the DDC1 signal.
   
   Ask your monitor vendor to find this out.
   (Usually all new monitors should fullfill this requirement)

When your system fulfills these requirements they you'll have much fun with the eDimensional E-D shutterglasses. It really is an awesome experience and makes gameplay so much more enjoyable.

E-D glassed can be bought from eDimensional, the wireless version will sell for $99.95 and the wired version will cost you $69.95
If you have enough money then better go for the wireless version, this way you won't have problems with that cable flying around in your field of view...