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| Virtual Reality in Sim-Racing Games |
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3D GLASSES
Now putting a real 3-D experience into the equation will make things a little different. While seeing how well you are able to control the view, how can it work using 3D glasses?
There are many things that have surprised me during the years of using different software and hardware. I�m always striving for the best simulation experience I can get for my money spent. I have never ever had such a surprise turning on the 3-D support with the nVidia drivers together with the eDimensional glasses. To make a long story short, I just couldn't believe my eyes. How on earth can one sit in front of the computer and actually see items in three-dimensional space? Could a pair of shutter glasses really work in doing that in a believable fashion? I have heard a lot of people having received glasses with their cards promising to deliver a good 3-D experience. Many have said it didn't work well. I have now learned to form my own opinion. If using eDimentional 3D shutter glasses at least, they couldn�t be more wrong. Although I have upgraded my computer numerous times and in various ways, I have never encountered such a vast improvement in my experience with simulations. It's very hard to describe the impact these glasses have on a racing game. When using these glasses together with a software package that uses 3D well, the result is amazing. The experience can�t be described by words alone. You have to see it to believe it.
Once again the brain takes over and fools you into believing that you are actually looking at things at various distances. Meaning if you are approaching a corner, you can actually tell if you are 20 or 50 feet away. The same goes if you�re in a tight battle on an oval because it�s no longer difficult to determine if someone is right beside you. You can easily judge the distance of another car. The depth perception is just unbelievable. Again, this was something I was very sceptical about, and again, I have learned better. In fact, every time I turn it on I�m totally amazed even after weeks of testing.
I used the NVidia 3-D software drivers for my graphic card. Not all simulators are supported in there. In many cases, one needs to tweak the settings for each game to get the desired effect. Knowing not all users read the manual that comes with the glasses, many have not been able to realize the full benefit of using these glasses. I will try to write a small guide on how to do that fast and easy.
First of all you need to set up some sort of command buttons. You do that by accessing the driver set-up screen. After installing the drivers, you will have a stereo option right in the NVidia options tab (using Win Xp), you need to set up the stereo separation buttons to quickly enable the necessary changes. As well as the convergence buttons! (Those can be found in the game configurations screen under configure hotkeys.) There are many tweaks one can do, but these two are likely to be the ones used most frequently. You need to get on the track and use the stereo separation buttons to get the track to look good in your eyes, disregarding the cockpit. If possible use a view where the cockpit isn�t visible. When you get a good 3-D view of the track using the stereo separation buttons, switch to the cockpit view and use the convergence buttons to adjust the cockpit. The cockpit initially will look totally offset and blurred but once you adjust the convergence, the cockpit will come into focus. These two setting are likely the most important to make a racing game/simulator work perfectly. I have been informed that a new driver will be released very soon that will support exporting and importing customized settings. As of now, it can�t be done, so the best I can do is to provide this little tutorial for non-supported games.
The only glasses that I have used are the eDimentional glasses so I don�t know how well any of the others work. These shutter glasses work by using your monitors refresh rate. It separates the left eye from the right to give a good 3-D impression. It does that extremely well. On my system, my monitor only could go as high as 85Hz per second. Meaning that I was seeing 42-1/2 frames with one eye and 42-1/2 frames with the other. I saw some minimal �ghosting� around some objects although it was nothing that adversely interfered with the game play. I eliminated all surrounding light sources, which seemed to help. Some flicker was apparent, especially at light parts, but you adapt to it easily. The manufacturer's recommends a refresh rate of 120Hz or more, thus giving a refresh rate per eye at 60 times per second. I could use it for hours on end without troubles or any adverse effects. This can vary though and this is just my personal experience. The bottom line is, the higher the refresh rate on the monitor, the better. If you have a monitor capable of 120Hz or more, you shouldn't experience any problems with light sources. One other thing I need to add is that the images actually appear to be of higher resolution using the glasses. Jagged edges are almost completely gone using a low resolution such as 1024x768 even without the use of anti-aliasing. When switching back to 2D I really did break out in a little giggle. Seemed silly, compared to how it looks using the glasses.
VIRTUAL REALITY IN GENERAL
We have found tracking to be a good thing when supported properly and the shutter glasses worked exceptionally well. How do those two applications work together then? Would there be a frame rate loss? Before we get to that we should examine a few of the other products on the market that don�t live up to their billing. First we have the I-O Glasses. There are many to choose from. Many are on sale at eBay, and there is a good reason why. The earlier models only support a very low resolution. Even if it takes 640 x 480 from the graphic card, it only shows half of that. If using the �fantastic� 3D option, the definition gets even worse. Look closely at what resolution is supported; anything less then 800x600 is not going to work well at all. The glasses are too old and much of the software is not supported by newer operating systems. Beware many of these items are sold for 300 dollars or more, used! It is also difficult persuading WinXP to let you use 640x480 as an output resolution. All in all having a Head Mounted Display (HMD) system that sounds unbelievable is not going to immerse you more into games than using your normal monitor screen. The alleged �Big screen� experience is no more than looking at a 17� screen at 3 feet�s away and at a much lower resolution as well. I only tried the low-resolution I-O glasses and from what I experienced, I would not recommend them. If using the very early HMD�s, you�ll notice a line in the manual saying; �you are not able to read DOS letters�. That says it all I think.
There are a few head tracker companies around that offer products to an �affordable� price as they say. One is VirtuaTrack that has a customer support system that totally disregards second hand consumers. I have written to them numerous times, and have yet to see a response. (5 weeks pending) They say they are the only ones selling it, but after doing a quick search, I found another company. The unit sells for between 300 to 499 dollars depending on the marketer. I was unable to adequately test VirtuaTrack tracker because of the lack of post-sale support.
 
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