Review: E-D Glasses by EDimensional

[SamualT]

Review of EDimensional E-D Glasses

Company: EDimensional
Web Page: http://www.edimensional.com/
Product: E-D Glasses (3d shutter glasses)
Wired: $69.95 US
Wireless: $99.95 US

What are they
--------------
3D shutter glasses let you see stereo-3d images and games on your computer. It adds depth to your screen by providing two different views, one for each eye. They make a good cheap alternative to HMD's (Head mounted displays). If you want to be "In the action" you need stereo-3d!

How they work
---------------
Simply put: One image is shown on the screen for your right eye while the left is blocked. Then the left eye is shown an image while the right eye is blocked. This happens so fast that you can't tell how it's done. If you have a monitor that can handle at least 100hz refresh you won't see any flicker either! Viola, you are now seeing in true stereo-3d.

Out of the box
---------------
I received the wireless model. It consisted of:

1. A VGA dongle. Thing you put between video card and monitor.
2. An infrared emitter. You put this on top of your monitor.
3. One pair of wireless shutter glasses.
4. CD, booklet, and a power adapter.

I did think the little manual was slightly confusing. The EDimensional website had better instructions. Here is a tip: You do not need the power adapter for the VGA dongle unless your monitor is very old and just gets a black picture when you boot. Otherwise, just store that away. Also, the narrow side of the dongle goes to your video card. The broad side of the dongle goes to your monitor. Installation takes less than 2 minutes and you don't have to open the computer or anything like that. Very easy.

When I first got my glasses they needed batteries. The voltage tested good but the glasses didn't work till I replaced the batteries the next day. I was scared that I had got some bad glasses, but I kept the faith. The folks at EDimensional tech support responded very quickly, and with the correct advice, and even offered some free batteries. They were very nice. Kudo's to their tech support people! I think good tech support is imortant for such products.

First Impressions
------------------
The glasses have big honking shutters that give a very wide view. More than enough for my 19" Daewoo monitor. This is important because if the shutters are too narrow then your view will be clipped and you can't see the whole monitor. I was used to the old 3DTV shutter glasses which were very narrow. The E-D Glasses came as a relief. And they're so light they feel just like regular glasses. They also have adjustable length earpieces, the part that goes behind you ears. Too cool! I might add that I bought some wired E-D glasses also and they are exactly the same, with a wire that plugs into the dongle. I do use the wireless more because I like to feel unencumbered. Both are excellent though.

Soon I was veiwing stuff in stereo-3d! I couldn't have been happier. I had lots of programs that I donloaded free from the web. Picture viewers, movie viewers, all kinds of stuff. But soon I wanted to try some stereo-3d gaming. Unfortunately, I had an ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card. ATI offers no stereo-3d support at all, unlike Nvidia which has world class stereo drivers for all of their graphics cards.


Stereo-3D Drivers
-------------------
No matter what brand of shutter glasses you have you will need some stereo-3d drivers. This is software that lets you view DirectX or OpenGL in stereo-3d. This is where you might hit a "bit of a sticky wicked" as the Brits say. I have written a whole other review just on this subject. The gist of the other review was that I like the Nvidia stereo-3d drivers better than anything else I have seen. They are free for all Nvidia graphics card owners and really do work in a most excellent fashion!

Up till now, if you owned anything other than a Nvidia card you didn't have many choices.
1. Wicked3D is defunct. Their drivers are old and only for old video cards.
2. Now that Winx3D is defunct, VRCaddy will have to add some code to do page-flipping. Funny they don't mention this on their web page. I mean, you can no longer download Winx3D which VRCaddy relies on for certain functions.
3. Which leaves us with....nothing! Non-Nvidia users have nothing!

EDimensional to the rescue! EDimensional is writing some code that can be used with all video cards. Mind you, it is in the beta stage right now. If you go to their web sight you can request the latest version and they will email it to you. I have tried these drivers and they are most encouraging. I hope and pray they keep writting code and polishing what could turn out to be something great. Their new beta drivers work with DirectX as well as OpenGL. We should build temples in their honor for taking on such a task. And so far the results are very positive. What's the downside? Right now they only support over/under mode. Things looked a little scrunchy to me. And they didn't work with all the things I wanted to try. Also, at the moment you have to copy a file to each game directory to get them to work. I am not slamming them at all. They are beta drivers and may take a little while to get everything ironed out. You should acknowledge they are beta drivers before you do anything with them. In that light, they are most excellent. EDimensional will find no bigger booster than me for this software, even if I do think it has a way to go yet before they are finished. BTW, what a boon to EDimensional if they do turn out some really good drivers. No other 3D glasses maker has such software!

Right now, I think the Nvidia drivers are much better and that is what I'm using on my new Nvidia graphics card. I bought this card just to try the Nvidia stereo-3d drivers. I am now a huge Nvidia fan. So much so that I'm dumping my ATI Radeon 9700. With the Nvidia stereo-3d drivers I have full screen, non-flickering, perfect stereo-3d. The first thing you should do is get a print-out of all the hot-keys. These are keys that help you adjust things during the game. You won't need them much. It looked so good I spent 2 hours last night playing Descent-3 and didn't even care how badly I played. It's much different in true stereo-3d and you'll have to learn to play most of those games all over, more the fun! The Nvidia drivers only support page-flipping mode for shutter glasses but if you set your monitor to 100hz refresh you won't see any flickering at all. It's very smooth. Also, more things work with these drivers and they are very stable. It can't get much better than this.


Conclusion for E-D Glasses
--------------------------
1. + Very light weight and adjustable.
2. + Big honking shutters to see big monitors.
3. + Excellent tech support.
4. + Decent price and good value compared to others.
5. + Easy to install and use.
6. + They are actively writing drivers that can be used by all graphics cards! No one else is doing that.
7. + EDimensional drivers should also work for Nvidia cards also.

I am very impressed with the E-D Glasses. I did buy a Nvidia graphics card to get the most out them though. I think that is a good strategy no matter what brand of 3D Glasses/HMD you get. I do hold hope for the EDimensional beta drivers though. I think with a little work that EDimensional could be much more than just a company that sells shutter glasses. They might even end up licensing that software to others. In any case, wheather their beta drivers come through or not, I highly recommend the E-D Glasses by EDimensional.


P.S. I have no ties to this company at all, besides owning a pair of their glasses. I have only owned 3 different types of shutter glasses so take my review for what it's worth. Also, I don't claim to be any kind of guru on drivers or software of any type. And last, I believe everything I have said to be true...but I could be wrong ;-)

"This is where you might hit a "bit of a sticky wicked" as the Brits say."

It's "sticky wicket", referring to the cricket term

[mustrum]

Hehe i am waiting for my geforce FX 5900 to arrive. Using a Radeon 9700 PRo now and it made me a huge ATI fan.
My new card will be a downgrade but guess what: I bought those edimensional glasses and got them to work with one game only (SOF2).

Enough for me to sacrifice a bit PS2.0 performance for nvidias 3D driver.
God those glasses rock!

[butterwaach]

lol!

flash your card to 5950 ultra and there you have your upgrade!!!!

I have the ATI x800xt-plat. ed. on order. Was wondering in anybody knows if it will be compatible with the E-D goggles? If so..I'll definatly be getting a set of goggles. I'm always looking for ways to enhance my game play to realism. Thnks all!

[Glidefan]

Well i don't think so, at least not with the current set of drivers from E-D. As far as i know, they have problems with most DirectX 9 games. Of course we would need to see the card.

That's too bad..was really liking the goggles. Well...here's another speedbump on the road to Life-Like Gaming. Hopefuly there'll be more support for ATI cards in the future...hopefully.
<<<<<

[Glidefan]

Well they are supposed to be working on their driver.

i have x800xt pe and on the wbsite it states, they work with ATI cards, ill let you know in a few days also, i got a pair of these badboys too
http://www.essentialreality.com/demo_hi_popup.asp

[Unclebob]

It won't work very well at all. Even if you mess about with powerstrip and do everything you can.

Please do not waste your money, your time and a lot of stress.

If you want stereo3d use Nvidia.

Their drivers are
mature
work with nearly all games
support FSAA
support vertexes
support OpenGL and DirectX
support a custom 'in picture' crosshair
support custome game configurations
have test applications to make sure things are working
are released in step with their latest drivers (so if you use 45.6 you need to use the additional 45.6 stereo driver)

ATI have no declared plans to support any of this technology. edim do what they can but they just do not have the clout, history, patents and expertise that Nvidia have.

I have a DLP projector projecting full immersive 3d onto a 100inch+ screen with edim glasses and have ditched my 9800pro for a gf3 for the experience.

And what a great experience it is...

[Glidefan]

Hehe. iMAX at home?

[Unclebob]

Yep

a tiny amount of blue bleed but other wise amazing.

That 4 inch Nividia logo that jumps out of a 17inch screen and hangs in space is jaw dropping the first time you see it.

A 4ft one on a 10ft diagonal screen hanging in space 3 ft from the screen is fing brillient

Yahhh! That's some..uhhh....view!

(*slight envy here!)

[Glidefan]

Oh man! with a bit of tweaking (or perhaps without that even!) games will be totally .... have no words for it! I mean c'mon... with that screen... i thought it was great on my 19" monitor...

[Unclebob]

Do you think some anaglyph pics would work? I'll try some photos to give you an indication...

[Glidefan]

Well i don't have anaglyph pics. But you can send the two frames individually. i can work with those

I have owned these glasses for almost 2 years i think and all i have to say if you have a lot of money and u just want to amaze your family and friends then go for it, but it dies down very quick and you will just chuck it iup the attic. When a new game comes out you will want to see wow this will look amazing in 3d, so u dust out the glasses and get ready to play....WTF the drivers for the glasses are so old that the new game wont run, quickly email e-dimensional and they will say Hold on Son the game has just arrived a month ago give us some time. And you will wait and ....... wait untill u just decide to throw the glasses in to the attic again.

But the games do look awesome with the glasses on but if you want to play any game seriously then the glasses will go flying.

These goggles are really really impressive. It works VERY FINE and even more if you have a powerfull NVIDIA graphic card.

I used them for more than a year with my old Geforce 4, and I was totally amazed by the result.

But, don't expect too much because, if you're playing an fps for example, then, there is 99,99% of chance that your perfect headshot right between the eyes of your enemy finishes in the wall... effect guaranteed. So, you have 2 choices :
1-you learn how to shoot the wall in order to make a headshot... (it's hard, believe me)
2-you don't enable Stereo 3D when playing these king of games.

BUT, IF YOUR A FLIGHT SIMER (MS Flight Simer 2004 in my case), YOU WILL BE TOTALLY AND AMAZED AND ESTOMACED BY WHAT YOUR ARE GOING TO EXPRERIENCE. Learn you ingame hotkeys to set the stereo ad you wish and ENJOY because it's really really REALLY wonderfull
I caught myself several times trying to catch my F-14 Tomcat out of the monitor...
The effect produced by these glasses is too excellent!

ANYWAY BE CAREFULL. I wanted more power and so I bought a ATI 9800PRO, I'm currently testing the new beta drivers from E-D (for non nvidia card exclusively) and the few that I saw of it, I can say that this is BIG ****..., but perhaps I was wrong, I'm going to make some further testing right now, so, if the result is good enough, wou'll see me again...

see ya.

[Rodolfo]

I'm totally satisfied with my glasses. I own them now for oven a year and it works fine with my racing sims like GPL anf F1C 99-02 from EA. Some mods are a bit frame hungry, so I don't use the glasses with them, but GPL is unbelieveable and F1C and some of the mods too.

I use 61.77 drivers with MSI Geforce 5900XT.

Rolf

Hi ATI users of ED-Glasses first,
and everyone else too...

So, I'm back with my testings and ED has recently put the new "Release-3.9.2.0-150.zip" file containing last drivers for their goggles.

And, I can say that these are QUALITY drivers! Yes, I have tested with MAFIA and it does his job very correctly. But there'i a bug. If you want to use a clean image, be sure to turn of the AA and AF settings you put in your specific ATI driver.
For exaple, I'm using DNA-drivers 2.8.4.8, and I have to put AA and AF to "Application controled" for 3D Stereo to work properly, otherwise, I get loads of artefacts and 0.5FPS... Unplayable.
Feel free to use the ingame AA and AF settings if it contains some because, these won't do any noticeable bug.
I'm going to test them under Flight Simulator 2004 but I'm sure I'll have to disable my DNA driver's AA and AF too. I'll see.
I'll also do a test with Max PAYNE 2 which is a directX 9 game to see what's happening...
But I can already say these drivers now work correctly with ATI cards...

Tests to continue...

See ya'

Gotta say I havent had such a good experience with the E-D glasses. Sorry heheh. But I feel I should put up a warning for others trying to get them going on DLP projectors...
I have been swapping drivers and changing frequencies and screensizes, and I am getting a phasing happen that I have found seems to happen with alot of people with DLP projectors. It seems to be about 1 Hz out at 60Hz (ie in minute cycles, the 3D fades out to double view then inverted view before going back to 3D view). It is a darn shame, because as you turn the test on it is fine and as UncleBob says seeing the E spin ion the middle of the room is fantastic, except on mine and a few others it is short lived. ED support after a while give up and say their support doesnt cover projectors.
The shame is I really get the feeling I am so close and it is almost there, but almost isnt good enough.

Uncle bob I dont spose you could tell me the exact set up (freq / screen res / driver versions / NVidia set up) of your PC / Projector so I can try that can you?

Anyway I thought I should leave a review in case everyone wanted to run out and buy a DLP / shutter glasses solution - be aware and get uncle bobs set up and not just any DLP.

[Unclebob]

X1
Native
800*600 some blue ghosting - antidote adjust colour
1024*762 perfect - cropped image though adjust screen to get centered
Asus 6800 Gamers Edition 61.77 drivers 61.77 Stereo Drivers (these are actually a control panel enabler as the stereo aspect is written in the main driver set)
XP SP1
DirectX 9c
Absolutly no edim or ati software on the 'puter.
Screen Ikea white blackout blind
Screen size 7-8ft by c6ft

For DVDs and films absolute quality
For general gaming ist 800*600 with AA and AF - its so good friends just sit and watch...No jaggies brillient image quailty, characters 6ft tall in fps's...

This is the coming thing.

Mainstream in perhaps 2 years given price drops on dlp projectors, faster response time LCDs which will move into LCD projectors, OLEDs (with their very fast reponse time) moving into projectors as well.

Its close, at the moment its just fiddly and expensive. £500 for my X1.

I also have a geforce 3 powered 3d holodeck in my living room thanks to nvidia. It's gaming zen. (Athalon1.4/Cybertronic H3D/i-o glasses/Optoma739EZ/GeForce3)

Hey Crew :

I think this thread has been hi-jacked as of late ! Interesting info however , about DLP projection etc . Perhaps a thread could be launched or posted to direct traffic there ?

Anyway , I bought the E-D glasses because of high marks from the reviewer , and no bad reviews (no reviews at all !!!) from other sites .

The topic is the review , and I noticed 2 broken links to the control panel apps . I also noticed the reviewer mention we could use the control apps , but then used the supplied stereo "driver" . I wished he would have also shown another method too , to help when new forcewares are out , but no new stereo drivers yet .

Also , the link to Detonators takes us to Forceware drivers . This can be very confusing to newbies , like myself .

Still , a good and fair review , and since the market is limited , and glasses info is rare , I think this review really helps people to make that tough decision about E-D glasses .

Thanks
Dynamo

[mopheta]

I bought edimensional glasses 1 month ago. Before, I have a problem with my 6800 nvidia card. This card don´t work very well with 61.77/61.77 drivers, and I´m using now 66.93/61.77, and only can view 3D in opengl games.

You must see Doom3 runing in a 6800 with 1024x768x32+2xAA... I have no words. The hot keys give us a lot of fun, doing different perspectives. This glasses are not 100% real, but this is 200% better than play with nothing.

The only **** is the price, and the difficult to find in shops. I bought directly to edimensional (I live in Europe).

There are something negative: once you have play with glasses, to play without is not fun. I only play opengl games (Doom3 & IL-2).