Review: E-D Glasses by EDimensional

Discussion in '3D Stereo and VR Gaming Section' started by SamualT, Jul 23, 2003.

  1. SamualT

    SamualT Member

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    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 ;-)
     
  2. RocketMBA

    RocketMBA Guest

    "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 :)
     
  3. mustrum

    mustrum Guest

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    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!
     
  4. butterwaach

    butterwaach Guest

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    lol!

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

  5. sak28wa

    sak28wa Guest

    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!
     
  6. Glidefan

    Glidefan Don Booze Staff Member

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    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.
     
  7. sak28wa

    sak28wa Guest

    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.
    :pc1: :cop: <<<<<
     
  8. Glidefan

    Glidefan Don Booze Staff Member

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    Well they are supposed to be working on their driver.
     
  9. NvidiAti

    NvidiAti Guest

  10. Unclebob

    Unclebob Member

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    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...
     

  11. Glidefan

    Glidefan Don Booze Staff Member

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    Hehe. iMAX at home? :D
     
  12. Unclebob

    Unclebob Member

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    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
     
  13. sak28wa

    sak28wa Guest

    Yahhh! That's some..uhhh....view! :supercool :eek2:

    (*slight envy here!)
     
  14. Glidefan

    Glidefan Don Booze Staff Member

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

    Unclebob Member

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

  16. Glidefan

    Glidefan Don Booze Staff Member

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

    janagan Guest

    Waste of money

    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.
     
  18. Lob

    Lob Guest

    I don't agree with you Janagan

    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.
     
  19. Rodolfo

    Rodolfo Member

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    GPU:
    Palit 5X 970 H14G2J
    Best results in racing sims

    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
     
  20. Lob

    Lob Guest

    Reporting Back

    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'
     

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