DCS and Nvidia 3D

[sweinhart3]

Has anyone been able to get Nvidia Stereo 3D working for Blackshark2 or A10C? I cant seem to get them to work and Ive tried doing some registry edits that someone posted awhile ago which did not work.

[beers]

Yes, been able to use 3D vision (red/blue glasses) since first release of BS, works fine in A10 as well.

 

just turn it on in the nvidia settings and then clear your desk area of any spillable, because after about 5 minutes in there, your connection to the 'real' world gets a bit fuzzy ;)

 

If you can view the sample 3d picts and the setup animation you should be able to do DCS in 3D. Kicks frames in the gut, but you might be able to get reasonable frames with it in SLI (although I imagine if the sli-cloud thing is still an issue that this will give you headaches)

[DanKurt]

Interesting.....This may be a stupid question but do you need a 3D monitor for this or is it an effect produced by the graphics card?

[beers]

It is primarily a feature of the video card. With nVidia you can do the red/blue glasses without the special monitor. The step up from that requires a monitor that will do 120Hz refresh rate and active glasses that sync to the screen. If your card will do it your nVidia control panel will have a 'set up stereoscopic 3D' item on the left. If you have a pair of the red/blue glasses it is worth playing around with for a few minutes.

[robbc]

With nVidia you can do the red/blue glasses without the special monitor. The step up from that requires a monitor that will do 120Hz refresh rate and active glasses that sync to the screen. If your card will do it your nVidia control panel will have a 'set up stereoscopic 3D' item on the left.

 

3D Vision is stereoscopic 3D and it requires a monitor that will do 120Hz refresh rate and active shutter glasses. The stereoscopic 3D wizard in the control panel is for setting up 3D Vision.

 

The red/blue glasses are passive

Edited November 19, 2011 by robbc

[DanKurt]

Cheers for the info chaps. I have a Nvidia GTX570 but not sure if the monitor refresh rate is 120Hz.

Is there a way of finding this out?

Its OK I found it in the de-structions. Its unfortunately 60Hz......aw pooh!

Edited November 20, 2011 by DanKurt

[beers]

I think I might have spoken too soon, I cannot get Nvidia 3D to work with BS2 or A10 1.1.1.0. I am just using the "3D Vision Discover", the red & blue glasses, and when either program starts it has the odd slightly-red tint to everything, and the normal messages display, 3D keyboard shortcuts work so I am sure that stereoscopic 3D is in action, but there is no off-set in the image no matter what I do with the depth (or the convergence). The test patterns & sample picture work fine but no DCS 3D. DCS is just the normal image with weird colors. :(

 

Anyone have any luck?

[lazduc]

I have a 120hz monitor and the nvidia wireless glasses. I cannot get BS or A10c to work. I can get the 3d vision to work..its very cool. I have 2 nvidia 560's in sli...first time I tried with A10c it crashed my system...I actually had to remove one of the video cards before I could reboot as it trashed my video drivers completely. I will wait till the technology matures a little more before I go through that again...somehow the DCS programs do not play well with the 3d and sli setups.

[beers]

Well, if no one speaks up with verification of successful implementation of nVidia stereoscopic 3D then I think our good friends at ED should consider this a bug. It worked in previous versions of BS and A-10C. And, damn, those 120hz 3D monitors are getting cheaper, would have been a nifty holiday season present to myself ... guess that will wait a few more months :(

[PeterP]

Ever thought about that the NVidea 3D drivers only work with 32bit programs and fail with native 64bit applications ?

 

I'm on ATI and the free IZ3D driver also fails with DCS 64bit - but work OK when used with a 32 bit install.

 

I have a dual-boot system XP32/win764 and installed DCS in XP- copied the x86/bin files over to my win7-64 installations to be able to run 64 and 32bit in win7-64...

And I get 3D also only in 32bit.

 

So I would be very carefully to blame ED for this and call it a "BUG".

[agrasyuk]

i did try it. (here) active shutter 3d glasses. enabled in Nvidia settings an tested . apparently my TV can do 60Hz refresh only in 720p and goes to 24frames in 1080p. regardless, I got a massive drop in FPS (gtx470 here), near unplayable. 3d effect was there (confirmed by another viewer behind me) but i might say quite subtle and not worth the performance hit. for now i'm skipping 3d ...

no HDR, but i did not try to lower visual setting.

[lazduc]

Tried again last night....the 3d works but the resolution/size and sync is all off. If you cross your eyes and just look into the cockpit you get the full 3d effect...cool..major headache if you do it longer than 30 seconds but the second you shift your gaze out the cockpit the 3d effect is gone and you see 2 frames...crossing your eyes again you can see the clouds and again it is cool but do not do this over 30 seconds...

 

It appears that the seperation of the two frames is to much as they cannot come together with the glasses, if this makes any sense. I tried different resolutions and screen ratios but nothing worked..too bad as when again crossing your eyes and seeing the effect is real cool. I have the wireless glasses and a 120hz Acer monitor. By the way it is guite a hassle to set up the 3d in sli and then get everything to sync in with a program...

 

If anyone has a driver that works please list it here and let us know. I am using 285.62 nvidia...which does not work correctly in 3d with DCS. I have two 560's in sli.

 

Lazduc

[beers]

I think PeterP might be on to something with that 32/64 idea. Are those of you with success running 32?

 

I'm running A10 1.1.1.0, BS2 and nvidia 285.62

 

(and PeterP, i totally agree. "if" "I think", ... i would be more than happy if someone illustrates what setting or whatever that could fix the problem.)

[PeterP]

Thats also made me wonder -

Everyone says that "It" isn't working and takes the time to write down specs of the monitor and so on - but doesn't write a single line about the operatingsystem and the version of DCS they are using...

 

...who expect a serious answer how to debug this?!

[GregP]

I can verify that Nvidia 3D Stereoscopic does indeed work with DCS. I recently bought an Acer HN274Hbmiiid 27" 120hz monitor that came with Nvidia 3D Vision glasses, and I gave 3D in DCS a try (64-bit version 1.1.1.0) with the 285.62 drivers. It works, and is pretty damn cool, but of course kills FPS, dropping it by half.

 

Over the weekend I added a second video card to my system, so I suppose I ought to give 3D a try again and see if my FPS is more acceptable. I don't see myself actually playing DCS in 3D, though, because then I'd be stuck with a single monitor again instead of the triple-screen setup I prefer to use.

 

I may not have time to play with it until the weekend, but I'll report back when I do.

 

BTW I didn't need to do the registry hack to get it working in DCS, it just worked.

[lazduc]

Greg,

I would be interested in any problems when you enable sli when using both cards. I think possibly with two video cards the images get skewed like rendering the wrong frame...that is how it appears on my setup. Win7 64bit, 285.62 on 2 nvidia 560's, Flam Clif 2, I72600k, 8gb,sdd, acer hd235H,

nvidia wireless glasses. What are your video game settings. resolution, aspect ratio? Thanks for the reply..

Lazduc

[GregP]

lazduc, I'll try that out as soon as I can. I attempted to run the test last night and then (unrelated) my Nvidia RAID setup got corrupted, taking the entire rest of the night to correct itself, thereby locking my machine down.

 

BTW my normal resolution in DCS is 5960x1080 (3 27" plus 100 pixels bezel compensation between each monitor), with everything on high (except for Civ Traffic low, Water and Shadows medium), MSAA2x, TSSAA, HDR, cockpit shadows, etc. BUT, for 3D, I'd run just my center monitor at 1920x1080.

[lazduc]

Greg,

Too bad about the raid, the last 2 machines I haven't bothered with a raid setup...the drives now are fast enough...I guess if you raid 2 ssd drives it would be faster, but then again they will only transfer at 3.0 speeds. Back in my day(lol..I am 70, live in Vancouver, Wa but spent 1.5 years in Wash.DC in school while in the Navy..Intel and Language) the drives were Rll, MFM and even the later transfer protocols benefited with Raid setups. Now however the drives transfer at the fastest chip speed and from what I have heard do not increase in data transfer....unless you are just concerned with redundant data. Anyway, I await your reply on the SLI setup.

By the way...Merry Christmas, holidays or whatever your flavor.

Lazduc

[GregP]

Gave it another try tonight; first of all I realized that I was wrong earlier -- I did in fact do the registry change to get it working the first time. But for some reason, doing it again now doesn't work -- no matter what I try, even in single-card mode, I can't get 3D working again. I'll keep at it but I'm stumped.

 

Yeah, the RAID I run just for data backup; I've had way too many data losses over the years and it's an easier alternative (usually) to doing regular manual backups.

 

70, eh? Man, I'm 35 and have been simming for over 20 years, and thought *I* must be one of the veterans by now. :) I guess it's all relative.

 

I'll give 3D some more try this weekend; I'm planning a full day of DCS testing ... switching out my new GTX580 3GB SLI setup for a Radeon 6970 Crossfire setup; I'm determined to ... err, determine which one is better for multi-monitor gaming in DCS once and for all.

 

Happy holidays to you too, and thanks!

[GregP]

Oooookay, finally got it sorted! I just couldn't leave it alone.

 

Turns out I was doing the wrong (or maybe half of the correct) registry change: the main one to do is this one, with this one may or may not being needed.

 

Once I got that fixed, my tests went as follows:

 

1920x1080 resolution:

single GTX 580, no 3D: 29 FPS

single GTX 580, 3D: 19 FPS

 

two GTX 580 in SLI, no 3D: 37 FPS

two GTX 580 in SLI, 3D: 28 FPS

 

And in particular, 3D using SLI did not have any problems. Image quality looked the same to me as with one card. I'm using Win7-64 with 285.79...have you tried that set yet? Maybe it's a driver issue you're having.

[beers]

Confirmed!! the regedit's GregP pointed to do the trick for me too. Thank you thank you thank you!

[lazduc]

Some success. Everything works. BUT in the cockpit the image is still double and unusable....outside views are full 3d. Too bad it will not work in the cockpit view...I tried the convergence settings but the CTRL+F6 and CTRL+F5 did not make any difference...I tried to use those setting while the game was running. Question..This is in LO FC2 and not Warthog..have not tried A10C or BS as they are on a different computer. This computer has LO FC2 so I assume you are using A10C. Have you tried LO FC2?

Lazduc

[GregP]

I have not tried LOFC2, no ... in fact I don't think I even have it installed anymore. I guess A-10C and BS are technically different engines (DCS) so perhaps that explains the difference.

[sweinhart3]

I followed the directions but still cannot get the dcs folder in regedit to be displayed. I tried the fix to show hidden folders and no go. Also I remember when there was a time I was able to see the folder and I tried the registry hack and didnt work. The instructions on that linked forum are rather confusing as to what the settings are supposed to be since some settings mentioned are apparently typos. I couldnt figure out what the correct settings are supposed to be.

[GregP]

As I understand it, the typo is that

 

StereoMemoEnabled REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (0)

 

should be

 

StereoMemoEnabled REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

 

i.e. there is no way to type in "0x00000001" but then have a "0" end up in the parenthesis. Looks like a simple typo.

 

As for why it's not working on your machine, did you do a search in your registry for "Stereo3D"? There are at least two places in the registry where it appears, but only one might have a "GameConfigs" folder in it, and it's THAT one that you want to add the 'dcs' subfolder to.

 

To make this process easier, I'm going to combine Rodney1111's two previous posts, condense, and fix the typo:

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

1) Run Regedit

 

2) Go to the address HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Stereo3D\GameConfigs\

 

I then found that there was no dcs folder. When I went to create the dcs folder it wouldn't let me because it said the folder already existed. I concluded the folder was hidden (with no immediately apparent option to unhide it).

 

Apparently programmers hide their registry folders when they don't want people fiddling with their registry settings.

 

A quick search of the net shows how to unhide reg folders.

 

Go to

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL\

 

And make sure that you have

 

CheckedValue REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

 

Once the dcs folder has been unhidden, make the data at above address look like this:

 

(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

Link1 REG_SZ Launcher.exe

StereoDX9 REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

StereoMemoEnabled REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

StereoTextureEnable REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

 

Note that you add the StereoTextureEnable and StereoDX9 values by choosing "New->DWORD" while you add the critical "Link1 REG_SZ Launcher.exe" bit by choosing "New -> Expandable String Value" (at least I think that was what I did not sure about that last one).

Edited December 15, 2011 by GregP