Modern usage and downloads?

[ThreeDeeJay]

Hi there. The ReadMe mentions "display on any 3D device". Does that include 3D Vision, at least in a generic way like Tridef 3D?
I've always been puzzled by Grand Theft Auto IV's -stereo launch parameter and initially I thought it was meant for 3D Vision (considering GTA5 supported it natively), but I could never make it work (besides 3D Vision automatic and the HelixMod fix) and I just came across a post that implies the 3D mode may have actually be meant for iZ3D: https://www.rage3d.com/board/index.php?threads/official-nvidia-3d-iz3d-or-other-solution-stereo-thread.376225/page-208#post-8925208

Also are the compiled binaries available to download anywhere?
I tried compiling on GitHub actions but it fails because it targets an ancient VS not available in any of their current runners.

[bo3b]

All good questions. I don't know. I never used iZ3D specifically so only have a rough idea of what it could do.

I've driven through the iZ3D code base a fair amount, and it has a handful of other alternate outputs, including multiple anaglyph variants, but as far as I know it never had a 3D Vision output. Direct competitor to the hardware they wanted to sell, so not surprising. Just like with Acer, the software being subsizided by hardware sales is a terrible business model.

I've got the original iZ3D driver on my server at: https://www.bo3b.net/iz3d/

Might or might not run, no idea about those binaries, but maybe worth playing with. I know their driver has some really wild kernel level hackery, so odds of running on Win10 are low. They used an injection model instead of wrapping. I never got this building because it needs a specific driver level certificate to be authorized. I got that cert from the original guy Madshi who is a 3D friend, but ran into some other driver level problems like needing some weird Microsoft DDK that required something like a business license or some madness. (Can't quite recall, been a long time.)

In any case- what I found after doing some code inspection was that their DX9 support was excellent and gave very good results, but their DX11 support was not quite complete and would require more dev work to bring it up fully. Nowadays with geo-11, there is not much incentive to do that.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Nice, perhaps it'd be handy to upload the files into Github releases as a mirror, along with any other relevant files like guig's iZ3D Archive.7z which contains the trial reset and was posted here but the link's now dead.

I saw a screenshot and I'm hoping this can work with 3DV

The same way Tridef 3D works with 3DV using a similar device type even on Windows 11:

Anyhow, I'll report back if I find anything interesting 👀👌
I'll leave the issue open in case other people would like to ask about this too.

[bo3b]

That's a good idea, I'll see if I can add a 'release' page with the binaries. In the meantime, you can use my server, which I keep up indefnitely. I don't trust any corporations to keep things alive as long as I want. The genuine archive is on bo3b.net. We can't trust that GitHub won't change the rules whenever they feel like it.

I had made a copy of guig's archive, and I moved it into https://www.bo3b.net/iz3d/ as well.

It's possible that they have a 3D Vision output mode, there is a 'S3DShutter' output mode as one of the code options. As seen here: https://github.com/bo3b/iZ3D/tree/master/OutputMethods/S3DShutter

They maybe invoke 3D Vision from alternate method that I don't know about. There is some ancient approach of tagging every frame with a special stereo signature bytes to enable 3D, but I can't recall if that invoked Auto mode or Direct Mode.

I can say for sure they don't do the necessary NvAPI_Stereo_SetDriverMode(NVAPI_STEREO_DRIVER_MODE_DIRECT) call that would be a normal Direct Mode output.

There is some support for 120Hz projectors as well. So at least in principle I think you might be able to get WibbleWobble to activate the glasses, even if 3D Vision doesn't run.

[bo3b]

OK, made a 'Release' of the old binaries here on Github as another backup of the files.

If you run across other binaries or anything else that should be added, please let me know.

If you get something running, I'd be interested in your opinion of how it looks in comparison to other variants.

Base game list they supported is found here.

Edit: Worth reading that original mtbs3d.com thread, there are also suggestions there that 3D Vision hardware was supported. John105 reported that he got it working using the trial.

Good text game list provided by Guig as well.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Absolutely, will do! 👌

[ThreeDeeJay]

Been trying it for a couple hours but I can't even get the anaglyph mode working.
And 3D Vision seems to hijack even the iZ3D dynamic test (the one with the iZ3D logo spinning), and turning 3DV off while keeping a windowed 3DV app running as the workaround mentioned in that thread to let iZ3D handle stereoization while still keeping the emitter/glasses shuttering doesn't work because as soon as I turn off 3DV, the windowed app also becomes 2D and 3D mode disengages. StrobeLight (permanent lightboost) didn't help either.

And I know it was mentioned before but I did get a BSOD the first time I installed it 👀💦
Btw I'm on Windows 11 23H2 with driver 425.31 with an RTX 2080 Ti which is probably the best middle ground for a modern-ish 3DV compatibility setup, but I reposted this in the 3D Vision discord server so maybe someone else might have better luck. 🤞

[bo3b]

OK, worth a look for sure. Thanks for experimenting.

This matches what I remember- I don't think it works on Win10 or 11. Maaaybe 8.1, but we know for sure it works on Win7. Did you set the compatibility flags for the exe installer to Win7? Probably no effect, because the part that needs Win7 compatibility is the kernel driver itself.

Can you set up a dual-boot with Win7? Or maybe have an old machine lying around?

When I'm trying to debug blockers like this, my technique is to keep narrowing the scope down and moving to smaller and smaller test cases that were known to work. If I think it's particularly hard, I'll jump as far back as I can to a known working setup, and then move in new changes piecemeal to find where it fails so I can debug the simplest scenario. I don't think it's possible to solve problems like this using a scattershot approach.

In this case, I think it's diving straight into the deep end to try to get it working on Win11. Too many changes, too much time. Microsoft no longer gives a shit about backward compatibility. Worth trying as the top level experiment, but not a surprise that you can't find a combo to work. In this case, I'd say the driver did not install at all- because you are getting the exact same results you would without it running, by 3DV Automatic doing the stereo.

So in this case, I'd recommend jumping all the way back to the simplest setup: clean Win7, running there in Anaglyph, no 3DV installed. Then try to add in new variables like 3D Vision, and maybe OS upgrade. Doing this approach, you learn how it previously worked, and what to look for. You could play with fixed DX9 games and see if it seems worth the effort. I think this is the optimal debugging strategy because it's a hard problem. And we also know it has some sort of driver level certificate that might have expired and block it altogether today.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Hmm, to be honest dual booting sounds kinda tedious, especially because I'm not sure if it's worth the effort and from a practical perspective I might not even use it if it won't work on Windows 11 because rebooting to switch to a Win7 partition would break the 3DV driver (425.31) which is already tedious enough to constantly reinstall to fix lol.

That said, I also take a similar approach when tracking down regressions so when I get a chance, I'll definitely try reinstalling with Win7 compatibility and set up a virtual Win7 machine where I could probably change the date to see if it helps with expired certificates without a ton of features breaking (usually internet/browsing) or going haywire on the host.

In the meantime, I've been looking for comparison/test reports comparing the 2.
This person claims 3DV should be disabled to use iZ3D so maybe 3DV wasn't natively compatible, at least back then:
https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7777#p7777
And there's some screenshots comparing both drivers here https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=31794#p31794
@cybereality Any lasting impressions on iZ3D? And any idea if it could work on modern systems with our without 3D Vision? 👀

EDIT: Also found a bunch of recordings on youtube which I can load in PotPlayer though quality from ~15 year old vids is rough lol

[cybereality]

Not sure, cause I haven't looked at it in years, but I recall (at the time) the software stopped working and even anaglyph mode didn't work. I believe it used some sort of licensing system (and the servers are gone when the company went under) but even bypassing that might not be much help, cause it's DX9 and probably wouldn't work on modern systems without extensive work (and no source code). Didn't seem worth pursuing. I mostly used DDD back then (outside of official Nvidia driver) since it was better than IZ3D in some ways, but their driver was pretty solid. I'm just not sure it's worth that much after so many years.

[ThreeDeeJay]

I see. So I'll try older versions. I did also try the "experimental" version because it was the one someone reported worked with 3D Vision but I had no luck either.

The licensing might not be a problem because the devs posted a trial reset method and even an automated tool, which Bo3b uploaded to releases here: https://github.com/bo3b/iZ3D/releases/latest

And you mean it didn't work on other backends? I know Bo3b mentioned DX11 was experimental/unfinished, but I was also curious about DX10 and the wrapper for older versions, and OpenGL, all of which is in the source code posted here btw, unless you mean they missed something?

And who knows, maybe some of this code can be salvaged and repurposed into something like say, "geo-9" 👀
Because helixmod was never open sourced, right? and even if they did, I think it relied on 3DV driver so a generic Geo3D alternative would be nice.

[cybereality]

Right, so I think they did start with newer DX version but that was never finished, or working as well as DX9. Guess that would have been around 2010-ish, but they went under shortly after. You could probably getting it working, sure, it's just that it hasn't been updated in like 10 years, and without the source code seems like it would be way too much effort when there's other options that already work better.

[ThreeDeeJay]

and without the source code seems like it would be way too much effort when there's other options that already work better.

I'm confused. that's what this repo contains, doesn't it?
Or are you saying that there's some source code missing?
I read RAGEdemon got Vadim and the iZ3D crew to open source it, and then passed it along to bo3b who then uploaded it here.

But I agree, there are already working alternatives like dgvoodoo + geo-11, though the former breaks 3DV fixes, can introduce artifacts and performance degradation, and its repo has been archived and development put on hold indefinitely. and even though it's supposed to, geo-11 was never open sourced because of reasons™️

I've read a lot of reports of games looking great with iZ3D so maybe they took an efficient approach to stereoization that might be worth some hassle, at least to some extent because I don't wanna have to maintain a retro PC/partition just to play some games, unless I eventually come across a game I really want to play but that that was only fixed in iZ3D. So who knows, maybe there's something in the source code that could be useful if you ever decide to make a Geo3D plugin. I think @BlueSkyDefender has been working on one ("Shift3D" I think it's called) 👀

[bo3b]

I got it running on a Win7 boot, including using 3D Vision glasses.

It was kind of rough and ready, but good enough to get a feel for a couple of games. I've got an ancient gaming laptop with a GTX980 that I remembered I'd made a Win7 dual boot, and I'd already installed iZ3D back then.

Can't recommend it. Win7 is really out of support, as in the only browser that runs is FireFox. Steam is dead, unless you happen to have it installed like I did. The version there still runs and installs games but says it's going to die in 0 days. I don't know how you'd even get Steam installed on a clean Win7. Other apps like EA or Ubi are just MIA. GoG can work because of offline installers.

I also can't recommend it because in testing I don't think it's sufficiently better than 3DV at doing stereo to justify the work.

I'm sure that I could bring this back up if I wanted to, I can replace the madchook library with a modern version and rip out the kernel driver parts. Getting injection working would be tedious and annoying, so getting it to attach to games would be the pain point.

After getting it running, I experimented with a couple of games, and also read all their built in documentation. The basic problem here is that it is a sort-of 3DV clone, and does not fix much in the games themselves. So for example in L4D2, it's 90% of the way there, including shadow fixes, but stuff like the sun are at wrong depth. In TheBall, the character shadows are wrong, and did not fix with the profile settings. Both of those games have built in iZ3D profiles.

So I think where it stands is that it is roughly a 3DV clone, with some similar heuristics on the shader fixes, like not stereoizing square render targets to allow shadows to be fixed. It doesn't have any general purpose mechanism like HelixMod to actually fix shaders, and as near as I can tell the experience is essentially the same as 3DV out of the box- same sorts of broken effects, with about 90% working.

Back in the day, it might very well have been better at some games than 3DV because of different techniques, but I think it is not as good as we would want nowadays; having been spoiled with hand-fixed HelixMod games.

I wanted to get a good feel for where it actually stands, and whether it would be worth some heroic coding effort to bring this back to life. At least in my judgment, I think the answer is no. If, or when, DX9 path in NVidia drivers dies, that would be a good time to bring this back. But since 3DV is still running even today on Win11 in modern drivers, there is not enough advantage here to do that work.

[bo3b]

BTW- Using that technique of trying to narrow the problem set to known good- I tried L4D2 as a known good, high profile game, that had a built-in iZ3D game profile. So it had some direct attention from the devs, and is maybe a metric for best-of-iZ3D. And that experience was definitely good, but not flawless. I guess I was half-expecting flawless, but it's much closer to a no-HelixMod 3DV fix.

I was using a Sager laptop with a real GTX980 (not mobile), on Driver 425.31, last Win7.

Here are a batch of things worth noting for anyone experimenting, including me 5 years from now when I can't remember. (Nobody cares about documentation except for me... but it might be the most important part of coding. Without docs, you just have a giant bucket of bits.)

1. Use the StaticTest in the control panel to start. It's the simplest and most reliable way to see if it's working. This reliably worked for all output modes, including the 120Hz shutter mode.

2. Next up, using the dynamic test in the control panel as next best 3D. This spins an iZ3D logo. This is worth doing because it avoids all the driver patching and injection. Good for testing different output modes.

3. The 120Hz Shutter mode does not in fact work with 3DV output hardware. It activates the monitor and runs at 120Hz, but has no ability to activate the pyramid and thus sync the glasses.

4. The glasses can be synced, sort of, by dinking around with 3DV. The technique that worked reliably for me was to

   1. Disable iZ3D driver.
   2. Have 3DV installed and working.
   3. Add the 3D Vision photoviewer app to the iZ3D blacklist, so that it would not inject into it. This allows 3D photo viewer to run without crashing.
   4. Run the 3D photo viewer to turn on 3DV and show stereo on screen and glasses.
   5. Disable 3DV in the NVidia control panel. This is strange in that it disables the 3DV Automatic injection that would crash or interfere with iZ3D... but it leaves the 3DV Photo running and syncing.
   6. Enable iZ3D driver. Doing tests like the StaticStereo test shows in-sync 3D and works on 3DV hardware. The DynamicStereo test also mostly works, but I'd get eye-flips on occasion, as the GTX980 isn't really up for this task.
   7. Run a game. I got TheBall and L4D2 running and syncing with the 3DV monitor, but it was bad. Lots of eye-flips as iZ3D got out of sync with the glasses. Could reset with Ctrl-F8 to flip eyes in iZ3D. On a GTX980, it simply can't maintain a smooth enough performance to keep this in sync. More of a proof of concept. By setting game to lowest graphics and 720p, it would run mostly reliably and not eye-flip.
   8. Alternate path was to using NVidia Profile Inspector and mark TheBall and L4D2 as Not Stereo profiles, so that 3DV would not try to run. 3DV had to be set to OnlyWhen3D games are running for NVidia Driver Profiles to be active. Using this approach, 3DV can remain enabled, and iZ3D will generate the stereo, not 3DV Automatic.

5. There is another 120Hz output mode, but it is designed with Projectors in mind. It was not clear how this might work, although I do have a H5360 that is directly supported in their hardware white-list.

6. Anaglyph kind of mostly works and is the least trouble to get working. But jesus, mary, and joseph- anaglyph is just a bad experience all around. I love 3D more than anyone, and if this was all we had, I'd have to think twice. Maybe that StereoMirror output with two monitors instead.

7. I don't have any hardware that iZ3D supported. That was the main reason I never used it, no Zalman, no iZ3D monitor, no SBS Projector (I only had frame-sequential), no AMDHD. VR worked at one point for a SBS VirtualDesktop experience I think, but I don't think VR works on Win7 anymore and can't be installed. Maybe something like OG Oculus CV1 runtime. This is why I put some effort into the 3DV glasses- they were reported as sometimes working, and it's all I've got that matches. I'll try the Viture glasses though- if it can show up as a monitor on Win7, then SBS can work.

8. I tried a couple of DX11 games including Witcher3. iZ3D has a generic profile for unknown games, so in principle this might work on untested/unknown to them games. I could not get anything that I had installed on that machine to run. All DX11 games would crash, even in Anaglyph output and 3DV disabled. I'll experiment just a bit more to finish my research.

Since I have this running on a dual-boot and it's a real bitch to get it set up, let me know if there is anything you'd want to see or have me experiment with. Now is the time, we'll never come back to this after I finish this investigation.

I will be taking some screen snapshots and will post them here and on my server for future reference.

[cybereality]

Sorry @ThreeDeeJay I haven't touched this in at least 10 years, didn't see it was open sourced (I did scroll up a bit, but didn't follow the conversation). Though I think @bo3b confirmed my comments about it being out of date in terms of trying to use on modern hardware or operating systems. You all can do what you want, but just seems like a massive effort when there are already working solutions for Windows 11 and newer drivers.