ATI Evergreen 3D Code May Soon Go Into Gallium3D

[klikklak]

Funnily enough, plucking out an eye would probably be less painful than reading this piece of 'jump off a cliff' mum logic.

How many technophiles waste money on the latest gimmicks, then go to ridiculous lengths to justify it, if only to themselves.

I'll grant you that that's a good response to the logic bit.

You're however replying with psychology, I find that distasteful. And I think my point stands, maybe you've seen avatar, didn't like it, maybe even saw a stand at best buy or whatever, but you have not played for a few hours on any system. I was willing to try it, 300€ is not something I cry at night about, if that makes me a technophile running after the latest and the greatest, so be it. Gaming in 3D works reasonably well and you get 'oh wows' every now and then. ie. It works for me.

[etnlWings]

I find that distasteful.

Well I'm pretty proud of that.

Keep in mind, you accused pretty much everyone here who disagreed with you of being ignorant of the technology and of some presupposed confirmation bias. The less said about immediately jumping to the conclusion that we're 'Luddites', the better. Those in glass armchairs shouldn't throw psychologists... or something like that.

[klikklak]

yeah, I went overboard with flamebait, but it's just that when ever 3d is mentioned, a dozen experts pop up saying that it's no good, "just wait for holograms".

[TomcaT-SdB]

Yeah, actually I work with multi-wall 3D displays quite frequently, and the focal issue is something that never really bothered me (my eye sight is pretty bad anywho, but eh). Large conference halls (theme parks and whatnot) have used passive stereo quite successfully for some time now (as rohcQaH pointed to). At 120 Hz the flicker isn't perceivable for most people (below that, the constant dim / bright can cause eye strain too)... But back on point:

The trends in consumer electronics (looking at 3D blu-ray, 3DS, stereo TV broadcasts, nvidia's nvision, etc) are heading towards stereo capable displays. Note the presence of stereo content / displays at trade shows like CES. I really like the idea of building an HTPC capable of stereo playback using free drivers.

The reason I think stereo support in the driver is important is due to the fact that content is heading in that direction, from both the gaming side and and the classic entertainment industries (movie / tv). I expect other areas to push stereo as well. Up until now, mainstream content hasn't been there to support stereo in the home, but that's rapidly changing (most / nearly all movies are shot in stereo now, TV shows are heading that way too).

Sarcasm aside, writing it off because it hasn't caught on until now is ignoring the advances in dosplays that are allow high quality stereo displays to become commodity components plus the incoming wave of consumer stereo content.

[TomcaT-SdB]

Oi, really wish there was an edit button In any case, does anyone know if the Gallium framework includes the necessary hooks to support active stereo?

[etnlWings]

writing it off because it hasn't caught on until now

No, more like writing it off as it's strictly the purview of enthusiasts and kids and they're still iffy about the technology and in little position to be dictating (premium) hardware, respectively. There's of course the third category of people with more money than sense but these are the people who hooked their Blu[e]Ray players up with composite cables, while fawning over the picture quality and probably aren't using *nix, anyway. Considering the nature of video on *nix is one where people are thankful just to have vsync, stereoscopic 3D is just not going to become a make-or-break feature anywhere in the near future, doubly so since anyone interested in gaming already dual boots and anyone interested in video knows better than to put that BD ROM, 3D or otherwise, in the drive tray and fire up VLC.

[V!NCENT]

yeah, I went overboard with flamebait, but it's just that when ever 3d is mentioned, a dozen experts pop up saying that it's no good, "just wait for holograms".

OpenGL isn't even done yet, but let's shoot straight to stereographic 3D...

[nanonyme]

Why learn to crawl when you can flyyyy?

[V!NCENT]

Why learn to crawl when you can flyyyy?

Lllllllooooolllll

[TomcaT-SdB]

So, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, etc all have no idea where the market is going? Ummm, ok. The point being, that uptake in new technologies happens pretty fast when there's a muti-vendor push. At CES, most (save one that I read of) 3D displays were based on active stereo. By all accounts, every display vendor on the floor had 3D displays as their showcase.

You're also ignoring the rapid standardization of 3D formats, and the fact that 3D capable TV's are already in the sub $2000 range (albeit the DLP checkerboard stereo). IIRC, the big vendor push for 3DTV's will be happening early next year. LCD monitors with a high enough refresh rate already provide great 3D for computer users w/ sync out from the machine's card (Quadro and FireGL users).

The rest of the post can be summarized as "video on *nix sucks". If there's going to be a change in that, we need to support current features. The proprietary drivers already do support active stereo, the open drivers should also be able to make use of the hardware. I'm not saying stereo is the end-all-be-all, but it shouldn't be overlooked when examining what's important feature wise.