I was lucky that my eye caught up on a nice boxed set of the original Wicked3D Eyescream set, with the H3D glasses. In the advert on Ebay the seller said the driver CD was lacking. So I encouraged the lovely chap to try finding it and he did !
So I made him a proposal outside of Ebay and we struck a deal. A few days later I was (and still am) the proud owner of a nice and complete boxed set. Of course I had to try ‘em out so I went to search for a good CRT monitor and found a 19” Iiyama capable of 1024*768@120Hz.
By using the wayback machine (internet archive) I was able to download driver updates from Wicked3D’s site back in 2000. Now I was set to test these out on the Voodoo5 retro machine.

The set was originally designed for use with V2’s but later on Wicked3D updated the drivers so all sorts of cards could be used with them, up to GF3’s. I’m still gathering parts to complete a mean V2 machine so was forced to test them out straight away on the V5 machine by using the updated drivers.

The Wicked3D engineers decided to keep the 3D effect for a “diorama”-like effect where you get the illusion that you can stick your hands inside the monitor rather than parts of the scene “flying out”. I read they made this decision to keep the additional eyestrain from wearing out your eyes. The only “pop out” effect the set generates is during the demo included with the drivers to test the set where a rotating Metabyte logo literally rotates a few inches in front of the screen.

I tested the set so far on 3 games only because I have only limited time lately: Quake 3 and the original Unreal Tournament where the first I launched. They both generate a nice effect where like I said give a diorama-like feeling. Nothing actually comes out of the monitor but you get the feeling that you can reach out and put your hands inside. UT is better in it than Q3 though. Then on to Quake II, where the set was focused on back in the days (Voodoo2 + Quake II combination). This is even better than UT in terms of 3D depth of field illusion. Only played a couple of minutes so far but am already impressed with this 12+ years old technology.

According to the reviews the best games to get a nice 3D effect where Q2, NFS II and NFS III, Tomb Raider series 1 through 3, and a couple of racing games like dethkarz and others. I think I’m gonna try out all games I have on these  ! (which will take me some time, I know, but I’m sure that a lot of them will provide so much more drama and feeling that I will be tempted to replay them completely)

First thing I’m gonna try however is another version of Quake II. H3D created a patch for Q2, making the game run in native stereo rather than the induced effect by wicked3D’s drivers. They say (have to verify) that this version of H3D Q2 is even better because this one does let effects pop out of the monitor for an even bigger 3D effect. I’m curious to find out, but it won’t be until some time later on due to other priorities right now.

And last but not least I will be testing the set with the fastest available hardware it supposed to work on, being the GeForce3. I would love to try out the effect on UT2003 and other more demanding games the V5 can’t handle properly. You have to keep in mind that the displayed scene actually has to be rendered twice, one for each eye. This effectively cuts your performance in half. A scene in normal mode hitting 60fps will only do 30fps on the same machine in stereo (3D) mode. So Quake 3 in 1024*768 in stereo 3D is really stretching my V5 / Athlon 3200+ combination.

So far my experiences with this impressive piece of hardware and I would love to hear yours, and/or any other info you can give me related to this !

oldskool wrote on 28.06.12 at 11:22:23:


No but there will be more gfx corruption in lower resolutions because of the way the 3D stereo effect is induced. They "solved" it by the softwarematic sync doubler but still better to run as high as possible.