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Wide rendering.

Introduction

Stereoscopic 3D is included in Racer v0.9.0RC6. It is currently limited to nVidia Quadro cards (unless AMD cards can take over transparently). 3D Vision (from nVidia) may follow later, possibly. Also interesting and hopefully easy to implement is support for the Oculus Rift, which should be more immersive than watching a (severely FOV-limited) monitor.

Requirements

Currently only nVidia Quadro's are supported. This is really a choice from nVidia, to not support it on Geforce (consumer) type cards. This is not expected to change anytime soon. The nVidia cards can operate in quad-buffer, meaning 2 front and 2 back buffers are available. Racer renders 2 slightly different views for each eye. The graphics card does the swapping and synchronizing of the (active) shutter glasses.

nVidia seems to have the following stereo technologies:

• Quad-buffer - 2 back buffers and 2 front buffers (GL_BACK_LEFT and GL_BACK_RIGHT for example, in OpenGL terms). This only works on nVidia Quadro.
• 3D Vision - this also works on Geforce cards. In nVidia's Control Panel this is currently named 'Stereoscopic 3D', strangely enough.
• 3D Vision 2 - like 3D Vision, only with improved glasses. The glasses are bigger, and with LightBoost technology (which lets the monitor do part of the shuttering) is easier on the eyes (less flicker).
• 3D Vision Pro - like 3D Vision, only with and RF emitter (radio signals instead of infra-red). The glasses are the same as with 3D Vision.

Next to this, for 3D Vision (any variant) you'll need an approved 120Hz monitor, which can be found on the nVidia website (click to visit their webpage). 3D Vision 2 monitors support LightBoost, which tries to overcome the fact that most 3D glasses make the image darker. For quad-buffer, you can use any 120Hz monitor, it seems. Even 60Hz monitors will do, but as you only get 30Hz per eye, it's not pretty to watch. However, it can be used for testing purposes. Expect a lot of ghosting in that case though.

Settings

These settings in racer.ini affect stereoscopic rendering:

• resolution.stereo.quad_buffered; if set to 1, Racer will try to create a stereo window. It will then render 2 buffers per frame; 1 buffer for each eye. This only works on Quadro. When set to 0, only 1 eye/buffer is rendered (monoscopic).
• resolution.vsync; although vsync=0 can be used, it probably isn't useful. Use vsync=1 to synchronize the image swapping to the monitor's refresh rate (which should be 120Hz or higher; you *can* run on a 60Hz screen, but it will be very hard on the eyes).

(last updated April 5, 2013 )