Stereoscopic 3D Compatibility Guide

work in progress

As of, Dolphin now has Exclusive Fullscreen in D3D, allowing it to work natively with 3D display technology. Using 3D monitor technology, Dolphin can produce anaglyph and stereoscopic 3D - systems to convert a flat image on a monitor into something people can perceive as having depth. Depending on the system, setup, and type of 3D, it can be very convincing, or not convincing at all. There are two main types of 3D used in homes today.

Limitations

 * Exclusive Fullscreen, and thus 3D Support, is limited to D3D for the time being, and is not available on OpenGL.
 * RealXFB must be off, or video will only appear in one eye.

Exclusive Fullscreen
To use 3D, you need to use D3D. OpenGL is not possible at this time. And then you need a 3D system. And use fullscreen.

Anaglyph
Anaglyph 3D uses passive glasses with colored lenses to filter out certain colors on one eye and other colors on the other. The game itself renders once for each eye, with things not at screen depth being rendered. Without the glasses, you'll usually see doubling in the glasses colors. This system is cheap, and fairly effective, though some color quality is lost.

Shutter Glasses
These powered glasses flutter at 120 - 240hz in sync with the monitor so that one eye sees one image and the other eye sees another angle. The game itself rendered from a different angle for each eye to see. People viewing the monitor without the glasses will see full color doubling. While this method retains color quality, monitor brightness may need to be raised compared to 3D off due to the fact that the glasses block out nearly 35% of light through the shutters opening and closing.

Polarized Glasses
These glasses filter out certain pixels of the screen to create depth. In this method, the game is rendered twice from slightly different angles and outputted to the screen at the same time, much like anaglyph. The glasses are fairly inexpensive compared to shutter glasses, and do not need to be synchronized with a monitor. They also do not require to be powered.

Dolphin in particular supports Shutter and Anaglyph glasses through NVIDIA 3D Vision and 3D Vision discover. Tri-def's 64bit Beta also works if you rename the Dolphin's EXE into a supported program, but may need further configuration.

NVIDIA 3D Vision Discover
Using 3D Vision Discover and Anaglyph glasses, users with NVIDIA graphics cards can try out 3D in a very inexpensive way.

Advantages

 * Cheap way to try out 3D, no monitor or powered glasses required.
 * Can record in 3D with Shadowplay
 * Works with Dolphin without any extra configuration

Disadvantages

 * Cheap glasses are sometimes uncomfortable
 * Color clarity takes a big hit.
 * Can be strenuous on graphics cards
 * Requires a NVIDIA Graphics Card.

NVIDIA 3D Vision
NVIDIA 3D Vision is one of the earlier shutter stereoscopic solutions for PC. By hooking into games through the NVIDIA drivers, 3D Vision produces good results for compatible setups. For the best 3D experience, you can adjust depth, convergence, and even add a 3D Targeting reticle that works well with third person and first person shooters!

Advantages

 * Mature drivers
 * High image quality, no color loss
 * Easy to setup and use, works with Dolphin without hacks.

Disadvantages

 * Expensive. Glasses may be fairly cheap, but the emitter and monitors add up fast
 * Requires a NVIDIA graphics card
 * Brightness is sacrificed by the shutter technology.

Tri-Def
Tri-Def is a program that can be purchased to convert games and other programs that are 2D into 3D for supported monitors.

Advantages

 * Can work with any graphics card
 * Works with a wide variety of 3D setups.

Disadvantages

 * Only the 64bit Beta works with Dolphin
 * Requires EXE renaming of Dolphin to a supported program or it will not detect it.
 * Requires setup for good 3D