GA-Source - Hardware - Revelator 3D Glasses

Introduction: Many of us have seen and heard about all of the different 3D and VR glasses that have been offered over the years, but not everyone has gotten to see and play with a set. Personally, I have owned a pair since 1987. By god they hardly had computers back then right? What was I doing with a set of 3D glasses? At that time, I was a big Amiga supporter. For those of you who were not computer users then when the PC was lucky to do mono sound, and 16 colors on screen at once, the Amiga was capable of stereo sound, and 4096 colors on screen at a resolution of 320x400. At a tradeshow I met the owners of a company named Haitex, and got a pair of their Haitex Xspecs 3D. They plugged into the parallel port of the computer, and gave you a realistic 3D feel. How does this sort of imaging work? Your eyes build a perception of depth by putting together the 2 different images that your eyes see. If you cover one eye, and then rapidly switch to covering the other, objects seem to be in different positions, especially the further away they are. Your brain builds a composite image from the 2 separate views, and uses the difference in position between the two views to determine the distance from you an object is. The glasses simulate this by using an LCD panel over each eye. The computer powers on one of the LCD panels, turning it black so that you can't see through it, and renders the image for the other eye. It then reverses the eyes, and does this over and over again. Your brain then build it into a single image, with added depth perception. Fast forward now to the early 90s. Many other companies start making 3D glasses, but almost invariably they have all failed. Why did such cool and fun device fail? There were a variety of reasons. For one, the glasses were a DOS mode product, which meant that each game had to support the glasses internally. They were also rather expensive, with some going as high as $200. Another difficulty was that with the amount of visible flicker while using the glasess, many people complained of headaches, even after short periods of use. Lastly, before 3D acceleration, most games ran relatively slowly with a normal persons system. Coming into the later 90s, a few companies made 3D glasses, but some of the same problems existed. Visible flickering was still an issue, as well as price. Luckily, with Windows 95 and its drivers it was possible to make the glasses work with most games, as the glasses could interrupt the normal flow of data from the game to the video card. Then the glasses drivers could make the necessary alterations to what was displayed. Still the performance and flickering and price kept them from being a standard piece of gaming equipment. Well here we are, at the end of the 90s. ELSA introduces their Revelator glasses. Do they have a chance to succeed where so many others have failed? I think they do. With monitors now having higher refresh rates, the flickering vanishes. At $49.95, price is not an issue. And with ELSA's upcoming TNT/2 product, you will be able to play games in high resolutions and/or 32 bit color, and maintain the framerates necessary for the game to look good. Installation: The hardware I received included an Erazor II (regular TNT) and the cabled set of the Revelator glasses. The card installed as with any other video card. The glasses included a cable that goes between the video card and monitor. I installed that, installed the drivers, and went on to play. Initial Impressions: The first game I popped in was SpeedBusters. It was absolutely awesome. Racing through the Mexico track, you just shy of felt the overhanging branches brushing over your head. I then proceeded to throw as many games as I could think of at the Revelators. I really can't remember all the ones I tried, but a few really stood out. Unreal, as you could imagine, was rather unreal. Thief:The Dark Project was absolutely awesome. At the bow and arrow shooting range (in the training mission) you could really feel how far away the targets were. One of the real joys of these glasses is that they breathe new life into older titles. Forsaken was truly nauseating with the glasses, as the barrel rolls and flips felt real. Interstate 76 is well worth playing through again with the feel these give. Jedi Knight has given me new pleasure as trying to pick off people at a distance offers a completely new feel. Pretty much any game that uses Direct 3D hardware acceleration will work with with theses glasses. That is what i consider the best value of these glasses, namely that they should work with about 99% of the games that come out. Currently they do not support OpenGL titles, but I believe that future support of OpenGL titles may be possible. If Quake 2 (or 3) is the only game you play, there may not be a whole lot of value for you in these glasses. Half-Life has a Direct3D mode, even if it is primarily a OpenGL game, so you can use the Revelators in it. For most of us, these glasses could see quite a bit of use. Drivers and Software: The drivers allow you to configure the 3D to match your eyes, and your monitor. One nice feature is that it allows you to save a configuration profile for each game for easy recall later. Even better, the process is transparent to you. You can bring up the adjustment screen while in the game, set it up the way you like, and save the settings. Quite a bit of what I tried worked fine on the normal settings, although some required a bit of tweaking to make the 3D feel right to me. Low price, give great sensation of depth, works with almost every game, adds new life to older games needs a fairly high refresh rate to avoid headaches, only works with ELSA video cards, doesn't work with OpenGL Final Thoughts: These are definitely the best glasses of this sort I have ever seen. They worked well in all the games I tried with it. One that I didn't mention earlier that was also truly spectacular with these glasses was Rainbow 6. The feel of creeping through the embassy was really hard to believe. It definitely is something that you have to see to get the feel of. Is it finally time for you to get a pair of these glasses? The only slightly bad parts are the minimum refresh rate and requiring an ELSA video card. The minimum specs say you need a 100hz refresh rate on your monitor, but I used these at refresh rates as low as 72hz. At that, my eyes would bother me after 45 minutes or so, but it is hard to play games with the glasses on for much longer than that (without a break) regardless of the refresh rate. I don't think that I will use these glasses for every game I play, but there are quite a number that I will definitely wear these for. As far as requiring an ELSA video card goes, as often as we gamers uprgrade our video cards, making ELSA the next card you buy is a reasonable choice. The downside to this is that if you really like these glasses, you become tied to buying ELSA video cards in the futures. Given that ELSA builds good quality, well performing cards at a reasonable price, this is not much of a downside. If you have a monitor with a high refresh rate, a 4 speaker sound card (plus 4 speakers), and a compatible (16mb or higher) ELSA video card, I suggest that you get a pair of these glasses. After you have them, start a game of Unreal or Thief, turn out all the lights in the room, and crank up the sound as loud as youcan. If that doesn't give you the most immersive gaming you have ever seen, may lightning strike my gaming computer.