Passive 3D monitor

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Sancho

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Topic # 87250 23-Jul-2011 15:18

Has anyone had any real world experience with a passive 3d monitor? I'd love to get a 24" - 30" 3d monitor for gaming but can't use the active shutters as they make me ill.

I was in Harvey Norman recently and took a good look at the new LG passive 3dtv and it was awesome! I don't want a TV for now as I have a projector in my home theatre foom and simply couldn't go down to 55" so will wait until a 3d projector is affordable in a year or 3 so thought I'd get my 3d fix from a monitor for now. I have done a little reading on the few that are available but they don't seem to be getting good reviews.

Besides the hardware, what games actually support 3d? I really only play COD: black ops and will most likely get BF3 when its out.

Thoughts?

Nety

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Reply # 497141 23-Jul-2011 17:11

Can't comment on the monitors although I had heard that passive 3D TV's have a more subdued 3D affect compared to cinema's and active 3D.
As for games basically any 3D game will support 3D as the information is already there. The only thing to be aware of is that because there are two separate images to display the overhead is greater so a game which runs fine on a standard monitor may struggle in 3D.

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vinnieg

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Reply # 497164 23-Jul-2011 18:10

Sancho:

Besides the hardware, what games actually support 3d? I really only play COD: black ops and will most likely get BF3 when its out.

Thoughts?

If you are getting if solely for Black Ops, prepare to be disappointed. It's a really really bad 3d job :(

Gran Turismo 5 - fine on 3d, not too bad, few clipping issues
Wipeout HD - great for 3d
Pain - good on 3d
Killzone 3 - best game I've played on 3d

Guess it depends whether you are playing on Xbox360, PC or PS3?
BC3 should be 3d, and should look awesome :)

I play mostly on my active Samsung 6 series LED, but have played a few on a passive 42" LG

The active shutters did take a bit of getting used to, but my eyes have adjusted to them well. They are the newer 2011 Bluetooth ones, the older infrared ones had issues with syncing and were pretty horrible(unfortunate for all those who jumped on board last year..)

Don't really see a lot of 24-30" monitors, there are 27" 3D tvs, but the monitors seem to range round the 23" range for some reason and all seem to be active shutter, in fact most of the PC monitors seem to be Nvidia active shutter only...requiring you to have an Nvidia card on board

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Lurch

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Reply # 497183 23-Jul-2011 19:09

From what I read stay away from passive 3d. It's only capable of 540 lines to each eye not full HD 1080p like active 3d.

One of the articles that I read:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20028916-1.html

Lurch

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Reply # 497188 23-Jul-2011 19:17

This is the TV I wanted, a shame it never took off :-)

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/10/philips-3d-hdtv/

Nety

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Reply # 497264 24-Jul-2011 08:44

vinnieg:

Guess it depends whether you are playing on Xbox360, PC or PS3?
BC3 should be 3d, and should look awesome :)

Very good point.. I was assuming PC. For PS3 there are only some very limited titles that support 3D and as far as I know the 360 does not support 3D at all.

Sancho

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Reply # 497336 24-Jul-2011 13:23

Thanks for the replies. Yeah it's frustrating as I REALLY want to have a play with 3D, always been a 3d geek right back in the early anaglyph days, even had a pair of those old shutter glasses for pc gaming that were around years ago!

Unfortunately the shutters do make me feel very ill, very similar feeling that I get when looking at a DLP projector and low refresh tv's and monitors, seems I'm very sensitive to visual flicker etc so Passive is really the only wy to go for me at this stage. I did look at the LG 55" passive TV and was persoanlly pretty impressed, but it was just their demo running and obviously optimised for their technology. It doesn't make it any easier with the fact there are no passive 3d monitors here in Christchurch (tyhat I know of) where I can go and actually look at one.

Antcodd

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Reply # 497728 25-Jul-2011 19:48

I bought an LG D2342P-PN 23" passive 3D monitor recently and thought I might be able to contribute my experience. It was the first 3D product I have bought.

The 3d effect is great and I like it overall (it is quite decent for a TN panel), and the half resolution in 3D mode is barely noticeable except in text heavy games (not good for RTS games etc). I also really like the clip-on glasses it comes with. In 2D mode I can see a slight difference in brightness of the lines in one of my eyes, presumably due to imprefect prisiming in my glasses - it is probably not a problem for most people and I got used to it fairly quickly.

Unfortunately the vertical viewing angle is really rather bad. I assumed it would be vaguely close to the LG passive TVs (which I really like and used to help in deciding whether to buy it); unfortunately it is no where near as good (apparently due to the size of the lines). You need to have your head in exactly the right place (not bad enough to get a cramped neck thankfully). This is made much worse by the lack of height adjustment (I had to try out combinations of thicknesses of books to get it the right height with sitting comfortably). The finicky and not quite enough tilt adjustment is also problematic. At least it has VESA mounting holes which might solve the problem in the future. I think the problem is it was probably tested by asian people who tend to be fairly short and thus sit lower to the ground (no offence intended).

The horizontal viewing angle is rather good so multiple people can watch 3D so long as they have somewhere to sit for the vertical angle. Note that RealD glasses from the cinema seem to have terrible crosstalk; I think this might be due to slightly different polarization as on a 45 degree angle they look good. Alternatively, they might really have bad crosstalk since at the cinema only one eye at a time sees the image for the most part (with a 'Z-Screen' that switches polarization).

The black-white crosstalk (which happens with anything vaguely bright against anything vaguely dark) is reasonably noticeable too (much more than I thought it would be but acceptable since it doesn't come up too often), but similar brightness colours have almost zero crosstalk (if your head is in exactly the right place). The trouble is, because of the viewing angle every time you see black-white crosstalk you think your head is in the wrong place (and some times it is). Some time I must take a closer look at the passive TVs and see if there is much crosstalk because when I looked in the shop I didn't notice any (like you I was rather impressed - it's what made me not wait for many reviews of the monitor).

Don't get my wrong, I do really like it. It is much cheaper than the active monitors (that still have a crappy TN panel for twice the price), and the lack of flicker makes watching 3D feel almost like normal. I'd just strongly recommend trying it before buying. I would think the 27" version would have interlacing lines that were too big and distracting (because of bigger pixels), though might have a better viewing angle. If you see it in a shop (don't think it is available in NZ yet, I bought it off Amazon, where it is rather cheap at the moment) note that from a high angle the images are reversed and the viewing angle bigger - you need to look at it straight on. I would be much happier if the monitor was more adjustable I think (so I could set it to the right place once rather than needing to crank my chair) - maybe a VESA stand will help.

On another note, apparently Samsung is coming out late in the year with monitors that use a RealD Z-screen similar to the cinema where the monitor actively switches polarizations. I'd imagine this would have much less noticeable flicker than the whole room flickering like normal active 3D but I'm not sure if it would still be rather flickery on the screen. I decided not to wait as I imagine they might be expensive and still be flickery.

Hope this helps,
Anthony

MrAlan

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Reply # 501063 2-Aug-2011 21:56

I have one of the new LG passives (47") and I prefer it over my old samsung active 3D set.
With active glasses I found I'd get eyestrain after an hour or so, I can play for a days without any eye fatigue on the LG passive. I care more about looking after my eyes than I do about getting a full 1080p image.