Frame packed 720p 60HZ vs 1080p side by side for 3D gaming

A lot will depend on your video card you use. I use Nvida and their 3D solution. They only support frame packing under the 1.4 HDMI specifications with their
3D sofware. (720p @60Hz or 1080p @ 24Hz.) It does not support the half res modes for gaming. I believe half res gaming is supported by AMD using their DDD TriDef software.
My current tv, a Sharp LC60LE925UN, has horrible 720p 3D game rendering but looks great at 1080p 24Hz. Games such as Skyrim play well at 24Hz in 3D as long as you use a game controller. Mouse use for me has terrible lag and studdering at 24Hz.
Of course, we don't know how the ST1080 will look at 720p until it is out to the public or reviewed prior to release. It is the lack of any previews by reviewers that have kept me from pre-oredering the ST1080.

There is some minor motion judder in games and varies depending on content. The more graphically demanding games produce more judder such as The Witcher 2. I have a fairly beefy computer system with SLI so that helps a great deal in keeping a stable frame rate at 24Hz in 3D mode.
I would expect a smoother 3D experience in 720p @ 60Hz with the ST1080 as resolution is lower and frame rate as high as 60 as opposed to 24. Of course, the more powerful computer system you have the better the 3D experience.

Hopefully the ST1080 HMD will double or triple-up the 24hz signal with no input lag. That would be ideal (short of 1080p120 support at least) and many displays are doing this since 2011. 1080p24 is not usable on my TV due to increased input lag and the flicker. However to your question. I have used 720p and SBS on my Sony NX711 LCD extensively and the SBS image is a bit better, but i wouldn't expect any miracles. SBS, at least on this Sony exhibits some pixelation not present in the 720p image. Its very minor, but its there, as if the algorithm for scaling is a little better for 720p. I use SBS when i can, but 720p can look absolutely stunning as well as long as non-blurring types of anti-aliasing are available.

Since I also don't have the option of gaming at 1080p/60 in 3D using the Optoma HD33 projector, the best image quality vs performance (specifically frame rate) I have found after much testing is the following:

720p frame packed with the image downsampled from a higher resolution eg 1920x1080 or 2560 x 1440 and above (keeping 16:9 ratios).

This blew my mind when I worked out I could do this. It effectively takes the higher resolution frame, and all the color information, detail and the like, and down-scales/ downsamples it to 1280x720p. So although in essence your still playing at this lower resolution you end up with a much cleaner, detailed image with practically no aliasing of edges. The added benefit is keeping 60fps, assuming your rig can push the higher resolutions at that frame rate. You can pretty much turn off any anit-aliasing freeing up some rendering power as the image doesn't need it so much when downsampled like this....

It works, trust me and its a GREAT boost in image quality from either 720p frame packed or 1080 sbs.

Happy days.

And exactly how would one achieve this feat? . The jaggies in Borderland 2 were bothering me so i tried 1080p and it seems much cleaner but 24hz is not ideal. I was just this minute googling a way to render the game at 1080p60 and feed my devices a 720p 60hz signal, do you use some form of anti aliasing injector? Using 3d vision it just says to set a comatible 3d resolution unless the resolution is set to 720p60hz or 1080p24.

To the OP how playable 24hz is seems to be game dependent, using a controller definitely seems to help, maybe playing with mouse smoothing options would assit with this. Some brief testing I tried today it seems Borderlands 2 and Tombraider Underworld are playable but Black Mesa is not. An article here on 1080p 24hz gaming :http://3dvision-blog.com/3777-testing-nvidia-3dtv-play-stereo-3d-with-a-panasonic-3d-hdtv/.
I briefly played with sbs with iz3d while waiting for a HDMI card to showup and other than the obvious that 1080p sbs was better than 720p sbs. 3d vision deifnitley seemed a step-up but I only had a few hours of playing with 3D at the time. It also meant auto switching to 3D and less faffing about with osd being split between the eyes(although this was more with video playback), i may revisit this to test image quality.
FYI this is gtx 670 into a Sony HMZ T1.

First of all I'm using an AMD card which apparently is more difficult to achieve than Nvidia, but really its not very hard. This guide is a good starting point for AMD:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=366244

I'm pretty sure Nvidia have the ability to do this from the control panel but I can't attest to this as I'm AMD. The process is very simple though, this is what I do.

- Set my desktop to 1280x720.

- Launch game with 3d application, for me it's TriDef DDD of which I have set to output at 720p/60 framepacked.

- In game set your resolution to 1920x1080 or above. I use the next one up 1440p if my card can handle it for that specific game (eg Drive SF runs 40-60fps @ 1440p but Spec Ops I have to drop to 1080p)

- Thats it! You game will render the game at the higher resolution and your graphics card will downsample to your monitors resolution, in this case 1280x720p which you set earlier. Good bye jaggies, hello detail! (if you really hate jaggies you can still run some AA as well but beware the extra performance hit as you are basically rendering 2 x 1080p + AA).

Do a quick search for Nvidia downsampling I'm pretty sure its even easier than that guide link I posted for AMD. Don't be put off if its seems difficult, its really pretty easy with lots of people doing it, so lots of forum support, and the end results are actually incredible.... I might even have to go back and re-play half my games like this!!

Good luck,

Joe.

Wow thanks for the links if I can get this to work it's basically the holy grail for my current setup! Thanks to cheap korean apple reject screens I've been spoilt by 1440p gaming, even just 1080p would be a massive bump up from the 720p ghetto! I think 1440p at 3d would buckle my setup unless i went sli anyway. I saw a guide to nvidia downsampling a while back but I assumed that once I set the higher resolution the card it would complain about the resolution being wrong.
If I understand this correctly I would create a custom resolution say 2048x1152 setting the height and width to this but the hdisplay and vdisplay to 1280 and 720? I think you can just create the custom resolution in nvidia control panel for nvidia cards. Do you need to mess around with the desktop and in-game resolutions every time you start a game?

I've given this a go trying this guide and this guide. With non 3d resolutions there doesn't seem to be any problem at all. Any variation at all of the 3d resolutions results in a blank screen or no signal received notice from the hmz t1. JoeFourMan are you using hdmi or dvi to connect to your projector? With the t1 the only option is hdmi.

Hey mate,

Yeah I'm using HDMI to HDMI. I do change the desktop to 720p each time that way TriDef won't try and exceed that resolution, resulting in putting the system into 1080/24hz -which I want to avoid.
Then in game I change the resolution to the custom resolution I'd made globally for the system, eg 1440p. The screen goes black like its changing resolutions then flicks back into 720p/60 frame-packed BUT
the game is now rendering at 1440p, downsampled. Keep in mind this is with a AMD/TriDef combination, so I'm really not sure of the intricacies of a NVIDIA setup.

Its magic when it works but not every game seems to like it. Sleeping Dogs would consistently kick me out fullscreen mode and thus 3d mode, so I just played in with Super Sampling AA, which if I understand correctly does a similar thing to downsampling anyhow. Other games that require the cursor for primary functionality, like clicking spells on a hotbar, may cause problems too as I'm not sure TriDef can re-map the mouse to the new resolution resulting in it being "trapped" in the 720p screen space. Normally I play with a gamepad/driving wheel so this isn't a problem, or even mouse aiming/looking would be fine too.

I'm not sure if this specifically answers your questions but I thought I'd give all the info I've discovered along the way. Good luck.

Seriously thanks for all the info mate you've been a great help. I guess 3d gaming over hdmi is still a real niche market as there so much less information regarding it compared to standard gaming. With all the people stressing over image quality at 1440p you'd think there'd be more concern at 720p where it makes a far more visible difference. I guess it is just accepted that standard 720p is the best you can currently get over hdmi.

The lack of downsampling with nvidia 3dtv play is a nvidia driver limitation it appears. The hmz t1 can accept the standard frame packed 3d 720p60 (1280x1470@60hz)and 1080p24(1920x2205@24hz) signals no problem and the nvidia card can output them as well. I can set these resolutions so they downsample as well so in theory any hdmi 1.4a device should be able to achieve this with current hardware it's part of the standard afterall. The problem is none of the 3d drivers available currently output directly to a frame packed resolution. Should anyone be interested the timings are here .

I tried the tridef drivers. They work with nvidia cards using 3dtv play if you set your 3D display as AMD HD3D or Direct 3D stereo. If anyone wants to try this to get it to work with a nvidia card:
1) Enable 3dtv play and set the 720p 3d resolution.
2) Set the 3D display in Tridef contol panel to Manufacturer = "AMD", Model ="AMD HD3D Technology(HDMI 1.4a)" or Manufacturer: "(standard display types)", Model = "Direct3D Stereo (60hz)"
3) If you get a side by side display disable 3d vision in game (default keyboard shortcut ctrl+T).

It appears that the downsampling is actually built into the tridef drivers why couldn't nvidia do this! I set my desktop to 720p60hz 3D and then it scales to whichever resolution I set from the in game options. Finally downsampling from 1080p at 60hz! Sadly though there's a massive impact on frame rates from rock solid 60 fps at 720p to sub 60 and 1080p hovers around 35(which is still better than 24!). I guess this comes from running to 2 3d technologies at once. There's probably a way around this. I'm not sure if the tridef drivers to output straight to a frame packed resolution. If not I guess I could tone down some of the settings to get the frame rate up.
The other issue is the quality of the 3D. Borderlands 2 has major issues but this may be down to the Helix\Eqzitara patch for 3dvision I've used. There's a Borderlands 2 profile on the tridef site so I'll give it a try.

I haven't tried SSAA yet. As you say in theory it does exactly the same thing, although you lose the granularity of setting the resolution, for some reason downsampling seems cleaner to me. As always the setup is different for nvidia and amd. I think AMD have it built into the drivers. It appears with nvidia you can enable SSAA for all DX10 or DX11 games using the tool here.

Hi Guys,

I've tried what you've suggested but can't seem to get this to work at all. I am using a HD300X 3D projector and what seems to keep happening is when it switches to 3D mode it simply reverts to the same 1080p @ 24hz. Any help would be appreciated.

Replied to you in pm but thought this might be good info for everyone too...

Hey mate

After hearing back from you I decided to try and play some games just to check whether there was something I had left out from my description for down sampling and guess what? I could not get it to work! All the games that I know I have previously down sampled now exhibited exactly the behaviour you described, they all default back to 1080p/24.

It looks as though a recent update to one of the drivers either AMDs or Tridefs has altered something breaking the down sampling. From my observations it looks as though Tridef now can take control globally of the resolution regardless of what your desktop is set to, whereas previously it would honour the desktop resolution, 720p, forcing the application that was set to a higher resolution to down sample. I'm really bummed it doesn't work any more, especially as I've been telling people how great it is Lol.

My guess is Tridef 5.2 will still work but I haven't had time to test that theory and rolling back drivers is annoying as you miss out on all the other improvements. I'm going to send a message to Tridef to see if it's something they can easily reverse as it really was a great feature. Basically it made the image very clean with little or no aliasing giving the overall effect of a cgi like graphic to models and environments. Until we can buy 1080p/60 3d projectors for gaming it was a really nice compromise.

Anyhow let me know if you discover anything new,

Cheers,
Joe

quick update:

I uninstalled TriDef 5.6 and re-installed 5.4 and it looks like the downsampling technique works again! Let me know how you go and what you think of the overall effect. I've been playing through The Walking Dead in 3d and I've tried 720p/60, 1080p/24 with frame interpolation set high, and 1080p downsampled to 720p/60 (once I got it working again) and I wouldn't say the downsampled looks quite as good as the native low-frame rate 1080p/24 but its a definate upgrade over native 720p/60 3d plus you get the benefit of true 60fps not interpolated.

Ok thanks. I tried 5.3 as I could not get a download of 5.4 and it worked as you suggested, but in all honesty I cannot really tell the difference between downsamped 1080p via frame packing at 720p 60 hz and SBS 1080p at 60hz.. also 5.3 has its own set of issues that were probably fixed in subsequent revisions.