XBox and Epson 3010, only some '3D' games display in 3D. Why?

First, I will explain the setup.
Panasonic BDT500 Blu ray player (not in the loop, but listed as comparison)
XBox 360 Star Wars version (recent purchase)
Epson PowerLite 3010 projector.

Connections:
XBox to Projector - 25' HDMI2 cable with 10G throughput
BDT500 to Projector - same 25' cable
For troubleshooting, I used a 6' HDMI2 cable to rule out length of cable as possibility

I will be the first to admit when I am missing something obvious and am sincerely hoping that this is the case. I have not been able to find anyone else with a similar problem after googling for two days. It has to be something I am missing and probably will be embarrassed for asking after the obvious is pointed out, but I just can't see it right now, lol.

Problem:
I love the BDT500! The 3d with the Epson is fantastic. I have nothing negative to say about it. Movies are the primary reason for the purchase, secondary is gaming on a 96" silver screen. When I first purchased it, I used a 25' HDMI cable, but it was the first incarnation with the smaller 5G throughput (roughly). It did not work. They symptoms were that the screen would go black for up to 2 minutes and then come back on for 15 seconds, rinse and repeat. I posted on this forum and quickly found out and learned about HDMI2, got the cable, and it works beautifully. No problems.

I purchased the new XBox and hooked it up. I am new to XBox (yes, behind the time I am) but everything has been flawless. I was unsure about the 3d gaming, so I had a friend bring Halo (revamped 1st game in 3d) over and tested. Works fantastic! Spent a few days testing it out and was impressed with my system.

I then purchased Batman: Arkham City and Avatar. I had already tried Batman: Arkham Asylum and was aware that Asylum was not true active glasses 3d, but for TrioViz magenta and green passive glasses. But I read up on both the other games and they should work on new 3D systems. Neither works correctly.

Avatar: Avatar comes up and displays a visual that, when 3d is enabled, clearly shows two pictures on the screen with both left and right channel views superimposed on the screen, and it triggers the projector to go into '3d enabled' mode, but glasses don't start up. I toggle back to 2d on the projector, then back to 3d on the projector, and I get a prompt that says, "the current image/video does not display in 3d" or something similar. I went through the menus on Xbox, game, and projector at a great length and finally got it to work by telling the game to abandon 'full checkerboard' and display in 'side by side', then forcing the projector into 'side by side' mode (my only other options are 'Auto', its default, '2d' and 'Top and Bottom'. I cannot force it into 'Full checkerboard' or any of the other modes that the Avatar game offers.

I am mainly perplexed by this because I HAVE found other folks online that have an Xbox and Epson with the game Avatar and they gush about how beautiful it is and that it just 'came right up in 3D'.

Batman: Arkham City: Even though the game clearly states that it supports both 3DTV and the older Trioviz, I have no options within game that refers to the 3D setup, so I can't change the output to 'side by side'. Forcing the projector into an either 'side by side' or 'top and bottom' results in distorted screens.

I would love to blame the XBox or cable, but Halo works beautifully. The Panasonic has never failed me, I have been watching 3D for 6 months, and all using the same cable. I have these on a powered HDMI switch (which I removed from the loop during troubleshooting) and have not had any problems before now.

Any ideas on what I can do next? Are these newer games using a technology that the Epson can't 'see'? I am currently looking to see if firmware can be upgraded and how to do it if it can on the Epson.

Thanks!
Edited by Shindig710 - 11/28/12 at 8:12am

It's as I feared then, judging by the response, this is only happening on my system and is not a known issue. The next thing I am going to look at is the firmware update. There is one for this system but there is no literature on what is included in the upgrade. I am not one to do a firmware upgrade unless I know that it addresses a specific issue. The only info I can pull up is off of these AVS forums and they reference it helping with lag issues. I lucked out, I have no lag issues when gaming.

Does anyone have any info on what is included in the epson14650-PLHC3010_3010e_FW113.zip of of their ftp site? I have downloaded it and read the pdf, it does not include what fixes it addresses.

Thanks!

That sounds reasonable. The fact that if I switch the xbox to sbs and yet the epson projector still won't pick it up when set to 'auto' tells me that it is not picking up a signal. I put in a ticket with Epson to explain the issue and find out more info about the firmware update. This is the response:

"When getting the message "current image not in 3D" please change the 3D mode from auto to either "side by side" or "top/bottom" to see if the projector will now recognize the format.
To answer your question about the firmware, the best I could find out is that it does not address this issue.

Best Regards,
Victor S.
Epson America, Inc."

I have already tried this with Batman and it did not work. Only when I set Avatar (which offers the choice in-game) would that work. Someone came to my house and pointed out that the Star Wars game was also 3D (I don't know how I missed that) and we tried to turn it on with the same results as the others. I just can't wrap my head around why Halo: Combat Evolved works so easily, no problems in 3d whatsoever, and none of the others will.

I am also disappointed about the firmware info. I may go ahead and do it anyway in the hopes that you heard correctly and the support info is incorrect. I may wait for a bit more research, though. I am leery, since this projector is FANTASTIC in every other way: I lucked out on any lag issues (it might be the HDMI 1.4 cable I got for it) and I seldom experience crosstalk. But I want to troubleshoot this down as far as I can.

Thanks for the response and the link! That page is very helpful and when I next have some time I will be taking a closer look at the hidden menu settings. That may be a couple of days, though.

Thanks!

One additional ts step that I failed to list above: I have dropped the XBox output from 1080p to 1080i and 720p with same results. My understanding is that the XBox already drops the image down to 720p with 'framepacking', but that is getting to the limit of my knowledge on how all this works. I am guessing that the default output is checkerboard from the XBox, but feel free to correct me if I am making incorrect assumptions. I do not profess to be well versed in 3D technology, just trying to digest it all and be able to word myself correctly at this point.

Thanks!