Passive 3D video generator????

I found this online by accident. Was searching on a site for internet renown hacker Ben Heck and went to his products offered on another site. Found something called the Virtual FX 3D Converter. http://www.ultimate3dheaven.com/vifx3dcogltu.html It claims to convert standard 2D video to 3D with a standard CRT type TV. Even better is the price: $79.00 But at that price one has to wonder if it works at all. Seems too cheap to do the algorithms it claims to do for 3D conversion. Many reviews I read on it claim that watching movies aren't impressive but games are. Any thoughts on it? Got one yourself? Will this be a waste of money or worthwhile for my old Sega and Nintendo games? Do share.

 

Dunno, but back in the 90s there were some PC games that could be played with 3D glasses. I know that Quake 2 had that ability.

There are also some TVs now that will convert any video source into 3D.

 

True but I'm looking into this $79 one for a few reasons. 1) I don't have one of those 3D converter TVs. 2) Most of said TVs tend to be crap in that area. 3) I do have a somewhat new CRT TV (around 12 years old or less). 4) The adapter is cheaper than a full fledged 3D converter TV. 5) Want it to be "somewhat" portable. A full TV set isn't but a box the size of a model 1 Sega Genesis is.

 

It's not possible to create 3D from 2D source material, the processor can only make educated guesses, if that. You can equate this thing to an audio receiver mixing 2.0 sound into 7.1. Most likely the illusion of 3D will be broken non-stop by objects having inappropriate depths and messed up perspective. Considering how bad 3D mixes are with actual 3D source material I can't imagine this being anything other than crap. It looks like something as sold on TV.

 

Maybe so. I'm still gonna check it out just to see how bad it is and if the "illusion" will be utter crap. For $79 I got nothing to lose and if it works good enough for me, then I'll be happy. If not, then the casing will make a good project enclosure box. Not to mention many useful electrical components for projects and repairs. I've spent way more on my defunct Sega Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast. Not to mention the N64.

 

I can't see it being much good either. I have a few 2D to 3D video converter programs and most do a pretty poor job at converting. These programs have all the time they want to calculate the conversion yet still can't do it well. A box for next to no money is not going to do the same thing on the fly and come out with a real 3D image. I'd love to be proven wrong but I just don't see it working.

Yakumo

 

I'll get it, check out how crappy it is, and review. It may work somewhat well for my games like Sonic the Hedgehog. (Obvious fan based on my username.) Based on what customer reviews have said, it works well with games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on PS2 and Need for Speed series. Movies were mostly utter crap. Either that or Amazon is full of lying reviewers.

 

I've seen these things before. From my understanding, the glasses make you feel like your looking at things cross-eyed. That is, the lenses are focused so that when your looking perfectly normal, you still get the cross-eyed effect (Without actually crossing your eyes). Something similar to how you would view 3D stereoscopic images. Of course, this could be based on totally diffrent technology, but in my experience most of these kinds of glasses do some kind of thing like this. In order to get better 3D, you need to use other technology outside of the sub $100 price range.

UPDATE: Indeed this device does work differently. Apparently it doubles the frame rate (or lowers it?) so that each frame goes to each eye via a shutter system. I still have no idea how they plan to get the left-right eye data from a 2D video image.

 

That’s a great idea. Even if it does turn out to be crap it would make an interesting review. Try and do a video review if possible. I'm sure many are interested in how this thing works or doesn't work.

Yakumo

 

I'm interested. I watched Iron Man on Blu-Ray on a Samsung C7000 LED TV with the 2D conversion on. I found a good sweet spot on it's menu for depth. It did a pretty good job. The opening scene where the humvee is going down a hill - the bottom of the hill came out slightly and the rocks in the foreground were another layer on top for depth. I was impressed considering I expected it to be total gutter trash.

 

I just love 3D games.

 

Super Mario Bros 3 or Sonic 3 in 3D anyone?

 

So you want to play 2d games in 3d?

What the actual fuck?

 

It was a bad joke at this piece of junk doing what I said above.

 

As I know, there are many converters in the market that claim to support convert 2D to 3D. I am lucky to choose a right one. But I am not sure that if your TV is non-3D effect can play the 3D videos. You'd better download the free version to have a try.

 

Bump an old thread I made long ago with no real information that helps. Congratulations for no help at all.

 

Since this is already bumped I might as well post about my experience with this. if you haven't already, Don't go for the VFX. I bought one of these a few years ago to "3dize" my classic games. The effect works somewhat on racing and FPS games mostly, but everything else it doesn't seem to work on. In your case it wouldn't work at all. It mostly works on games that are polygonal to begin with. it likely uses the angles of the polys to guess the depth, and 2d is flat. Hope that helps.

 

Most 2D-3D converters of this type work by assigning each area a value that represents object depth. Racing games probably look good because when estimating object depth, most algorithms take lower objects in the screen to be closer, while objects higher up to be farther. It also probably takes solid lines into account, depending on if they are angled inward or outward.

 

Yeah maybe, but it barely works on racing games that use sprite scaling, it works on games like say Daytona USA. Either way, its not very good. sad cause the idea of 4:3 ratio 32/64 bit games in 3d appealed to me immensely. I bought a master system in 96 with a number of 3d games and loved it. Sega should have continued its early 3d support through the genny and Saturn.