I perosnally think it is quite correct to say the division of stereoscopic capability between the different hardware is an artifical market segmentation.
Nvidia do restrict the quadbuffer stereo features to the high ened workstation cards, it does allow them to charge a premium for that product. Of course the people looking for the workstation cards are generally ok with paying the extra cost. It does suck. In addtion, yous all may be aware there are several types of stereo display technology available now, from projection systems to lcd monitors, to glasses free monitors, to samsung rear projection tv's etc etc. I heard this second hand (and i wont swear to it), but you know on the stereo drivers they have support for different stereo display technology, so you can run an opengl quad buffer application and in the dirvers you select the display device and it just works itself out to convert for that format, well i heard that previously nvidia was adding new formats as a matter of course as they were developed, but im told now nvidia will only include a display format for diff display technology if the manufacturer of the display tech will pay a licence fee to have thier format included. The thing is that from my view it should not be a big deal for nvidia to include a feature for the new glasses and usb sync technology to work with quad buffer off a quadro fx The ability to use lcd glasses with LCD monitors for desltop stereo is a big deal, i dont recall its been doen before (other than usless lcd glasses free technology that is not worth the cost). Seriously this ability to use lcd glasses with a lcd monitor is realy a great thing, and i cant imagine nvidia not providing it for the quadro, for workstation users. It might be that the glasses are already available for use with a 3 pin connector for the quadro, but ive been out of the business for so long now i have not kept up to date. As far as laptops go, DELL sell a range of workstation laptops, that have built in Quadro FX vga cards and they support quad buffer stereo. If you use lcd glasses on the external vga port that takes the sync from there, there stereocpic works fine. I had one of these laptops at my last workplace and did this. Our sales reps traveled the country with them, all our expo demos were done in stereoscopic from these DELL laptops. Peted _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
