nVidia 3D settings for depth and convergence

[barnabas1969]

Did you know that the nVidia graphics card has settings for depth and convergence???

I didn't. I assumed that this was controlled by the movie.

Ever since I bought my new 3D HDTV, I've been a little disappointed with the 3D performance. In the showroom, things that are supposed to pop out of the screen (like the red rubber ball in the first chapter of "Monsters vs. Aliens", when they are in the SETI outpost and first discover the aliens) were amazing! The rubber ball almost hit me in the forehead in the showroom! However, when I got home, it wasn't as impressive.

I chalked it up to differences in how far I was standing from the TV in the showroom compared to my living room. There are settings on the TV for depth and other stuff. However, when I watch 3D movies on the HTPC, these are grayed out. I never tried them with a 3D BluRay player at home... only with my HTPC. I'm guessing that a BluRay player probably has settings for this.

I just discovered that there are settings in the nVidia driver for these! Apparently, the "player" controls this stuff. In the case of a Windows PC... the "player" is the video card.

Depending on your TV, one or both of these settings may be disabled.

There are registry settings you can tweak, but the easiest thing is to go to the nVidia Control Panel, and go to "Set up steroscopic 3D", then press the "Test stereoscopic 3D" button. This opens a new window where you can choose some options. If your computer is connected to a 3D TV (not a computer monitor), you will need to choose 23Hertz or 24 Hertz (23 is probably the best choice), and then click the "Launch Test Application" button. I do not think you want to turn on "Antialiasing" for non-game 3D video.

When the test video starts, you can press the following buttons (on a keyboard) to adjust stuff. These buttons do not appear to work when you are running TMT5. Also, I've tried programming my remote to send the same commands, but it does not work (even when I'm running the nVidia test video). Only the keyboard works, and only in the nVideo test video. I assume that it will work in some games too... but it definitely does not work in TMT5.

Here are the keyboard hotkeys for adjusting depth and convergence:

Ctrl+F3 = reduce depth
Ctrl+F4 = increase depth
Ctrl+F5 = reduce convergence
Ctrl+F6 = increase convergence

With my 3D TV connected, I cannot control convergence. Not even by hacking some registry keys that I found on other sites. It seems that my TV automatically controls convergence. To be honest, there are no double images, so I really don't need to adjust this anyway. But the depth settings definitely make things more interesting!

I set mine to 100% depth. It's much better now.

I posted this because I thought that others might like to know. It's just informative. I'm not an expert with nVidia settings... this is just something I discovered by accident.