x-spec interface possible?

desiv

work in progress...
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OK, here's my thinking...
I pulled out the Vectrex tonight and was playing some games.
Then I plugged in my 3D LCD glasses and was playing some 3D Vectrex.
Now, this is NOT the original Vectrex 3D imager.
This is something I bought by someone who took some LCD 3D glasses he found that have a stereo headphone type plug on them.
He built the interface that plugs into the Vec 2nd joystick port and does what it needs to do to tell the 3D goggles to flip when needed. (Since the original Vec 3D imager spun, that timing must be tricky..)

Then I remembered that back in the day, I had the X-Specs for my Amiga (Yeah, I was the guy who bought them. ;-)

So, I have these modern LCD goggles. I know the X-Specs plugged into the Amiga 2nd mouse/joystick port. I assume (really dangerous) that it might be a fairly basic interface to go from 9-pin Amiga to 3D goggles.

Well, by basic, I mean for someone who knows what they are doing.. :)

Anyway, since you can see where I'm going with this, does this seem feasible?

Thoughts?

Dumb idea? Useless?
Obviously, you haven't played Space Spuds 3D!!!! ;-)

desiv
p.s. Actually, I remember the demo disk had a 3d spinning cube demo, and I would set that up, and hold my hand under it so that it looked (to me only of course) like I had a spinning cube hovering over my hand... Yeah, I was that bad..
OK, if I could do it again, I would today.. :)

---------- Post added at 04:36 ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 ----------

OK, I found a few pages talking about interfaces (mostly PC serial/parallel/VGA) and most "standard' LCD glasses, and if they apply, the goggles need AC..

This oscillator generates about 400 Hz frequency for driving the LCD panels (the LCD panels must be driven with AC signal!).

This is from a page talking about Sega LCD glasses tho, so I'm not sure if those are the same type as the "standard' PC/Video ones, but I'm leaning that way.

So, the interface would need to take power from the joystick port, convert it to AC of some voltage and then you'd have a signaling pin?

Still probably not too complicated, although I was kind of hoping for just wiring some PINs together... ;-)

desiv
p.s. If you didn't use the X-Specs, there was an "xspecs.library" that was available for programming, and an IFF image X-Specs extension. I believe Imagine could render to X-Specs for 3D animations.
 
@Desiv

these type of glasses fool the depth perception of the human eye by exploiting horizontal frequency, simply put the eyes cannot process quick enough and depth perception is lost in favour of detail.

Essentially you would be able to use any 3D glasses as long as you used the correct frequency phase of the screen,

So if your using PAL50 thats 50 herts, NTSC is 60herts, so you would need to tell the shutters on the glasses to open/close at those frequencies.

not sure this will work with LCD as this is a different technology, although glases designed to run on these units could be compatible if the Amiga is being up-scaled - however milage may vary

If you got some specification of certain models I could help you adapt an existing or build an interface.


there also might be *sync* issues to consider, the reason I mention this is that you state these "glasses" pluged into the mouse / joystick port. As these types of units exploit AC current (to give them the phase of the machine i.e 50hz*pal* or 60hz*ntsc* phase) - there is NO AC current from the joyports, only 5v DC at 50ma - so one must ask why are these glasses plugging in to these ports?
 
Thanx for the reply.
To be clear, they are LCD "shutter" glasses, in that the lenses of the glasses use their LCDs to blank one eye at a time.

The most relevant link I've found so far is this one: http://mew.cx/syncbox.html
That link describes hooking up the x-specs DB-9 to a composite input for 3D TV viewing. Not what I want, but it does describe, kind of, what the x-specs interface would be expecting from the Amiga.

It looks like the Amiga is sending out power (DC and GND) and a control signal on PIN 6.

I'm hoping I can talk to the guy who built the Vectrex-to-LCD shutters adapter. If he can tell me what the LCD shutters expect, I'm hoping I can come up with an adapter.
Thinking about it, I'm sure the Vec doesn't put out AC on it's joystick port, so it probably doesn't need AC for sync. That might have been bad information (or maybe I just need to send 5V AC to the glasses to power them, so DV to AC??).

I believe the X-Specs used interlace for the syncing, so 1 screen draw was left eye, next screen draw was right eye, etc.. Not sure if that was the only mode they used tho.

Of course, even if I get an interface working, I'm not sure it would work through my amigamaniac s-video adapter (That's still interlace, so I would think so) and THEN through my s-video to VGA adapter (no idea what that does to syncs).

But it should be fun trying.

desiv
 
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