Hello PVB! I just joined and must say that I really enjoy what you guys are doing here. Some of the games that get released on PVB are just as good as, or better than the games released for the Virtual Boy in the 90’s. My question for you guys is how to properly emulate the hardware of the Virtual Boy. I use Reality Boy and VBjin back in forth (I unsuccessfully tried Mednafen, but I can’t seem to get a proper 3D effect. What graphics card(s) would you recommend? Would you suggest R/C or 3D glasses? Any tips on installing and using Mednafen? Thanks in advance!

There is no way to emulate the look/feel/sound/control of the actual console properly in my opinion.

speedyink wrote:
There is no way to emulate the look/feel/sound/control of the actual console properly in my opinion.

the vbjin port for the rift may have something to say about that. =) especially with a vb controller-to-usb kit.

The (most practical) methods for stereoscopic display on a PC, from least to most expensive:

* Free-viewing – This doesn’t require any extra hardware. You just have to learn to focus on a different image with each eyeball. It can be pretty fatiguing, though. Not recommended for prolonged viewing.

* Anaglyph – You can use any colors, but if you can get them, I suggest using Green/Magenta (although the one, cheap, Chinese pair I found on eBay is pretty much useless, so caveat emptor). You can get anything from cheap paper ones (usually for free or extremely cheap) on up to ones with fancy plastic (or even metal) frames and “diopter corrected” lenses.

* “Assisted free-viewing” (a term I just made up) – This method is similar to free-viewing, only you use some kind of device to cause the (con/di)vergence of your vision. This can be done with mirrors, lenses, or other optics. There may be commercial products for this, but mostly I’ve just seen plans for homemade ones.

(Note: large gap in price here…)

* 3D-capable LCD monitor – This is the one I use. I have an Asus VG23AH, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a great general purpose monitor for the price (I paid around $200 last year), and the 3D uses the same cheap, polarized glasses you get at the movie theater (I have over half a dozen pairs, including the two that came with the monitor ;-)).

* A homemade 3D projector – ‘Nuff said 😉

* HMD – Oculus’ Rift is probably the best known, and you could probably make a clone of it for not much more than the above monitor, but the “real thing” is still $300 last I checked (and who knows what the lead time is). There are probably other models available, but the price is going to be up there.

Note: all of these are easily used with Mednafen (except, as Lester mentioned, the Rift requires that special version of VBjin for the best results). I/we can help you set it up once you decide on a viewing technology.

The Oculus Rift thing blew my mind haha. I’m about to leave for the military, but I’ll probably save up for one as soon as I can. 3D gaming has always been an interest of mine, glad to see so many people are with me on this. Thanks!

Lester Knight wrote:

speedyink wrote:
There is no way to emulate the look/feel/sound/control of the actual console properly in my opinion.

the vbjin port for the rift may have something to say about that. =) especially with a vb controller-to-usb kit.

Ahh, I didn’t think of the VB controller to USB kit.

Alas I’m a purist though..

I sometimes use my 3D TV (side by side mode) to play VB games. The attached mednafen config works best for me.

Attachments:

1. mednafen-09x.config.zip

RunnerPack wrote:

* 3D-capable LCD monitor – This is the one I use. I have an Asus VG23AH, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a great general purpose monitor for the price (I paid around $200 last year), and the 3D uses the same cheap, polarized glasses you get at the movie theater (I have over half a dozen pairs, including the two that came with the monitor ;-)).

Are you sure about that? I thought the 3D monitor/glasses approach was to use active electronic glasses (with alternating right/left images)? 😕

The polarizing filters at today’s theaters use circular polarization. I have some fancy 1950’s glasses with linear polarizers, each 45° from the horizontal (90° from each other of course), they don’t work with circularly polarized format. And a “polarized active shutter” can fight with LCD’s, which themselves work off of linear polarizing filters!

I can kinda understand linear polarization; electric fields at 90° away from magnetic fields, and crystal/polymer structure can be set up to absorb one orientation (for instance, horizontal) but pass the perpendicular (for instance, vertical). But circular — the new glasses use a linear polarizer with an additional layer. “Quarter Wave Retarder”, or “Birefringent” — which converts the linear into circular. Okay, so far so good; but how does it work, and how do ya’ get CLOCKWISE circular, and COUNTER-CLOCKWISE circular? 😕

With the old linear format you can tilt your head and both eyes then see both images (blurry). With circular polarization, you can turn your head fully 360° and the right eye still only sees the right image, left eye left image.

…although, if you really can turn your head 360°, we need you in the cast for the next Exorcist movie!!! 😯

If someone can ‘splain circular polarization to me, that would be grand!

I’m not sure what part(s) of my post you are questioning. Are you doubting the existence of circular polarization, or that my monitor uses it, or…?

This article on CP (‘specially the pik-churz ;-)) helped me understand it better; maybe it’ll do the same for you.

While there is a tiny bit of ghosting, I just confirmed that the left lens continues to pass the left image, even when rotated 90 deg. and vice versa. I even tried the “RealD” glasses, which I’ve heard are linearly polarized, and it worked fine.

It wouldn’t matter if it was 100% ghost-free, since you can’t fuse a stereo pair when it’s turned too far off-axis, and looking at one like that for too long causes eye-strain. That’s why it’s imperative that a stereo-pair has only horizontal parallax – with as much as possible appearing in both images, on the same horizontal line – and why “toe-in” is such a bad idea, due to the inherent vertical disparity it produces.

speedyink wrote:
There is no way to emulate the look/feel/sound/control of the actual console properly in my opinion.

:thumpup: :thumpup: :thumpup: