When iZ3D was seemingly on its own against giant NVIDIA in the niche stereoscopic 3D gaming market, you could almost imagine a battle of David and Goliath. Now that iZ3D has teamed up with ATI, it seems like there just might be a faceoff of bitter rivals instead. But in reality, when pioneer NVIDIA went on stereoscopic 3D hiatus two years ago, the power vacuum that followed attracted any number of companies eager to profit from the potential customer base they left behind -- and now that NVIDIA is back on the scene, they have begun scrambling to assert their value to the market.

One such company is Digital Dynamic Depth, or DDD. Started in 1993 to service professional stereoscopic applications, DDD may well escape the NVIDIA scouring, as their primary business is providing the S-3D chips and boards that power expensive new TVs... but as the creator of the TriDef S-3D game drivers, they also have a business that may well be steamrolled by NVIDIA in the months to come.

In the fourth part of our series on the current state and future viability of stereoscopic 3D for gaming, we spoke to Jay Wiskerchen, VP of Technical Operations at DDD about the facets of their business that might impact gamers like yourselves.

GameCyte: While we're obviously most interested in stereoscopic 3D for gaming, we've noticed that DDD has been involved in most aspects of the stereo 3D industry. How did you get into games?

Jay Wiskerchen: It's really come about just due to consumer demand, or more so our customer demand in working with consumer electronics companies. I think the very first game we enabled -- that we had a driver for -- was Quake 3, back in 2002. Back then when we were enabling some professional applications, we thought "well, if we can do it for these professional OpenGL applications, why don't we do it for some games?" So we did that, and it was just a couple years ago that we started doing the same thing with DirectX games. We knew that the majority of the good PC games were all DirectX.

GameCyte: You say 2002. Before that, were you working entirely with professional applications for S-3D?

JW: That's correct.

GameCyte: What kind of applications?

JW: Molecular modeling applications made by Fujitsu... Actify Spinfire... companies came to us, asking us to enable their applications for 3D viewing. They already had a built-in customer base and they felt that viewing their models and drawings in 3D would be beneficial to the customers.

GameCyte: Definitely with CAD applications and such, I can understand. How did DDD become a recognized industry leader in the first place, to the point that these companies would seek you out?

JW: Years and years of research. We started in 1993, in Perth, Australia.

GameCyte: From that perspective, where do you think the S-3D industry is headed?

JW: On the game side?

GameCyte: I'd like to get into that... but I have a fairly unique opportunity here in that I can ask you about the multiple facets of the business DDD has been involved in. How do you feel they compare?

JW: We're at a good point because the large consumer electronics companies like Samsung and Mitsubishi already have excellent looking 3D-ready TVs. They've been selling the DLP televisions and the plasma 3D-ready TVs for over a year. By the end of 2008, there will be about two million 3D-ready TVs out there. All of those are for the early-adopter, but they all require that the user hook up a PC to the TV... so to get the 3D, you'd have to run your application on a PC.

GameCyte: Are you thinking that might change?

JW: We know that will change. DDD licenses our technology to those companies, and we put it on either a board or a chip that gets included in the TV.

GameCyte: And this has already begun?

JW: Yes; last April, Hyundai actually began selling their 46-inch 3D LCD TVs in Japan, and they're not selling a whole lot of those, but they're out in the marketplace and you can go to kind of the big-box electronics retailers in Japan and buy one if you want.

GameCyte: (filled with jealousy, mumbles under breath)

JW: And if you want to buy one here, DDD can definitely help you out.

GameCyte: (laughs)

JW: We've been primarily selling those to the studios and post-production houses, just because it's a great passive 3D system for looking at content, previewing production and animation and so on. [Editor's Note: In Japan, there are already limited S-3D broadcasts that can be viewed on the Hyundai set.]

GameCyte: Do these have a built-in chip, or a board, or...

JW: The Hyundais have a board; we call it the TriDef Core. That board decodes incoming 3D signals.

GameCyte: So that method doesn't require any drivers?

JW: That's correct. With this TV you can plug in your game system, your cable box, a Blu-ray player, and if you have 3D content you just hit a button on the remote and you'll see it in 3D?

GameCyte: Are there standard 3D formats, then, for this content?

JW: No. (laughs) That's one of the fun aspects. A bunch of organizations are looking to create standards, but up until now it's kind of been the wild, wild west.

GameCyte: I can't help but wonder if that's what it will take to get the game console manufacturers on board.

JW: That will definitely help.

GameCyte: Have you heard anything about game console manufacturers interested in S-3D?

JW: They are, yes. They're definitely interested in it; for them it just comes down to a business decision. For them to assign the resources and to focus on a 3D solution for their consoles, and for the game publishers to start spending some time getting that into the games, there has to be a decent install base of 3D-capable TVs and monitors out there.

GameCyte: Are they going to need to be ones with your chip in them? You'd said that without it, you need that PC...

JW: Yes... beginning in January, Samsung is going to start selling their 3D plasma TVs with DDD's chip. At that point, all of a sudden it's going from "3D-ready" to "3D-friendly."

GameCyte: You said these are a passive solution -- are you using some sort of polarization, then?

JW: One thing with the DDD technology is that we're display-agnostic; we work with all the different display technologies. The Hyundai TV is passive... the Samsung TV uses active shutterglasses.

GameCyte: I'd like to ask a little bit about the market for these technologies. Comparing your professional applications to, say, your consumer DVD conversion applications and game applications, what's business like right now?

JW: We have actually dropped 3D support for our professional applications earlier this year.

GameCyte: So you're entirely consumer-facing now?

JW: Exactly. We're pretty much focused on the consumer who buys Blu-ray discs and PC games, and -- in the future -- who is a console 3D gamer.

GameCyte: Well, that certainly demonstrates your confidence in consumer 3D.

JW: There will be two million 3D-capable sets out there, and that's a great start. It's going to take more than that for you to see the console manufacturers put 3D technology into the PS3s and Xboxes, but it's just a matter of time.

GameCyte: So one quadrant of your consumer-facing 3D package, among the likes of 2D-to-3D conversion for videos, still images and the like, you have these TriDef drivers that you sell on a game-by-game basis... how does this gaming business compare?

JW: The market is actually fairly similar, and it would probably take a front seat to the video side, just because the studios aren't yet releasing 3D Blu-ray discs, or putting out high-quality 3D video files that can be downloaded on the internet. We've found that the majority of customers who are buying the 3D-ready TVs that Samsung and Mitsubishi are making are usually gamers, and they're the type of person who are most likely to have a PC hooked up to those TVs.

GameCyte: I'm curious; where do you get the data that they're most likely gamers?

JW: Pretty much based on our sales. We know how many 3D TVs are being sold, and we also have a decent idea of how many people are actually utilizing the 3D aspect of it.

GameCyte: Through surveys, or...?

JW: Usually just information from Samsung.

GameCyte: Just looking at it from a layman's perspective -- I don't have any data either way -- I'd tend to assume that those in the market for new HDTVs wouldn't necessarily choose based on 3D gaming potential. Am I entirely wrong?

JW: That is pretty much true; the people who are looking to do 3D gaming are the ones who are looking to make sure the TVs are enabled. Up until just a few weeks ago, there has been zero promotion, zero marketing from Samsung in the stores, and usually the sales associates wouldn't be able to tell you what that "3D-Ready" on the box meant. But Samsung has some beautiful endcap displays that they've designed that the 42" plasmas will go on, and I think the sales associates in the independent electronics stores are finally getting up to speed on what those TVs can do.

GameCyte: Do you know if, by any chance, those Samsungs will actually be demoed with 3D content in the stores?

JW: Yes; the displays that they've manufactured have spaces where you can buy the 3D accessory pack, and also some of the supported PC games. I believe in most of the stores they're running static demo loops from Need for Speed, from Halo 2, showing you what the game looks like, but it's a real capture, not a movie, not something that was converted to 3D. But they also have the option to just put in a game, and let somebody in the store try it out, and see what the reaction and response time is like.

GameCyte: I hope they will! Since you have this data that gamers are buying these TVs and using them for gaming, can you tell me what penetration is like? You say there are going to be two million 3D-ready sets -- how many would you estimate will be used for 3D gaming?

JW: Oh... (chuckles) Unfortunately, a pretty low number. Definitely less than five percent.

GameCyte: So they're in the market to buy them for that purpose, but they're not necessarily going to do that?

JW: Right. Honestly, I'd say it will be about two percent. But considering that there's been no marketing, no sales promotion, that's not bad. Hopefully that will increase once we see some ads out there and some in-store displays.

GameCyte: Let's talk about your TriDef drivers. What's the comparative size of that side of the business?

JW: I guess the actual number would be -- I think we have sold 1100 game drivers in 2008.

GameCyte: And these 1100 are individual game drivers?

JW: That's right. We started selling them in 2007, and I think we started with five games.

GameCyte: So this was after NVIDIA dropped out of the stereo 3D market, then. Given that you were already working on S-3D drivers as early as 2002, did NVIDIA's departure impact you in any way?

JW: Honestly, we weren't focused on that at all. We had that technology, but with NVIDIA in the marketplace and them having the huge market share that they do, we thought we'd just leave it up to them. They do a pretty good job with the videocards and the stereo driver looks pretty good; if they want to enable the PC game market on all these 3D monitors and TVs coming out, that's totally fine. But once they did kind of... develop their business strategy, that changed the way consumer electronics manufacturers were dealing with them. All of a sudden we started getting requests from the large companies looking for a 3D game driver solution. We listened to our customer, and if a big company wanted us to do something and they could guarantee that we could sell X amount, we'll definitely do that.

GameCyte: Which companies were interested?

JW: Well, one of them was Samsung. They knew that they were releasing their 3D DLP TVs, and while they had the hardware side covered, they knew that the other component was content. If there wasn't much in the way of 3D video or 3D movies out there, they wanted to insure that there were at least some 3D games out there.

GameCyte: I can see I'm going to have to speak to one of the big TV manufacturers next... any other partners?

JW: Originally, I guess it was Sharp, because we had licensed our software to them for inclusion in their laptops. They were the first ones to ask about that, and get us thinking about that, and do some research into not only the OpenGL side, but the DirectX side as well.

GameCyte: Tell me about your competition.

JW: Well, compared to NVIDIA we're not tied to a video card; our driver will work with any video card out there that is high enough performance. You can use it with NVIDIA, with an ATI card, if you have an Intel graphics chip, any of that should work...

GameCyte: (chuckles) You've tested this with integrated Intel graphics chips and still had it work fine?

JW: Well... working, yes. Working at an acceptable framerate, not necessarily. In theory, it would work, but we saw some slow performance with some of those chipsets.

GameCyte: Eventually, they'll get the message. You said you're display agnostic, but I'm reading here that your game drivers only work with anaglyph and line interlaced display technologies.

JW: We will work with anything; the Hyundai displays are line-interlaced, we work with the checkerboard formats that Samsung and Mitsubishi are using, we work with older technologies, including some glasses-free technology by DTI -- even the Zalman monitor, that is also horizontally line-interlaced.

GameCyte: I'm looking at game drivers in particular -- and I'm not sure if this is up to date, because your website mentions DirectX9 -- but the Supported 3D Displays page notes that your DirectX9 game drivers work with anaglyph and line-interlaced, but not page flipped, side by side or any of the others stereoscopic methods.

JW: That's correct.

GameCyte: Are there any plans to change that?

JW: Not in the near term.

GameCyte: Have you found that working with passive polarized and -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe anaglyph is being phased out...

JW: You don't need a special monitor for anaglyph, and we really wouldn't recommend it -- it's not for long-term viewing, it's not very comfortable.

GameCyte: But you do believe that the passive polarized and checkerboard solutions are where the market is going, and where you'll find profitability?

JW: Yes we do.

GameCyte: Why checkerboard and polarization?

JW: On the polarized side, over the last couple of years people have gotten used to going to the theatres and putting on those polarized glasses when watching the 3D films. You not only get full-color 3D, but it's also a very comfortable viewing experience. There's no shuddering, no flickering; it's just a lightweight solution and it looks great. The downside on the monitor and TV market is that those sets are more expensive then their 2D counterparts. But then if you shift over to the checkerboard side, with those TV sets the 3D-ready models are the same price as the previous year's 2D-only models.

There's no cost increase -- the only price you have to pay is for a 3D starter pack. Essentially, if you want to use the 3D feature in that TV, you just fork over $150 or $200 and get a couple pairs of glasses, your 3D transmitter and some software. There are pros and cons: the shutterglass solution has excellent resolution, there's virtually no flickering -- for the majority of people, those displays are running at a high enough frequency that the flickering is really not bothersome at all.

GameCyte: You don't get any complaints of headaches or things like that?

JW: No... we haven't done any consumer studies directly, but we work with companies that have done them here in the US as well as Japan, and in both of those cases they have not seen any issues with short-term viewing. They have come across some complaints with people watching full-length movies with certain content, and with certain shutterglasses, but the vast majority -- if you spend a couple hours sitting down playing a game, that hasn't seemed to be an issue.

GameCyte: Good to hear! Personally -- and I'm not asking you to speak for the company as a whole -- which do you prefer between the two?

JW: Personally, I like the passive solution.

GameCyte: So we have some competitors on the market now -- iZ3D and NVIDIA, each working with their own display solutions and building their own drivers. How do you intend to compete with them, both in the short term and the long term?

JW: Honestly, we don't intend on competing with them directly. I mean, DDD's a small company, definitely compared to NVIDIA, and we would much rather license our technology to a huge company that has great hardware and distribution channels and let them sell it, let them incorporate that into their solution.

GameCyte: Are you going to be able to do that? On the hardware side you've got those chips in TVs, but on the software, you've got $5 drivers.

JW: Right. We believe that we will be doing that.

GameCyte: So there is some sort of deal brewing with a larger partner?

JW: Yes.

GameCyte: Can you tell me any more about it?

JW: Unfortunately not. As you said, our current business model is selling the drivers on a per-game basis. That's not necessarily going to be our business model in the near future. We're currently working on that right now; we're just figuring out the best way to do that.

GameCyte: That's good to hear. I looked at TriDef and I said, "This doesn't look like it's modern day, this looks like a few years ago..."

JW: (chuckles)

GameCyte: "...and then I was like, "but you know, they're probably doing something about that now."

JW: Yeah -- our big thing is we really want a quality 3D experience, and years ago when we started enabling these drivers and we were doing it on a per-application and a per-game basis, we'd spend time and kind of tweak our driver and make sure that everything looked really good. We also developed an auto-focus feature so when you were going between scenes in a game there wouldn't be harsh changes. If you were looking to another planet, and then all of a sudden someone put a gun in your face, we made that transition smooth just so your eyes wouldn't go above your ears.

So we kept on selling the driver per-game... but I guess the ideal solution is if one driver can enable all or almost all the games out there.

GameCyte: And that's what you'd like to do?

JW: That's what we're looking at -- and we will see what the best solution is for us.

GameCyte: Do you know if that will be expensive, or something relatively affordable?

JW: Very affordable. We'll just see how it works out -- so far, the results are very promising, but as I said before ideally we'd like to have a business partner distribute that and get it out to a lot of different people and into markets that we can't touch.

GameCyte: Can you tell me if there are any plans to support Windows Vista and DirectX10?

JW: We currently support Vista 32bit. We do have it working with DX10 but we haven't released any updates yet.

GameCyte: Are there plans to?

JW: There are plans to. I don't know exactly when.

GameCyte: On the content side, are you working with any game software developers?

JW: We are not. Over the last couple of years, we've met with a handful of them... our office is literally right next door to Activision, and EA is just maybe a five-minute drive from our office. So we know folks over there, and we've met with them, and yeah, they're currently not doing anything on the 3D side -- like the game console manufacturers. They're waiting until there are more 3D monitors and 3D TVs out there. But they are excited about it, they love the 3D of it, they just need reassurance that there's a big enough market that they can make money. With the publishers, we have an open relationship with them.

We're currently not doing anything with them, but that doesn't mean that we might not be able to do something with them in 2009.

GameCyte: Can you tell me when you might expect them to jump on board, say "There is enough penetration in the market now to natively support stereoscopic 3D."

JW: I would probably say... because we've seen the projections from Samsung and some other manufacturers, and by the end of 2009 there are going to be... actually, I don't have the exact number, but there are going to be quite a few 3D-ready TVs out there. I think by the end of 2009, it will start to look pretty attractive to those game publishers and console manufacturers.

GameCyte: Lastly, what do you think of your competitor's solutions?

JW: We think they're pretty good; but we think NVIDIA's business model is flawed. From our perspective, we just want to see a lot of 3D content out there, and a lot of games enabled... and I can understand where they're coming from, but we don't agree with the way that they're trying to get their 3D drivers out there. On the iZ3D side, I think they have a pretty good monitor and they have a good gaming solution, and it's definitely a formidable competitor. They're not selling millions of monitors or game drivers, so I think the market is big enough for both of us, and I think that it's great that they're out there, because it's only going to help everyone that's working on 3D -- help the market grow.

GameCyte: Thank you for your time, Jay!

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• Is Your Gaming Future in Stereo 3D? — Part Two
• Is Your Gaming Future in Stereo 3D? — Part Five