HP's ENVY 17 3D - HD3D's Difficult Road to a Seamless 3D Experience

DDD's TriDef 3D Ignition

To get to Google Earth, or any other DDD supported application you have to go through the TriDef Ignition window. The TriDef Ignition is where all the real magic happens, and once again, if  there had been some documentation about it, this whole review would have gone a lot smoother and faster.

DDD's TriDef 3D Ignition App window is used to scan and implement the 3D driver for applications detected.

When the Ignition window is opened it shows what games and applications have been found. If you've just installed a game, it may not have been discovered so you have to click on the scan button - note - things don't happen fast in this dialog box, wait for it.

You can add games to TriDef Ignition by simply clicking and dragging the game icon from the desktop into the TriDef Ignition window. Once the game is added, TriDef automatically searches for the right game profile for the game. With the latest software, TriDef has over 460 custom game profiles available (430 by DDD and 30 custom user-submitted profiles). If a game does not have a custom game profile created yet, TriDef assigns a generic game profile that allows most games to be played in S3D. The gamer then can improve his 3D playing experience by customizing and saving his own game profile.

Getting back to that Google Earth in 3D

We then tried to launch Google Earth in 3D by dragging the icon for Google Earth into the TriDef Ignition window. But when we launched Google Earth 3D it only showed up in 2D. It turns out that a Google Earth Plugin was missing. How do you find that?

It turns out that TriDef recommends that users click the 'Scan' button to find game apps. Click on the scan button and the TriDef software discovers supported apps. It found "BioShock 2," "Battelfield: Bad Company 2," and Google Earth, and the Google Earth Plugin this way. So I did that and got it running and once it was running it's amazing. HP should have pre-installed Google Earth and its plug-in. I later found out there are some tips and very cool recommendations for places of interest and pre-programmed ‘fly-throughs'. It is fun to sit, back and relax, while the system takes you automatically through a pre programmed fly through over some very interesting landmarks].

Odd Things

There's no Num Lock on the HP ENVY 17. So to engage the DDD control panel (which normally is done by pressing zero in the key pad) you have to press Alt-Shift-F1. Not a big deal, but if you didn't know, it could be a show stopper. And to adjust the depth you have to sue Alt-Shift ] or [ . Since the HP ENVY doesn't have a Num Lock key, and being an uber geek I went to CMOS set up to see if I could force it. Forgetabout it - no control there. So you have to rely on Alt-Shift-F1 key combination, which can produce interesting effects if you are in a game.

Be warned that when you're in the TriDef Ignition control panel and you double click on a game, nothing happens, naturally you double click a few more times, and in about 3 to 5 seconds the little spinning green wheel shows up, and then you have two or three copies of the program running. The trick is to click on the icon to highlight it, then click on the Launch button - once, and then be patient. Patient, not the behavior motif I'd used to describe a gamer, and certainly not me.