Portable full-HD 3D PC-gaming with Steam Deck and geo-11

Ok people, this is it. As the title says, we have portable stereoscopic 3D PC-gaming. I haven't seen any posts about this yet so I had to share it.

I recently bought some Xreal Air glasses (check r/xreal for more infos) and have been playing around with them. With its newest firmware you can switch the glasses to a 3840x1080 mode, which allows 3D visuals in side-by-side (SBS) mode. So far I've played 3DS on the deck using Citra, Virtual Boy via RetroArch and some games on the PC using 3D Vision and the 3D fix manager. All in 3D of course.

Obviously I wanted to have 3D PC gaming on the Deck too but I wasn't very optimistic, because 3D vision requires Nvidia drivers (up to version 452.06, Nvidia axed 3D Vision in 2019). There's also the possibility of using some post-processing via reshade (https://reshade.me/, depth3d), but those solutions use the z-buffer, so it's not "proper" 3D.

Anyways, yesterday I found this blogpost from bo3b on helixmod.blogspot.com from a year ago about Davegl1234's amazing geo-11 driver (which is based on Chiri's no less amazing 3Dmigoto wrapper). It should replace Nvidia 3D Vision at least for DX11 games. However, since the driver is not dependent on Nvidia drivers, it can be used with any hardware, including AMD and, apparently, the Steam Deck. No Nvidia hardware and no Windows is required.

I've only tested it with GoG's The Witcher 3: GotY Edition so far, but it worked like a charm, so give it a try. As described in the blogpost, all I did was putting the necessary files (d3d11.dll, nvapi64.dll, d3dxdm.ini and d3dx.ini, all from the x64 version) into the game's exe folder (/bin/x64 in this case). And that's it. SBS 3D out of the box. For visualization I connected the Xreal Air and switched to the SBS mode (hold brightness +-button with newest firmware). Now, for Witcher 3 at least, the aspect ratio is still wrong and the shadows seem to be off, but I think it's already great.

The driver's output is by default SBS, but you can switch to TAB and interlaced too. So this should work fine with any monitor, glasses etc. that are able to display these formats and are connectable to the Deck.

The drivers have been reported (on PC at least!) to work with all UE4 games, some DX11 games, the ps2 emulator PCSX2 and some more, you can find more details in the blogpost and the Meant to be Seen-forum.

Credits go to Davegl1234, Chiri, Bo3b and all the people from mtbs3d and helixmod for their great efforts, and the anonymous person that asked if the driver works on Steam Deck too. It does my friend, and I might not have found the post without you.

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Tldr: put geo-11 d3d11.dll, nvapi64.dll, d3dxdm.ini and d3dx.ini in exe folder for stereo 3D

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geo-11 drivers:

https://helixmod.blogspot.com/2022/06/announcing-new-geo-11-3d-driver.html

Meant to be Seen forum thread regarding geo-11:

https://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=26264

Firmware update for Xreal/Nreal Air ( r/xreal ):

https://ota.xreal.com/en/air-update.html

3D fix manager on helixmod for reference:

https://helixmod.blogspot.com/2017/05/3d-fix-manager.html

Edit: added stereoscopic to avoid confusions.