Reader DC - 3D PDF - New nVidia drivers: it doesn't work!

I do not believe this is an NVidia issue specifically. What I have noticed is that by default Adobe Acrobat DC has the option "Enable Protected Mode at startup" enabled.  This results in Acrobat DC reverting to software rendering mode. So if you have a complex 3D model, with textures, then it will either look very ugly or simply may never load and will crash or hang Acrobat as it tries to load it into its software renderer.

By disabling the "Enable Protected Mode At Startup" option it tells Acrobat its OK to use Hardware rendering and everything works fine.

What possibly may be happening in regards to Nvidia is that perhaps Acrobat is trusting certain drivers, but we the users have no idea what drivers they may be. So it "might" work on some computers, but not on others. However for myself I always see it in software mode on Windows 10, but on OSX it seems fine. So it may be an NVidia thing on Windows 10, possibly due to Acrobat checking for some compatibility etc...  And disabling the option brings back the correct rendering in hardware with all the benefits it provides visually and speed wise.

This was never a problem last year. Everything worked beautifully and my clients were able to produce very high quality 3D PDF documents with textures, environment maps, lighting and complex geometry.

But now due to the changes Adobe has made it has crippled Acrobat Reader as a delivery platform.

I hope this will be addressed sometime soon, as every thread I come across the issue is either dismissed or user are told to disable that option, which is not something I would ever suggest to a user.

This should be tested internally on multiple computers, hardware and drivers and at least suggest to end users what drivers they have tested and verified as being compatible. This is done for most 3D software and I feel that Adobe should be doing this also for Acrobat Reader if they wish it to be taken seriously as a distribution system for 3D content.

It is clearly nVidia who have a problem to fix. There's nothing in Reader that's specific to any one video card, and bugs in video drivers are depressingly common. Did you report it to them? They have active driver development teams.