3D Vision Blog

The Multiplayer Demo of scheduled for February 16th release game Aliens vs Predator has been released yesterday over Steam and a lot of people (including myself) tried to play it with 3D Vision. It turned out however that the 3D Vision drivers contain a profile for an older AvP game and load it and that results in totally messing up the image on the screen when you turn on the stereoscopic 3D mode. Turns out that the convergence level is the thing that totally messes up the image on the screen, but even after lowering the convergence with the help of CTRL + F5 key combination the game is not in a true stereo 3D mode…

So I had to figure a way out to fix that by preventing the wrong game profile to be loaded from the 3D Vision driver and this was not as easy as to just rename the AvP.exe file from the Steam directory as this prevents the game from actually being run. So the solution I’ve found is to rename the actual game executable from AvP.exe to AvPx.exe and then add a small launcher that is named AvP.exe that is just calling up the renamed actual game executable file and that did the trick. The 3D Vision drivers no longer detect the game and load the old profile so things look normal, although you might still want to play with settings in order to get best results in S3D mode. To make it easier I’ve packaged the launcher I’m using (Bart’s program launcher 1.2) into a small archive so that after renaming the the original Exe of the game you can just extract the files from the archive below and then just run the game with everything working fine with 3D Vision.

- Download the archive with the launcher fix for the AvP Multiplayer Demo…

Recently there are some interesting hings happening around Nvidia’s 3D Vision solution for stereoscopic 3D gaming and movie and photo viewing, so here is what is new in brief…

You know that the game Dark Void has been out for a few days already and it is the latest title to support PhysX and 3D Vision, however the profile in the 3D Vision drivers rates the game as Good and not Excellent as you’d expect from an official (?) 3D Vision title. The game has been developed by Capcom, the same guys that made the Resident Evil 5 – the first official 3D Vision-optimized title that came out (the PC version only).

Some of the issues that Dark Void has are due to the use of Unreal engine ant it is not handling perfectly well in stereoscopic 3D mode, so basically most of the games based on it have some issues that need to be fixed afterwards. A good example for a game that is also based on the same Unreal engine, but has been constantly improved to offer good stereoscopic 3D support for 3D Vision is Borderlands. The developers from Gearbox have been constantly improving the 3D Vision support and they just released a new patch version 1.21 that adds 3D crosshair in the game instead of the 2D one when playing in S3D mode.

After five days or exactly on February 9th the game Bioshock 2 should become available. And this is supposedly to be another 3D Vision-ready title and if you ask me is much more interesting and can look really great in stereoscopic 3D mode if it is done right. And especially after the success of the first BioShock, everyone is expecting a lot from the sequel.

Another interesting game title expected next month, March 16th is Metro 2033. This game is supposed to be something like a post-apocalyptic FPS with some RPG elements, with the action going on underground in the Russian Metro, the year is 2033 and what is left of the humanity is just trying to survive in the harsh post-apocalyptic world. This game should support DirectX 10, take advantage of PhysX and officially be 3D Vision-ready, so you should put it in your to look forward to list of games.

Some other games that might be officially 3D Vision-ready are the upcoming on February 16th Aliens vs Predator with its multiplayer demo just released and available for download over Steam (this one is supposed to be DirectX 11 and ATI Eyefinity title, so official 3D Vision-readiness is a bit questionable). There is also the expected to be released on March 2nd Battlefield: Bad Company 2, another first-person shooter that is currently undergoing a beta testing stage.

Finally if you already own a 3D Vision kit you might complete a short survey that Nvidia is currently conducting regarding the accessories that come with their shutter glasses. So if you have a spare minute you can fill in the few simple questions, absolutely anonymous, providing some feedback on how you use the product and this way maybe help improving the next version of the 3D Vision….

- To fill in the 3D Vision Accessories survey currently being conducted by Nvidia…

The usage of Anaglyph method for viewing stereoscopic 3D is still by far the easiest way to get a glimpse of what is possible in the world of S3D and what you can expect from a better solution. Of course there are some issues associated with the anaglyph method like problems with color reproduction or you getting tired even after a little use of the red-cyan or other color filters. But still having in mind that you can try it without the need for special display, glasses or even software that you have to pay is just enough for a lot of people to want to try that first and then go with solutions like 3D Vision, iZ3D Monitors, Zalman Trimon and others that require a serious investment in hardware and not only for the 3D setup itself, but also for the PC that will be able to handle the 3D content good enough. So lets get to the point how you can test anaglyph stereo 3D gaming on your mobile computer in particular, but the same solutions will also work on a desktop PC…

If your laptop has an Nvidia-based GPU inside (GeForce 8xxx or later mobile graphics) you can go for the 3D Vision drivers and use their free anaglyph mode called 3D Vision Discover with any pair of plain red-cyan anaglyph glasses paper or plastic. Or it was working without problems for the 3D Vision Drivers up to version 190.38, as with the later 191.xx (if I remember correctly) up to the latest ones you will get the error above when trying to enable the Stereoscopic 3D mode from the control panel. It seems that when you run any newer 3D Vision drivers they try to find a compatible 120Hz LCD panel in your laptop and if they don’t you are out of luck and cannot even enable the 3D Vision Discover mode to try out the anaglyph mode. It is still weird why Nvidia did not do anything about his issue since it has been around for some time already, or maybe they are simply ignoring all the owners of gaming laptops since there is still no official 3D Vision support for mobile systems with external monitor (with shutter glasses and 120Hz LCD). If you are a lucky owner of Asus G51J 3D laptop – the only one so far with a 120Hz panel you are Ok and you probably should not have any problems running the 3D Vision Discover anaglyph mode too, but why would you do it on this laptop anyway? Still with a modified drivers and and external 120Hz LCD monitor you can run both anaglyph and shutter glasses mode with the 3D vision driver. At least running the anaglyph mode on your desktop PC does not bring any issues, but still if you don’t yet have the shutter glasses you cannot even try the anaglyph mode on your laptop, why?

Anyway, the good news is that there are alternatives for laptop owners that still want to try the free anaglyph mode and that is to use the iZ3D Driver that does support Anaglyph and a few other stereo 3d viewing methods apart for the specific mode used for their own stereoscopic 3D displays. Another good thing about the use of this driver is that it will work not only on Nvidia-based hardware (including pre-stream processors architecture GPUs), but also on ATI-based video cards. The only drawback here is that the iZ3D Driver still does not support DirectX 10 games, unlike the Nvidia solution, although the company seems to be working on adding it for some time now. So if you have a laptop and you want to try out stereoscopic 3D gaming on it with anaglyph mode you should definitely download and try the iZ3D Driver.

- To download the iZ3D Driver with free Stereoscopic 3D anaglyph mode…