Blades of Time is a new hack and slash type action-adventure game developed by Gaijin Entertainment, the same company that has made the game X-Blades, and the two games actually share way too many similarities, although they are not really related officially in the form of a sequel/prequel. Considering how good X-Blades looks in stereoscopic 3D mode with 3D Vision I was eager to see will Blades of Time also have a good stereo 3D compatibility. The game offers detailed environments, a lot of effects and fast action which makes it a great candidate for a nice experience in stereoscopic 3D mode, and even though it has not be designed to be a stereo 3D title it actually does quite Ok.
Blades of Time does not yet have a 3D Vision profile, but even without one the default settings work Ok, you may do a tiny bit of convergence adjustment as a fine tuning and then you can start pushing the depth really high. With that said though, there are some issues in stereo 3D mode that you should be aware of, like the problem with the shadows not properly rendered in S3D, but you can disable them from the Options menu. The other problematic thing is related to the text being displayed on the screen when in stereo 3D mode, the same goes for some other HUD elements as well as the crosshair when shooting with a gun. Other than that, the item icons also render in 2D, but that s a minor thing. If you plan to push for the maximum depth for the normal more distant view you may have to be aware that when using the compass and in other closeup modes you may have trouble in stereo 3D mode, but even with moderate depth level the things look quite well when rendered in stereoscopic 3D mode. So Blades of Time might not be the greatest title of all time or a very special game, but it could be a fun thing to play for a while and waste some time, and doing it in stereoscopic 3D mode makes it even better. Hopefully the developer of the game will pay some attention to the stereoscopic 3D gamers and release an update addressing the issues in S3D mode and meanwhile there is a demo of the game that you can download and try before deciding if you want to get the full game or not…
A few days ago EA and Crytek have officially announced the upcoming game Crysis 3 scheduled for release in the spring next year and today they have released the first official gameplay trailer (embedded above). What they’ve forgot to confirm however is if Crysis 3 will support stereoscopic 3D mode as Crysis 2 does and if it does will there also be a full dual rendering and not only their 2D+Depth approach they currently use. The game Crysis 3 will be based on the CryEngine 3 and that engine does have native stereoscopic 3D support, so it will be plain stupid not to have the support available in the game, especially after the good feedback of the stereo 3D support in Crysis 2. Not to mention how the CryEngine’s stereoscopic 3D support is being advertised as a zero implementation solution with the game developer not having to do anything special to have S3D implemented in his title based on the engine. However we still don’t have any official confirmation about Crysis 3 having stereoscopic 3D support…
Now, we all know why Crysis has developed the 2D+Depth approach in CryEngine 3 or as they call it Screen Space Re-Projection Stereo (SSRS), all in order to ensure they can offer a decent stereoscopic 3D experience not only to PC gamers, but also to PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers willing to play in stereo 3D as well. Using the SSRS solution you get just a little performance loss when playing in stereoscopic 3D mode as opposed to the more serious performance hit that a full dual rendering introduces, but the later also does provide a more spectacular and realistic volume experience. And since we did not get full dual rendering stereo 3D mode in Crysis 2 via an update, a lot of gamers are hoping this will be introduced in Crysis 3, at least for PC gamers that can always upgrade their hardware to handle the extra performance requirements. As adding this opposed to the 2D+Depth approach is not possible for consoles where you’ll have to sacrifice details in order to ensure full dual camera rendering in order to fit in the performance capabilities of the PS3 or Xbox 360. Considering that Crysis 3 is scheduled for the spring 2013 or in about a year from now there is quite a lot of time for Crytek to add additional stereoscopic 3D rendering modes, but it is not yet know if they will indeed do that or not. Meanwhile they have started taking pre-orders of Crysis 3 Hunter Edition already that includes some extra bonuses for the most eager gamers.
The game Diablo III is one of the highly anticipated game titles coming this year and it is almost here and this weekend Blizzard had a quick open beta of the game to stress test the infrastructure and to give a short peek of what to expect to a lot of people. I took advantage of that short open beta to play a bit the game and of course try it out in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision. The 3D Vision drivers rate Diablo III as Good for stereo 3D play with the note that some objects render at wrong depth. The good news is that the game (judging from the beta) is actually quite playable in stereoscopic 3D mode if you keep at low to moderate depth levels as going to a high depth creates an uncomfortable feeling due to the fact that some things are rendered at screen depth level and they should not be. Things like the mouse cursor, character markers, object text, on screen messages etc are rendered at screen depth level, but pretty much all else is rendered well in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision thus lower depth works Ok. You should be aware that the game is a no-go for pop-out in stereo 3D mode at its current state and some things really do look like cardboard cutouts (flat) and this could really be intentional actually (you’ll probably not notice it unless you play in stereo 3D mode). Considering what Blizzard has done with Starcraft 2 for example we could as well get an update for the game that will make it work well in stereoscopic 3D mode just as it happened with SC2. Blizzard has posted that they are aware of the issues with the stereoscopic 3D rendering using 3D Vision and this is a good sign that they will most likely fix them in time for the full game’s release, or shortly after that. The game Diablo III is expected to be released on May 15th this year, so not much waiting left…
