If you have a lot of 3D photos you’ve probably discovered it can be a pain to organize them properly, even previewing and doing some simple editing could be a job you are not willing to start doing as it is not very convenient. The free StereoPhoto Maker application is a useful tool, but in the hands of more experienced users for doing some adjustments on 3D photos, but it is not intended for organizing your photos or even not very convenient for previewing 3D photo galleries. And here comes another interesting free tool called Phereoshop, it is a simplified 3d photo organizer, viewer and uploaded by the guys behind the 3D photo website www.phereo.com (the software platform that the photo section of 3DVisionLive is based on).
While Phereoshop is essentially for organizing and viewing your 3D photos it also comes with some simple and easy to use adjustments for editing 3D photos, offering features such as color correction, stereo alignment and cropping of images. The uploading part is there just to help you get the photos you want to share online easier on the Phereo’s website, for that you would need to have a registration at the website of course. The software is compatible with 3D Vision, you just need to disable the green Nvidia warning the first time you preview a 3D photo and you should be Ok, and you can of course also preview in other formats if you don’t have 3D Vision. The software can sure take some more improvements and get more features, but even now it is something that might be quite useful for novice users in 3D photography. So it is something worth trying out…
Oil Rush is pretty much the first real commercially available game based on the impressive Unigine engine that has up until recently been used mostly for benchmarking video cards using the very popular Heaven benchmark. The game has been developed by the makers of the Unigine engine itself, and since the more recent versions of the engine have official stereoscopic 3D support, the game also supports it. Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control that combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS title with the fun of Tower Defence type of games provide in a vast water world with very nice and detailed graphics. The game is multiplatform, so it is not available only for Windows, but the most stereoscopic 3D features are supported in the Windows version, including support for 3D Vision. Oil Rush is a game that you may want to try playing in stereo 3D mode as it does work very well.
Oil Rush Supports DX9, DX10, DX11 and OpenGL rendering modes in the Windows version that I’ve tried. With the OpenGL support for stereo 3D being limited to only anaglyph mode, while in all DirectX modes you get full support for anaglyph, Side by Side, iZ3D monitors as well as 3D Vision. Have in mind that you will need to activate Vsync in order to be able to use the game in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision. There is no official 3D Vision profile for the game available in the latest video drivers, even in the latest beta released just a few days ago, but activating the 3D Vision mode from the game launcher does produce very good results in stereo 3D mode. You can also run the game with disabled stereo 3D mode and then activate 3D Vision when the game loads, but then you may experience some issues with setting up the best parameters for playing the game comfortably and also have some visual artifacts.
Activating the 3D Vision mode from the game’s launcher apparently loads different settings and also disables the convergence adjustment, but there is also a stereo 3D effect slider in the game’s options menu. With the 3D Vision mode active and all the depth pushed to the maximum the game still looks a bit flat, especially for people that are used to play with a lot of depth. But as I’ve said not activating the 3D Vision mode from the game menu and forcing it directly inside the game, although leaves convergence adjustment unlocked and allows higher depth adjustment, may lead to having some visual issues and thus resulting in not so good experience, so you may be better off with the official 3D Vision mode activated and a bit flatter image. With the official 3D Vision mode activated from the launcher you will notice that the cursor is rendered in 2D at the screen depth, but that isn’t that much of a bother actually, and most of the HUD is also rendered at screen depth, although there are some elements that may slightly pop-out and that can create unpleasant feeling when moving the cursor over them. Other than that there aren’t any visual issues with the game running in stereo 3D mode with the 3D Vision option activated from the game launcher, so it is something that you may wish to try yourself and if you do you are welcome to share your feedback about the game below. The good thing is that the game developer is quite actively working on improving the stereo 3D support in the game and getting rid of the issues…
Update: Apparently the game runs directly without going trough the launcher pictured above for the Steam version, so if you’ve got the Steam and not the standalone version of the game, then try running it trough the “launcher_x86.bat” file located in “C:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\oil rush\”, instead of directly trough Steam. Also the game developer has announced in their official forum that they plan to address the stereo 3D issues in the next 1.03 update that should be available next week.
If you still haven’t seen the stereo 3D trailer for the upcoming movie Men in Black 3, then you should take a look at it, although the stereoscopic 3D trailer still hasn’t made it on the official website of the movie, it has been available for a while already on 3net’s YouTube channel. Have in mind that the movie was not shot in 3D, and was instead converted to 3D in post-production, but the end results judging from the trailer are not bad. So do take a look at the YouTube 3D video embedded above, or download the 3D movie trailer in MP4 format (Side by Side with half horizontal resolution) from the link below, and as usual feel free to share your feedback about the video should you watch it. The release date of the movie is set for May 25th, 2012.
