3D Vision Blog

Last Friday Nvidia has silently released a new beta driver CD version 1.33 for 3D Vision users after previously releasing a 1.33 CD with WHQL drivers and that kind of confused the users as the version of the drivers included was the same as with the WHQL release. However in the new beta driver there are some improvements regarding the 3D Vision profiles and one of them is targeted for StarCraft II players, along with updated Mafia II profile (the game is finally coming very soon) and TRINE profile with both getting certified as 3D Vision Ready. And while normally there is no need to update (this is beta driver after all) if you play StarCraft II and want to finally be able to play in stereo 3D mode with good results then you should update the drivers as they do a good job in fixing most of the issues the game has in S3D mode. However this driver update brings the game to a “Good” 3D Vision status according to the profile and does not make it perfect in stereo 3D mode, for that we are still waiting for a patch for the game itself coming from Blizzard (like fixing the 2D crosshair etc.). One thing regarding the 3D Vision profile for the StarCraft that kind of surprised me was that the convergence level in the profile was a bit messed up, so I did some tweaking and here is a custom convergence profile that should fix things for you should you experience the same problem. So if you the the new driver and the custom convergence settings for StarCraft II please report how they work for you.

- Download the custom convergence settings for the game StarCraft II…
- Download the new 3D Vision driver CD version 1.33 beta with the updated profiles…

Just yesterday I’ve shared the information that the game Just Cause 2 will be 3D Vision-ready title and today we already have the demo of the game available on Steam. The good news is that the demo also works just fine with 3D Vision, so you can get a feel of what to expect form the full game when it is out later this month, however there are a few issues that you should be aware of regarding the demo. The game really looks great in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision even with all the additional effects enabled so it is really done with S3D in mind, but the demo however has some minor issues. You should start with the installation the 3D Vision driver included in the just made available 196.75 drivers as these drivers are the first ones that do include a 3D Vision profile for the game. Not that if you use older driver without the game profile you’ll have some issues as the default convergence level in the game is just fine, it maybe needs just some fine tweaking for optimum results, but that also depends on personal preferences. If you have an SLI system with two or more Nvidia video cards you should disable the SLI before running the demo of the game if you plan to play it in stereo 3D mode as it seems that the demo has some issues with SLI and 3D Vision working together. With SLI enabled when you switch to stereoscopic 3D mode by enabling the 3D Vision the left frame in the game (right when taking a 3D screenshot) is almost completely dark creating a very weird feeling and making the S3D mode unusable until you disable SLI. The last thing you should be aware of is that the demo and probably the final game is quite demanding in terms of graphical performance, especially if you wish to play it in stereoscopic 3D mode.

- To download the demo of the game Just Cause 2 over Steam…

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…