Nvidia has just made available a new beta video driver in the form of 295.51 with some interesting new features and improvements regarding stereoscopic 3D support and not only. It is interesting to note that Nvidia has not released a WHQL driver for a while now, and the last such one is 285.58 back from October last year, but there have been multiple beta versions released in the meantime. Not everyone however installs and users beta drivers due to the fact that they may have some issues and not work properly at times or with specific setups, so have this in mind if you decide to try the new beta driver as well…
The most notable stereoscopic 3D-related new feature in the 295.51 beta drivers is the addition of support for 3D Vision windowed mode on 3D-capable DLP HDTVs and on “Optimized for GeForce” passive 3D monitors, so you will be able to run games and applications in stereo 3D mode in a window on these as well. Other than that there are quite a few updated or new 3D Vision game profiles, and these are:
- The Adventures of Tintin – rated Good
- Afterfall: Insanity – rated Fair
- Black Prophecy – rated Not Recommended
- Chaos Online – rated Fair
- Da Vinci Online – rated Fair
- DotA 2 – rating upgraded to Fair
- Dungeon and Dragons: Daggerdale – rated Fair
- Ferrari Project – rated Not Recommended
- The First Templar – rated Fair
- Fractal – rated Excellent
- FreeStyle 2 – rated Good
- The Haunted Halls Reach – rated Excellent
- King Arthur II – rated Not Recommended
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – rated Fair
- Kong Fu Ying Xiong – rated Fair
- Love Beat – rated Good
- Marvel Super Hero Squad Online – rated Good
- Microsoft Flight – rated Fair
- Perpetuum – rated Fair
- Post Apocalyptic Mayhem – rated Fair
- Prototype 2 – rated Fair
- Q.U.B.E. – rated Excellent
- Quan Qiu Shi Ming – rated Excellent
- rFactor 2 (mod mode) – rated Good
- Saints Row: The Third – Rated Not Recommended
- Shadow Company: Left for Dead – rated Not Recommended
- Special Force – Rated Good
- Tera – rated Good
- Top Gun: Hard Lock – rated Not Recommended
- Tropico 4 – rated Good
- Worms Blast – rated Good
A word of advice for the game Q.U.B.E. that is rated as excellent, the game kind of reminds of Portal in style and is actually quite fun and works really well in stereo 3D mode, however similarly to Portal the color palette in the game is often highly contrasting and this can lead to experiencing more crosstalk than usual. Also the new driver does add SLI profile for the upcoming game Mass Effect 3, but there is not yet a 3D Vision profile or rating for the game, and the previous games from the series had some issues in stereo 3D mode. Mass Effect 3 has the potential to turn out to be a great game to play in stereo 3D mode if it works properly this time, so hold your fingers crossed for when the game becomes available in March this year.
The developers of the game Alan Wake have published some interesting photos on the official game’s blog that are hinting at some interesting features about to come in the PC version of the game. On the photo above you can see a three monitor configuration built with 2D-capable only Samsung monitors (probably an Nvidia Surround setup), and there is also a pair of the new 3D Vision 2 glasses lying around…
The PC version of the game Alan Wake itself should be released sometime in February and it should be available trough Steam according to the latest information available. It will apparently work on multi-monitor configurations very well, and although it probably will not be a 3D Vision-ready title it should work very will in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision setups… hopefully in 3D Vision Surround setups as well. For playing in stereoscopic 3D mode however you should be ready with some quite serious hardware, especially in terms of GPU performance. The game does not feature AMD HD3D native support either, but it might also work well with a middle-ware such as the DDD TriDef 3D software and hopefully by the time the game gets released AMD will also release an official driver supporting Eyefinity 3D configurations as well as Crossfire setups in stereo 3D mode as well.
I’ve just found a new and interesting game that works really well in stereo 3D mode using 3D Vision. The game is called Choplifter HD an in it you take the role of a rescue pilot asked to join the elite, international helicopter rescue team and in it you will be flying a helicopter doing a bunch of different stuff in more than 30 missions. The game combines things from reality with fantasy elements, and your missions will range from the extraction of captured military prisoners, to saving survivors of viral outbreaks. You will have to bank, hover, touch-down and sometimes even shake zombies from your chopper during lift-off in order to make the rescue and complete your mission. Oh, and there is a lot of shooting you have to do from your chopper, but even more enemies are going to be shooting at you…
Choplifter HD is based on Unreal engine and probably a fairly new version was used, because the game works really well in stereo 3D mode, although there is not yet an official profile for 3D Vision available in the latest drivers. Even without a profile the game looks quite nice in stereo 3D and you can easily crank up the depth level, but the real fun starts when you play a bit with the convergence as the game will look even better in stereoscopic 3D mode. The good thing is that the HUD is rendered in 2D and there aren’t any issues with lights, shadows or any pretty much any of the effects in the game, so you can have some fun playing this game in stereo 3D mode without any issues. You can pick up the game off Steam for $14.99 USD in US or for 9.99 Euro in Europe, but unfortunately there is no demo you can download and try before buying it.
