3D Vision Blog

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is now officially out and it got a patch released on the same day as the game became available and the good news is that the patch fixes the problems Bad Company 2 had with 3D Vision in stereo 3D mode, or at least most of them. A few days ago I’ve reported some of the issues the game had before the patch in 3D and the good news is that after installing the patch most of them are gone. If you’ve got the game over Steam or any other downloading service you should already have the patch, but if you got a retail copy on an optical media you should apply the patch to have things working (the game should download it automatically when run, but there might be some issues with that). As I said most things regarding 3D Vision support are fixed, for example there are no more problems with some shadows and lights, the sky is also rendered Ok now, you can even enable HBAO without issues in stereo 3D, there is also no need to disable blood either. Anti-aliasing (AA) however still needs to be turned off (set to 1x in the Options) in order to have 3D Vision working, otherwise you won’t see the stereo effect even after you turn it on. There is also a convergence profile for the game available in the new 196.75 drivers, with Nvidia rating the game as Good, stating about the problems with the sky, so obviously this was done before the patch was released. There also seem to be some performance improvements available and you can now even control the FOV trough the settings.ini configuration file of the game with default setting being 55 degrees. Anyway, now with the first patch for Bad Company 2 the game is actually like what was promised at first – a 3D Vision-ready title that looks really well in stereoscopic 3D mode, so if you were waiting just for that go and get your copy now.

- More info regarding the Day 1 patch for Bad Company 2 is available here…

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a first-person shooter set to be released on March 2nd, as a sequel to released in 2008 game Battlefield: Bad Company. The new game is still following the continuing combat adventures of misfits of the US Army’s Company “B,” and Bad Company 2 features the characteristic humor and grit of the Bad Company series, as well as a variety of gameplay improvements and additions, including 2-24 player online support; all-new four man squad gameplay; and more. Couple this with the variety of vehicle related items and classic Battlefield weapons included with the Limited Edition, and you should have the Ultimate Battlefield Bad Company experience to date. That is of course if you intend to play the game normally and not in stereoscopic 3D mode as there are some issues that you should be aware of if you are going to play it in S3D, thankfully there is a workaround for most of them so that you can enjoy the game with the added perception of depth. Oh, and I almost forgot that Bad Company 2 is actually one of the still few games that supports some features of DirectX 11 if you have the compatible hardware, but for Stereo 3D that does not concern us at all yet.

I had a chance to try the game a bit early in stereo 3D mode and play a bit with the settings to find what can be done to improve the experience for S3D players using Nvidia’s 3D Vision. The bad news is that there is still no profile in 3D Vision available and the good news is that I have prepared a custom convergence file to be used for better results. When running the game for the first time you should set the resolution and detail level accordingly to reflect your available hardware, but be aware of the fact that the game is quite heavy and requires a powerful video card to be played in high detail in stereo 3D mode. You must disable HBAO (Horizon-based Ambient Occlusion) to get better results in stereo 3D mode and the other thing is to set the AA option to 1x (disable), otherwise you might not see depth in the game! You have to also disable bloom (set bloom=false), but that is done in the settings.ini file, DirectX version in use is also being controlled from the ini file with auto set by default to choose the highest supported (DX10 for 3D Vision). The settings.ini file can be found in the documents folder in a subfolder named BFBC2 and you can edit it with a plain text editor such as Notepad.

While playing the game you can notice some problems with shadows and lights rendering – weird shadows around characters or glowing halos, lowering the depth level can help get rid of these. Generally you can play with a higher depth level without very serious issues, but for most problem free experience with the custom convergence settings you need to get the depth level to a lower setting (5%-15% should be generally Ok). The crosshair and objective indicators on the screen are rendered in 3D which is good, but the HUD is in 2D, although with custom convergence settings this is not an issue. The good news is that we are expecting an official patch to improve stereo 3D support soon after the release of the game and an official 3D Vision profile. Meanwhile if you try these recommendations and my custom convergence settings please leave your comments below on how they worked for you.

- To download the custom convergence settings for the game Battlefield: Bad Company 2…

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…