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…

Related posts you might be interested in:

• Upcoming Games to Watch For and Try Playing in Stereo 3D Mode (3)
• How Well are Some New Games Performing in Stereoscopic 3D Mode (18)
• The Game Transformers: War for Cybertron in Stereo 3D With 3D Vision (4)
• The Game Mafia II for PC will Support PhysX and 3D Vision (2)
• Playing the Game Singularity in Stereo 3D Mode with 3D Vision (2)

I’m back on testing new games with GeForce 3D Vision to see how well they preform in stereoscopic 3D and to try to help you get the best of a certain title if you want to play it in S3D. This time on the line is the game Borderlands, yet another title based on Unreal Tournament 3 engine which provides good results when playing in stereoscopic 3D, but no the best possible, as there are some issues present as it the case with Borderlands. Now the game itself is quite interesting and fun to play, because it combines a first person shooter with some RPG elements and on top of that with somewhat of unique cell-shaded style of animated graphics. I personally liked it, but I’ve kind of become a bit of an RPG fan lately and the atmosphere of the game and the visual game style kind of got me, but lets get back on the topic…

The latest 3D Vision drivers recognized the game Borderlands and the game itself is rated as a title providing good stereoscopic 3D effect, but it seems that the guys at Nvidia have forgotten to
mention some things you need to do in order to the get the best possible result. First of all here we have a problem with the shadows, as you can see from the screenshot above they are rendered incorrectly and when the frame for the left and the right eye is being combined you get a weird shadow effect.

So in order to get rid of the weird shadows what you need to do is to go in to the Game options and to turn off the dynamic shadows. From this the level of realism can suffer a bit, but the game will start to look much better in S3D without the weird double shadows visible. Unfortunately not only the shadows are a kind of a problem here…

Even after disabling the dynamic shadows you might notice that some objects still create double shadow effect, but this is only present around some lights in the game and unfortunately there seems to be no option that fixes this. But in order to minimize this negative effect you can decrease the depth level a bit which will help reducing it to a very low level that can easily be ignored. Anyway it seems that a new official 3D Vision profile for Borderlands is being worked on that will probably fix the issue with the shadows, but we’ll have to wait a bit more for that to be released maybe in the next driver update.

Another thing that you may try is to play a bit with the convergence level, maybe trying to lower it a bit will give you better results than what you get with the default profile, but you this depends on personal preferences. Anyway it is worth trying to see if you’ll see the effect better by lowering the convergence…

- Ge the game Borderlands here if you don’t have it yet…

Related posts you might be interested in:

• The new FIFA 2010 Demo and its 3D Vision Compatibility (1)
• The Game Shattered Horizon and its 3D Vision Compatibility (0)
• The Game Need for Speed: SHIFT and its 3D Vision Compatibility (2)
• Shattered Horizon Beta and 3D Vision Compatibility (0)
• Just Cause 2 Demo is Available on Steam and Supports 3D Vision (6)