3D Vision Blog

Crytek released version 3.2 of its CryENGINE 3 SDK and the good news is the update includes full Stereoscopic 3D (S-3D) support for all supported platforms and with almost no performance impact or compromise on graphical quality. Thanks to the CryENGINE 3 Screen Space Re-Projection Stereo (SSRS) solution, developers are not required to write any code, or change any assets to take advantage of the S-3D technology thus making it much easier to develop games with stereo 3D support and supposedly this solution renders in Stereo 3D with minimal performance loss and zero quality impact.

CryENGINE 3 Live Create, which allows 100% real-time, simultaneous editing across all supported platforms, also runs in Stereoscopic 3D thus allowing developers to make a single change in the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox editor and then immediately see and play the S-3D output on the target platform. Furthermore, CryENGINE 3 can output HD resolution S-3D movies from the renderer in real-time. CryENGINE 3 supports all industry standard output formats – meaning there is no specific requirements for hardware or top of the range displays to benefit from S-3D in games, not to mention that CryENGINE 3 has multiplatform (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC) native support for display technology including: HDMI 1.4 Stereo Standard, Frame-compatible formats for Pre-HDMI 1.4 TVs, Anaglyphic 3D and Stereoscopic Projection.

- Interested developers can easily evaluate the new version of CryENGINE 3 here…

Meet Jens Schöbel, Technical Designer (and stereoscopic 3D wiz) for Crytek, developers of the upcoming Crysis 2 video game and CryENGINE 3 game engine. Crytek first made headlines in stereoscopic 3D gaming with a demo they did on an iZ3D monitor at GDC 2009. They later demonstrated CryENGINE 3 running in stereoscopic 3D on the big screen at SIGGRAPH 2009. Now Crysis 2 is getting set for release (this November), complete with native stereoscopic 3D support for the PC and Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 consoles. Neil Schneider from MTBS3D began a mystery tour of finding out what Crytek have been cooking in 3D by asking Jens Schöbel a lot of interesting questions.

- Read the first part of the interview with Jens Schöbel from Crytek here…
- Crysis 2 is already available for pre-order with a release date of November 23rd…

Crytek has just announced some very interesting news. It seems that the company is planning to show their CryENGINE 3 in stereoscopic 3D (S-3D) at this year’s GDC expo in San Francisco (11–13 March). It is interesting to note that this actually appears to be the first announcement about something S-3D to be showcased during GDC this year, as I was beginning to wonder if suddenly everyone forgot about Stereoscopic 3D. Lets hope that there will be much more to be seen during GDC in terms of Stereo 3D support, after all the developers need to be aware of the advantages that S-3D can bring into gaming along with how to properly implement game graphics and effects.

But back to the CryENGINE 3, one of the key features of the new engine is the “LiveCreate” feature, which will also be showcased at GDC, and what it does is to allow designers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. With CryENGINE 3, scalability across multiple platforms is a revolutionary development to enable the creation of truly great-looking games – regardless of the target platform. Hopefully this will help a lot to stop seeing some crappy port of a game for one or another platform, especially if other developers adopt similar approach to their game engines.

“After the successful introduction of CryENGINE 3 at last year’s GDC, we are really excited to show the latest version of our all-in-one game development solution this year in stereoscopic 3D. Over the past few years, S-3D technology has emerged as one of the key trends both in movies and games. With CryENGINE 3, developers will have the ability to create their content in 3D on all platforms. There are basically no longer any limits to a designer’s creativity. CryENGINE 3 features many innovations to accelerate development, cut production costs and ensure teams are able to maximize their own creativity without delays,” says Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE.

It is worth to note that CryENGINE 3 seems to support Stereoscopic 3D natively and does not require additional drivers, or at least that is what Crytek demonstrated during Siggraph 2009 with the engine. And then again even before Siggraph, during GDC 2009, Cytek has also demonstrated working Stereoscopic 3D support with CryENGINE 2 on iZ3D display. Maybe it is about time for Crytek to become a bit more serious and active about S-3D and join an organization like The S3DGA, as there are still not a lot of game engines designed to support stereo 3D gaming. And while the Stereoscopic 3D support in CryENGINE 3 seems to be for PC only at the moment, with PS3 going to be 3D-ready soon and because of the LiveCreate feature of the engine we might see console S3D support too, and not only limited to PS3, but on Xbox 360 too. Still nothing official about stereoscopic 3D support for consoles coming from Crytek…