3D Vision Blog

As you probably already know Resident Evil 5 is just about to hit the shelves in two days and a lot of people expect the game to perform great with 3D Vision and other S3D setups, because it is being advertised as the first 3D Vision optimized game. And it is, as you can see the 3D Vision drivers have a profile up and ready for the game and the rating says “3D Vision Ready”, so everything should be great, right? Well it almost is, but of course there is always more to be desired…

Lets start with the fact that the game does not allow you to change the convergence level manually, it has been preset by Capcom at a certain level and you have to stick with it, being able to only control the depth level. Of course Capcom did a great job in choosing very good convergence level, at least for users of the 22″ 120Hz LCDs, but for owners of bigger screen HDTVs or 3D-ready projectors things might not go that well. Anyway the preset convergence level is good, but it stays this way only when you are using low depth level and if you increase it more you might start seeing ghosting on the objects that are far from where your character stands. The game is good to go for up to about 30-50% (depending on the person) level of depth with just some minor ghosting that some people might even not notice or just learn to ignore, but for more the ghosting gets more severe and is not recommended for usage. Other than that the game looks great with S3D, unfortunately with not that much pop-out of the screen effect… unless of course you increase the depth level more, when things will improve a bit.

Something that I personally did not like about the PC version of the Resident Evil 5, and that is not related to S3D, is that the controls are awful if you consider playing with your keyboard and mouse and most people using PCs with 3D Vision will probably do just that. As the RE5 for PC is actually a port of the game that was released earlier this year for consoles, the game has been designed with gamepads in mind, so going to this instead of the keyboard and mouse combination might be a good idea. This is a common problem for console games ported to PC, but I did expect somebody to think about this a bit, after all the game is partially a shooter and with a keyboard and mouse control it can be made a bit better. Anyway I’ll still play the game because I like the series and on a PC because of it being 3D Vision Ready, instead on a console… ;)

Here are the slides of an interesting presentation Nvidia had on Siggraph 2009 about 3D Stereo implementation and usage in games and other 3D applications. Some interesting things about S3D in general and of course a little bit about 3D Vision and 3D Vision Discover. The presentation covers more the technical part of how things work and are being designed with an emphasis on some key technology challenges and how many of them are easily addressed by some basic implementation patterns. The presentation also includes some good anaglyph Stereo 3D screenshots so if you have a pair of anaglyph glasses lying around you can try to see them with the intended depth perception. Still a good read if you were unable to be attending Siggraph 2009, but you are interested in the technology and how things work. The presentation was made by Samuel Gateau from Nvidia and there seems to be something from Capcom about their upcoming Resident Evil 5 that is supposed to be optimized for Nvidia’s 3D Vision hardware. Unfortunately the slides from Capcom’s presentation are still missing.

- To download the 3D Vision Technology presentation in PDF format…

Some time ago I’ve written about some interesting upcoming games that are expected to have official 3D Stereo support available in them in the form of anaglyph or 3D Vision S3D support and Disney’s G-Force game was among them. Now the game is out and it really disappointed a lot of people expecting it to be good in 3D especially when combined with Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision kit simply because the PC version doesn’t support any form of stereo 3D – not in anaglyph or 3D Vision. Now we did not expect to have some sort of a great game coming out for something that is based on a movie, because most of the movie-based games are coming out to be average at best with lot of them raging from total bullshit to something that might be considered for a good time waster. You can say that Disney’s G-Force is below the average, but still might be fun for some kids to play it and the thing that might’ve made it worth playing was the expected 3D Stereo support which did not happen for the PC version of the game… why?

Anyway, you should be aware that Disney’s G-Force Game is available with versions for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP so you can pretty much get it and play it on any of these. But if you want to be able to play the game in Stereoscopic 3D mode you need to get either PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions of the game, because only they come with anaglyph glasses and the needed mode to play with it. If you own a PC and buy the game to play it with Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision you will be disappointed so please do not buy it just for that – save your money and the trouble. And there is on anaglyph mode available for the PC version so even if you wanted to try it out with anaglyph glasses you are screwed so just don’t bother with G-Force anymore and get your fingers crossed for the release of Resident Evil 5 for PC and that it will really rock in S3D as we all hope and as Nvidia and Capcom says.

And if you are still not really ready to give up completely on Disney (hey you are not a small kid anymore, right?) you might get some hopes from the fact that in the fall they should release another Stereo 3D-ready game title. This time it will be exclusive for Nintendo Wii console owners and the game is called Toy Story Mania!, and you probably guessed it will be based on the movie with the same title from 1995, but the game is expected to also feature anaglyph stereo 3D experience.

- To get the game G-Force with anaglyph red-cyan 3D glasses bundled…