The 3D television production studio and 3D TV channel 3net along with its partners Discovery, Sony and IMAX have released a comprehensive manual for stereoscopic 3D pre-production, 3D workflows, 3D post-processing and delivery of high-quality 3D television programs. The 3D Production Guide features stereoscopic expertise from the top producers and technical advisors from the channel and its partners and the good thing is that it has been made freely available for everyone interested in it in the form of a PDF file. The 50-page illustrated manual includes detailed information garnered from the combined 50 years of experience in the area of 3D from those who contributed to its creation. The guide outlines in detail all of the facets involved in creating top-quality 3D content for television, from initial workflow planning, to production, post production, stereographic correction and final delivery.
The 3D Production Guide is a document outlining current best practices in the area of 3D production for television. It is the result of extensive contributions from the 3D experts of 3net’s partner companies Discovery Communications, Sony Corporation and IMAX Corporation. The guide was authored by Bert Collins, Josh Derby, Bruce Dorbin, Don Ecklund, Buzz Hays, Jim Houston, George Joblove and Spencer Stephens, with Bert Collins and Josh Derby serving as editors. It will be constantly updated and amended as the dynamics of 3D television production continue to evolve. And while this manual has been developed for 3D TV production most of the things found in it can be helpful and useful for any stereoscopic 3D enthusiast or professional, so it is something definitely worth reading.
The game Alan Wake is finally available for PC as well, for now only on Steam, but it should make its appearance on Origin and in a retail version shortly. And with the developers of the game talking about the game supporting 3D Vision and AMD HD3D as well as teasing us with multi-monitor setups prior to the release of the game the stereo 3D gamers were eagerly anticipating this release. But now that the game is finally available and many stereoscopic 3D gamers that have tried it report that it is far from perfect in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision.
So when Remedy Entertainment said that the game:
- Works with AMD Eyefinity 3D 3-screen mode.
- Works with NVIDIA NVISION2 Stereoscopic 3D.
Will Alan Wake PC support Stereoscopic 3D?
We have internally tested that the game works with NVISION 3D very nicely. It is fairly performance heavy though so a high end GPU such as the GeForce 580GTX and moderate graphics settings are recommended.
Remedy has not been able to test AMD HD3D (we spent some time trying), but AMD has access to the build and we are hoping they can confirm whether it works or not.
They probably have meant that the game can run with 3D Vision and AMD HD3D, but they were not referring to the level of quality you can expect to get in stereo 3D mode. The developers actually recommend to play the game with a very low level of depth and indeed when you just have a few bars of depth the issues of the game rendered in stereo 3D mode are not that apparent and it is actually playable. However stereo 3D gamers usually tend to play with high levels of depth and a lot of them also ten do tweak the convergence levels as well. With Alan Wake however you should not try this as it will literally make the game unplayable as increasing depth or messing up with convergence simply makes very apparent the issue with the dynamic shadow rendering that the game has in stereo 3D mode as well as the issue with lights. But saying that a game with such issues works “very nicely” with 3D Vision isn’t acceptable at all and it is very misleading. The game may be playable with very low depth levels, but that is only something that can be called acceptable at best and not “very nicely”… so if you have considered getting the game Alan wake with the idea to play it in stereo 3D mode, you better wait a bit more to see if the issues that the game currently has in stereo 3D mode get resolved first.
The game Dear Esther isn’t your traditional game, it is an independently developed first person interactive ghost story where you have to explore a strange island and as the island exploration goes you’ll also uncover the story of the game piece by piece. The game may seem a bit strange to many of you, but it is actually something different worth trying out and the best thing about it is that Dear Esther is working great in stereoscopic 3D mode with 3D Vision and with other stereo 3D solutions as well. There is no 3D Vision profile available for the game yet, but the game actually does not need it, you can play a bit with the convergence stings and can easily push the depth to the maximum to get really great results in stereo 3D mode. There are just some minor issues that you may have playing the game in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision such as weird water reflections at times, but this usually happens if you get under water for a moment, and just ALT-Tabbing out of the game and getting back in it should be fixed. There are also some distant objects that appear to be rendered at the wrong depth etc, but again nothing serious that can ruin your experience playing it in stereo 3D mode.
