Those of you that follow the blog should remember the 3D Vision stereoscopic 3D test system with water cooling that I’ve built. In the meantime I’ve been upgrading the test PC a bit by bit, but since it is based on a bit older platform already I decided to do some testing with the recently announced Intel Sandy Bridge platform. The 3D test computer currently used an Asus P55 Sabertooth motherboard together with an Intel Core i5 750 processor overclocked to run at 4 GHz 24/7, together with dual GeForce GTX 580 video cards in SLI setup. So I’ve got two more recent high-end motherboards from Asus for testing that are based on the new platform and use the P67 chipset – Asus P67 Sabertooth and the P67 Maximus IV Extreme and an Intel Core i5 2500K processor with unlocked multiplier (for overclocking of course). The goal of this test is to reach five gigahertz by overclocking the processor and measure the performance of the new Intel Sandy Bridge platform versus the older one that I’m currently using. As you can expect the tests would be related to gaming in stereo 3D mode and comparing the framerates with both platforms and the different motherboards to see if the upgrade is worth it or not.
With all of the above said, I should also mention that currently upgrading to a Sandy Bridge platform may not be the best choice, considering that not long ago Intel has officially announced a bug in the chipset that can potentially cause SATA 2 performance degradation over time. As a result of that announcement there was a big recall of potentially affected motherboards, but that is not something that can stop an enthusiast, especially when there is still some time before the motherboards using the revised chipset can be available on the market again. So even if you get an Intel Sandy Bridge motherboard now, you can avoid using the affected SATA 2 ports and get it replaced when the revised versions become available on the market in march/april. But as an enthusiast I’m not willing to wait for a few months for the revised chipsets, so I prefer to get the platform now and test it and if needs replacing the warranty can cover that when the revised models are available later this year. So stay tuned for some results of the tests soon… ;)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is an official 3D Vision Ready game title which in theory means that the game should play perfectly fine in stereo 3D mode with 3D Vision and look great on top of that. However the road that the game needed to go through was a bit long and hard, there was a day 1 patch to address some issues in stereo 3D mode and after that a few more patches that improved the stereo 3D experience making the game better…
However for a bit over a month now there has actually been a regression in that since the latest update version 553292 that as been out for over a month already actually brought back some issues when the you play the game in stereo 3D mode. Mainly the issue of the crosshair being rendered in 2D mode again, although with earlier patches it was working perfectly fine being rendered in stereo 3D mode. And since this is a quite serious problem for a lot of users playing in stereo 3D mode (and something you will not expect from a 3D Vision Ready title), the fact that it is not being addressed with a proper patch in a timely manner is actually very strange. The good thing is that there is a working workaround that fixes the problem by replacing one of the game files with a version from a previous patch that brings back the crosshair rendering in stereo 3D mode.
You need to download the file package.mft from the link below and replace the currently present file in the folder where you installed the game under \Dist\win32 for example if you installed the game in the default folder it should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Battlefield Bad Company 2\Dist\win32) and that is it, you are ready to go. The file is from the game patch version 529843 and you can thank the user metti from the Nvidia forums for discovering this fix and sharing it with us, so you should try it out now while waiting for the game developers to address the issue with a new patch. Have in mind that this is for single player mode, and although it will work in multiplayer too it may create some issues in multiplayer mode!
If you’ve missed the new free game from NASA (yes, a free game developed by/for the American government), then you might want to check out Moonbase Alpha now available on Steam. It seems that now NASA is looking to educate and train future astronauts through a free game, much like it was with the American Army getting new recruits through the previous free game called America’s Army… ;)
In Moonbase Alpha, you assume the role of an astronaut working to further human expansion and research on the Moon. Returning from a research expedition on the lunar surface, you witness a meteorite impact that cripples the life support capability of the recently established Moon base. With precious minutes ticking away, you and your team must repair and replace equipment in order to restore the oxygen production to the Moon settlement. There are several ways in which you can successfully restore the life support system of the lunar base, but since you are scored on the time spent to complete the task, you have to work effectively as a team, learn from decisions made in previous gaming sessions, and make intelligence decisions in order to top the leaderboards. And yes it is a multiplayer only online game where everyone is a real person that is quite interesting and might be fun to play for a while, but without a lot of excitement and action, so don’t get your hopes too high.
The game is based on Unreal engine, so playing it in stereoscopic 3D mode with 3D Vision as expected can bring out the typical issues, such as a problem with rendering the dynamic shadows and disabling these can help. Also since there is a lot of white, black and gray colors the game is prone to have some ghosting, but it still has a lot of potential to provide a quite realistic simulation with stereo 3D. The in-game HUD is rendered mostly in 2D, but that is not such a big issue and you might want to play a bit with the convergence settings to achieve best possible results. And you would probably want to lower the default brightness level a bit… And since the game is free all you need to have is a Steam account to download and play it, so it will be a shame not to try it, after all you might like it and who knows, you might be a future astronaut yourself… :P
