Depth Charges Comments by Rob Fahey

3D is definitely the way to go, but when building my new rig I deliberately chose not to pick up the NVISION kit, which fits into the second type of 3D mentioned in the article. 3D still has a long way to go, and it's going to have to work on a lot more than just the occasional game here and there to justify it's currently inelegant price tag.

Interesting article. Enjoyed reading that.

What about the 4th option. Head tracking and moving the game camera accordingly. Check out wii head track on google for example. This requires no new tv's or even hardware, the only difference is things dont come out of the screen as much. But this system is unique to games due to their real time nature . This system i'm sure will become very popular with the new nedal and ps3 wand.

It might remain a curiosity, but Nvision is remarkably close to being a mainstreamable form of 3d. The effect is excellent and the cost not hugely expensive compared to what you might expect (and that will come down as more 120hz monitor are launched).

hmm well sky are going to be trialling 3D to the home next year so film n tv in 3D may not be that far off

I get the point on mainstream acceptance, especially with consoles and the need for new TV sets. However, isn't there a bigger opportunity for PC games on monitors? More hardcore people, lower investment necessary vs normal upgrades etc. Could be a place where pc gaming could find another reason to exist, next to the other reasons that exist already of course.

My eyes don't support this technology (amblyopia). Anyone with less perfect vision will be left out, or left with a smashing sore head. Thumbs down to this technology from us amblyopes.

@ buggedbunny

ILM and several studios are experimenting with it, but it's extremely expensive to do and requires an entire specialist room built to accomodate it as it stands at the moment, whilst offering noticeable decreases in resolution and colour quality.

As cool as it would be, HD holographic TV is still ages away, assuming that it is feasible at all :D

Jaws 3 at the cinema in 3D was really something. Too bad they threw in too many scenes with the 3D in mind, over story. The original Jaws is still the one to watch.

Spot on. Hitchcock was forced to film 'Dial M for Murder' (1954) for 3D cinema (of the red and green type). But since he saw in it a pure gimmick (while his studio bosses hoped it would be a weapon against the rise of television) he made sure it also worked in 2D.

So, I think in the end it's not about the technical challenges (those will be solved sooner or later) but more about the question whether 3D will add anything to the (artistic) expression or the storytelling of a media, and whether designers will be able to restrain themselves from using it for mere effects.

I'm not so sure about the TV hurdles. There's been a movement in the Movie and Video media to upgrade de refresh rate of recorded video to 100/120hz and recently you see television sets being announced with "Tru Motion" for example, which is Layman for 100hz. Just check pixmania and you'll see lot's of decently priced sets with 100hz and even DVI ports already available.

True, consumers will be confused about their sets when 3d comes, but the real hurdle here is the glasses and getting out games with the tech.

Not sold on 3-D yet. Captain E-O was alright at Disneyland :D but HD is not even mainstream to the point where big events are given the respect they deserve. Is the World Cup even going to be in HD?

I have a question related to games and 3d. And I will use recent game, prototype, as an example.
How many of the readers think it's a great idea to see all those disgusting guts and gore with real 3d?
I know some people like it, which is why splatter horrors have some audience, but I can only hope that fondness for this kind of 'entertainment' did not became mainstream. And I don't think that 3d, even if it emerged within next couple years in games, would be used to show anything other than similarly gory images.
Quite a disturbing trend in games.

We could do with a big phat list of all TVs that do the necessary Hzage to do this, see if my investment was worth it or not.

Rodchenko - Agreed, I have to say playing Burnout Paradise on an Nvision setup it made me want to buy it there and then. If you haven't tried it you honestly should before you say its not the way to go. Sure maybe its PC only, but this is the first ever use of 3d in home that has felt worth the cash.

If you have a Geforce card I'd recommend trying one of the Zalman 3D monitors.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.as...

£149 - and that's it you are up an running - they have it on demo in store with the latest Tomb raider - it looks very good, especially for the money compared to the other stuff mentioned in this article.

I read a review of the NVISION bundle on IGN, it works with several games although you half your frames.

I think he said Burnout Paradise and CoD4 were best.

For me though - I don't see the point in getting 3D for several years, unless I somehow get a ton of money to waste.

Bonner, I've used Zalman and some other 3D monitors. They are shit. The effect isn't that good and it fucks with your eyes. 3D is a gimmick, none of it works well enough to justify the cost.

Pron will drive it same as it did for HD.

I've got Nvidia 3D Vision along with the Samsung 120Hz monitor and with a few caveats it provides a 3D experience comparable to modern 3D films at the cinema. Your mileage will vary as only a subset of games really lend themselves to 3D presentation but when it works the effect is quite startling and I'd certainly rather have the option to view in 3D than run things at ever higher resolutions. At the moment I'm really enjoying a 3D run through Half-Life 2.

On the downside, depth perception is quite variable from one person to another so the effect may not grab you immediately and you may have to fiddle with the advanced settings before you get something that works for you. It's also expensive as you need a new 120Hz monitor and a hefty rig as your graphics card has to render each frame from two viewpoints, effectively halving frame rates. The tech on the monitors could also be improved (overdrive applied to the pixels in order to get the 120Hz refresh rate can cause ghosting for very bright or dark objects).

Having said that for the next few years the PC is going to be the only viable platform for high resolution, high-frame rate 3D since the PS3 and Xbox360 lack the graphics power and suitable outputs (HDMI has insufficient bandwidth for 1080p@120fps). Most current 100+Hz LCD TVs are not suitable for 3D as they do not have inputs capable of taking 120 fps content (features such as TruMotion interpolate or repeat frames). However a few new DLP screens and projectors do support dual-link DVI and I guess DisplayPort will probably have sufficient bandwidth too.

3D capable hardware is coming to the mainstream even if the standards are someway off being decided and I would expect the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony to support technology that will allow 3D display.

The Nvidia solution is certified with 3-400 games and in theory works with anything that uses Direct 3D. The Nvidia driver is quite clever and will tell you the settings to adjust for each certified game - the number of artifacts depends on how much the developer optimised/cheated. However none of the games were designed to be viewed in stereoscopic 3D so only a subset of them lend themselves to the medium. That said, when you turn on 3D you'll find that there is a surprising amount of detail hiding in familiar titles (the Combine machines/synths in HL2 look great). Generally FPSs work well because of the viewpoint but some titles you wouldn't have thought would have gained anything turn out to look great - I like the way the units in Civ4 turn into something that looks like battle chess from Star Wars.

Also although it can cause eye-strain to begin with your brain adapts after a few sessions and you become able to tolerate longer viewing sessions. Still more visually tiring than 2D though (and you look like a bit of tool with the glasses on).

3d is shit. the characters themselves don't have any depth, its like watching Captain Pugwash.

starbug1978, I suffer from that too, so all these stereoscopic technologies are useless to me as well.

We can't really complain though, given that deaf people don't benefit from speakers, the colour blind are at a disadvantage in many games, most controllers require two fully working hands, and so on.

But what we can do is point out that people don't just perceive depth with two images! Focus control is important as well. Stereoscopic 3D visualisation tries to convince us that something is a certain distance away via perspective differences, but it still requires us to focus our eyes at one fixed distance. Hence why '3D' quickly results in nausea for so many people.

Games developers and movie directors can work around it by not putting anything of interest in the near or far distance, but then there'd be little point!

Seems like head tracking is the most realistic method for now. It's eerily effective for gaming.

I tried out the Nvidia 3d glasses in a shop recently, where a Street Fighter IV demo was looping. I was extremely underwhelmed - there was a barely-perceptible lumpiness to the characters and the background looked a touch odd, not unlike the layering effect produced by looking through binoculars, but otherwise I was wearing glasses for no real reason. Possibly that was simply a bad choice of game to demo the technology, but based on that, I have to disagree with the article, it totally is a gimmick, or at least it is at this point in time, and I'd have to advise anyone thinking of getting the Nvidia glasses to think again.

I'm sorry but your opening statement is astonishingly naieve and innacurate. The film industry is completely dominated by technology and audiences receive the benefits from this on a yearly basis as game players do. At the mosy basic level this can be seen by the relentless improvement in CGI effects in movies. This has a direct effect on the kind of movies that can be made.