3D Gaming*

Cool, my sentiment is similar to grandmaster's. If the vendors play their cards well, 3D will be the future.

article said:
Showing for the first time (to the best of my knowledge) are LittleBigPlanet and MLB: The Show.

grandmaster, MLB The Show 3D was shown in CES 2010. I posted it in the relevant thread, but here it is again:

 
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/playstation-3d-hands-on

Grandmaster article about 3dgaming on playstation.

this is curious >

A single 60Hz frame is being cut into two 720p images and both are being scaled, incurring more processing.


HDMI 1.3 have 720p 120hz mode but don't have resolution like 2560x720 or 1280x1440 60hz
Maybe Sony 3DTV use a proprietary format for put two 720p frame in one 1080p frame with a more complex merge than classic syde by syde and over/under?
in this case HDMI 1.4 will be more efficient with true 2560x720 and 1280x1440 support
otherwise use 1920x540 or 960x1080 in 1.3 is probably more pertinent
 
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I have had a go with Avatar the game in 3d a while back with 3d glasses and thought it was amazing and truly different to the traditional games. Framerate did feel a little bit choppy or was it simply the game itself I don't know. Grandmaster's article bodes very well for any future 3d games, GT5 sounds like heaven and I can't wait to try kz2, gow3 and uncharted 2 in 3d. My biggest concern being if I invested a Sony LX900 with shutter glasses but only to be screwed by a glasses free auto stereoscopic TV released next year. Otherwise I'm definitely down for 3d.
 
Even if glass free systems are going to be available next year - which I kinda doubt - they'd still be so expensive that it would not be a valid alternative to any TV you'd purchase this year...
 
No on has even demonstrated a practical glasses free, multiviewer system.

You have semi-holographic systems which require huge resolution (racks of projectors for instance) and the lenticular systems which have sweetspots and very low visible resolution.

The electrowetting method is quite literally the only glasses free stereoscopic methods I know of which I would say to be practical (if it works, which is far from certain) at least for flat panels (with non flat displays the design space widens a bit). For a practical method you have to be able to beam a separate image to a dozen areas in space some of which only separated by 2 degrees or so (5 cm between the eyes at 3 meter distance). A simple moving barrier instead of a moving lenticular doesn't work because a barrier will not prevent a different viewer from seeing the images (for both eyes) meant for you, you need to completely block off one viewers images from all the others ... all the while getting enough light to the eyes as well of course (you need very bright strobe backlights).
 
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No on has even demonstrated a practical glasses free, multiviewer system.

You have semi-holographic systems which require huge resolution (racks of projectors for instance) and the lenticular systems which have sweetspots and very low visible resolution.

The electrowetting method is quite literally the only autostereoscopic method I know of which I would say to be practical (if it works, which is far from certain). For a practical autostereoscopic method you have to be able to beam a separate image to a dozen areas in space some of which only separated by 2 degrees or so (5 cm between the eyes at 3 meter distance).

Yep, keyword: multiviewer. The lensebased solutions work well within a narrow view angle, (there are commercial systems for scientific/medical purposes), but if you want it to work for everyone sitting in the sofa things start to get out of hand, you´ll need tonns of pixels covering the wide viewing angle.
 
I shouldn't have said autostereoscopic BTW. A practical multiviewer stereoscopic display would have to detect viewer/pupil location and adapt to that, so it's more adaptive stereoscopic than autostereoscopic.
 
Not a technical post:
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/01/23/sony_3d_event/

3D live demoes in Japan:

Visitors can experience the following corners:

3D Video Principles
An instructive look at how 3D technology works.

3D Photography Experience
Visitors can sample Sony's 3D shooting system which is being used by publishers to create 3D content. This corner will run through February 7.

3D LCD Television (Bravia) Tech Display
Experience movies, documentaries and other content in high vision 3D.

3D Game Experience
Visitors can sample 3D games in advance.
 
I was looking at some benchmark from NVIDIA 3D Vision, it seems games took 40+% hit in performance going 3D. How will PS3 cope with such hit in performance? Or are the performance hit is just the non-optimise PC side of things?
NVidia is doing the stereo 3d fully in their drivers. The games do not natively support stereo 3d rendering. The driver modifies the camera matrix and renders the view twice (most likely records the command buffer and executes it twice). Game developers can use more clever techniques in their games instead of generating stereo 3d with brute force. The eyes are so close to each other, that many optimizations (approximations) are possible. I have been testing a reverse reprojection based system myself, and it seems really promising.
 
NVidia is doing the stereo 3d fully in their drivers. The games do not natively support stereo 3d rendering. The driver modifies the camera matrix and renders the view twice (most likely records the command buffer and executes it twice). Game developers can use more clever techniques in their games instead of generating stereo 3d with brute force. The eyes are so close to each other, that many optimizations (approximations) are possible. I have been testing a reverse reprojection based system myself, and it seems really promising.

The iZ3D drivers do the same thing and as a result very few games work perfectly in 3D.
WOW is listed as "Excellent" in the 3D vision compatability, provides in game menus to tweak the stereo effect and still has significant problems with UI elements.
It's a problem with niche markets.
The next step is for NVidia to convince developers that they should test in 3D. Anecdotally the initial release of Spore was unplayable in surround setups (The space ship was off the top of the screen), it was fixed as part of the first patch, because I happened to buy a Matrox TH2Go just before it shipped.
If developers aren't running these setups, they won't take them seriously.
 
NVidia is doing the stereo 3d fully in their drivers. The games do not natively support stereo 3d rendering. The driver modifies the camera matrix and renders the view twice (most likely records the command buffer and executes it twice). Game developers can use more clever techniques in their games instead of generating stereo 3d with brute force. The eyes are so close to each other, that many optimizations (approximations) are possible. I have been testing a reverse reprojection based system myself, and it seems really promising.

You mean you're not working on more DLC? :(

I'd love to see TrialsHD in 3D. That'd be awesome.
 
How do the BR3D standards work? Do all TVs need to support every different signal format, or do the players need to be able to output in any of the formats? Surely it has to be one of those two possibilities.

I have been looking at upgrading to a 3DReady projector (Was suprised you can pick a low end model up for around £600). The thing is it only supports 120hz frame-sequential signals. I know this is included in the Bluray 3D spec but does that mean it will work with every device that supports the spec?
 
How do the BR3D standards work? Do all TVs need to support every different signal format, or do the players need to be able to output in any of the formats? Surely it has to be one of those two possibilities.

I have been looking at upgrading to a 3DReady projector (Was suprised you can pick a low end model up for around £600). The thing is it only supports 120hz frame-sequential signals. I know this is included in the Bluray 3D spec but does that mean it will work with every device that supports the spec?

As far as I know, 3D Blu-ray is independent of the display format. So any 3D TV should work (as long as they can take HDMI 1.4).

The question is PS3 3D Blu-ray support since it uses HDMI 1.3. We probably won't know the details until they release the 3D firmware.
 
Some good questions and interesting answers there, good work.

Eurogamer: 3D is an emerging technology. Here we've got a 120Hz screen, but we've already seen 240Hz displays. The glasses are going to evolve. People are talking about circular polarisation as the next possible step and eventually there won't be glasses at all - that's the aim. Can we assume that what you're doing now will be forward-compatible with these new technologies?

Ian Bickerstaff: In terms of what the PS3 produces, it's just a video standard. It's up to the display mechanism to work out what to do with it. You could theoretically plug it into your Odeon cinema and have a game experience on that. There are some other challenges there, but theoretically you could do that. We might be sounding a bit evasive on the TV side of things but we're just generating video that can be interpreted in any way by whatever product is out there.

Simon Benson: HDMI 1.4 should serve us for a long time. What's going to be the next big thing? Maybe more resolution but it'll be a while before a standard comes along that changes the concept of having an image for each eye.

Eurogamer: From my perspective there are only a couple of things I think need to evolve. First up is support for the native resolution of the screen. The other thing is the one dividing factor between what I'm seeing here and what I'm seeing at the cinema... the field of view. The TV is still a box in the room whereas the cinema screen occupies most of your sight.

Bickerstaff: It's a funny one really because with the cinema you've got an enormous screen a long way away from you. That can be a problem. It's certainly a problem that people like Sony Pictures overcome routinely with their movies, but it's a problem because 3D is about objects that are very close to you. And yet you're looking at it on a screen a long way away from you.

In the earlier implementations (naming no names!) it can be a recipe for discomfort because you're trying to focus on a screen that's a long way away, but you're converging on to an object that is close to you and that's not natural, whereas here with a TV screen it's much more of an intimate experience. The objects are going to be fairly close to you in depth along with the screen itself, so the converging and focusing is going to be much more natural.

So, in that sense it can be... not superior, but different to the cinema experience. You're right though, longer term, potentially, you'll get the field of view. Who knows? The simulators we used to have [at British Aerospace] had 180-degree screens and complete immersion. It is a different experience and some people find the 3D better on the television compared to the cinema and maybe easier to view. You have to make up your own mind on that one, I guess.

Eurogamer: What you're doing here is something I can really appreciate... taking something that's there in the home and being pushed beyond its original design specifications. Although having said that, the original PS3 specs talked about dual HDMI ports and 120Hz outputs. Ken Kutaragi really was thinking ahead of his time there.

Ian Bickerstaff: When I joined Evolution Studios, that was one of the reasons I joined. It's got two outputs! Connect that to two projectors and you've got 3D! It's ironic because the format that's now in PS3 is actually much more elegant and simple than that. Only one HDMI but it's producing that quality. It was a happy ending but it was a little annoying when I discovered that they'd removed that second HDMI port.
 
Thanks grandmaster for trying to ask my questions !

Eurogamer: There's a lot of emerging technology in Sony. We've seen Polyphony discuss head-tracking within Gran Turismo 5. How difficult would it be to marry the stereoscopic tech you have here with the ability to track head movement and literally look around the scene on-screen?

Ian Bickerstaff: Before I was mentioning virtual reality "caves" and that's exactly how they work. It's typically 120Hz shutter glasses with a head-tracking system and a 120Hz projection screen that you can move around and it's constantly adjusting the image based on your viewing position.

From a viewing point of view you don't notice that you're in a cube at all. It's constantly recalculating the perspective. So that's been done for many, many years now and it's something we've been familiar with in the simulation industry. It's almost bread and butter really. We can't comment on future R&D but you could imagine the way it could go.

Eurogamer: So you're not going to comment on future R&D but using the motion controller as well is a no-brainer, isn't it?

Simon Benson: The idea of stereoscopic 3D marrying up with the motion controller is a bit of a no-brainer, and you can certainly see applications there that open up plenty of opportunities for gameplay. There are lots of other things we can achieve too. We're just at the tip of the iceberg with what 3D is going to enable. Once the technology's out there, it'll be interesting to see the things that follow.

Ian Bickerstaff: Anything that's out there in the simulation or visualisation industry that's sort of cool and you can imagine the public liking, then you can imagine that rippling through to the public at some point in the future.
 
3D cable/satellite TV race started:
http://www.multichannel.com/article...iver_More_3D_Than_Competitors.php?rssid=20076

"Our plan this year is to have a persistent 3D offering," noted Comcast senior vice president and general manager of video services Derek Harrar in an interview with HD Update. "Much like we did in high-def, it will start relatively thin and then, much like high-def, we will have more 3D content than anyone else as it becomes available."

Unlike DirecTV, Harrar also stressed Comcast has considerable experience with the technology. After first testing 3D with Hannah Montana: The Movie in 2008, the MSO has subsequently offered such films as My Bloody Valentine, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and Coraline in the anaglyph 3D format.

DirecTV has not discussed the specific technologies it will be using to deliver 3D content into the home, though it will almost certainly be using one of the intermediate "frame compatible" formats. These formats carry the signals for left and right eyes that create a 3D image inside a single HD stream. Frame-compatible formats can be delivered into homes equipped with 3D sets and newer HD boxes without major changes in the existing infrastructure.


EDIT: On gaming front...

Q&A with Blitz CTO on 3D:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...r_On_Why_3D_Gaming_Is_Inevitable.php#comments

What tech approach is becoming dominant?

AO: You can get different types of glasses. You can get active glasses, which shutter at 120 hertz, or you can use polarized, which is the same as the cinema. We've got some TVs in our office that are based on [polarization], and they're really comfortable to watch, but polarizing a screen is very expensive.

And by polarizing, you've reduced the brightness of the picture for normal 2D viewing. TV manufacturers know that most TV is 2D, so [polarized] just isn't practical at the moment. So, every TV manufacturer is going with active, which I wouldn't have guessed it a year ago.

The commercial reality of it is there's not enough 3D content to make your TV more expensive. They want to sell the TV at the same cost. So that's exactly what's happening. The TVs have all been going 120 hertz in the last year or so anyway, so they can interpolate the image to get a smoother image. And if your TV is running 120, then you can do this trick where you're flipping [frames]. It makes 3D possible.

Then the glasses are shutter glasses with batteries or charging. A pair of glasses is going to be in the $50 range, which is a little costly, but it's one of those investments. Once you've got them, you've got them for good.

What method is Sony going with?

There's this new mode that they've created and put backwards into the PlayStation 3, allowing you to have pretty much any resolution or multiple resolutions -- the obvious one being 1280 and 720 doubled -- so you can get a game running at 60 frames per second with two frame buffers, so the TV will run it at 120 and alternate.
 
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