3D Gaming*

[patsu]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/21/three-for-3d-espn3d-adds-home-run-derby-sky-3d-launches-4-3-a/

Three continents, three more milestone announcements for 3D. First up is Sky TV, which, with or without 15,000 or so flat screens from LG, is officially launching its Sky 3D channel around the Man. U/Chelsea game on April 3.

...

ESPN 3D has scheduled the first event it will produce and air itself, the MLB Home Run Derby on July 12, a day after launching with the SA/Mexico World Cup game. Other events officially on deck (the plan for the first year is still about 85) include several college basketball tournaments and the ACC Championship football game in December.

...

Last but not least is Japan, already home to at least one 3D network, which will soon have access to even more over the cross-manufacturer AcTVila video on-demand service.

 

[TheWretched]

Was there any talk of supporting anaglyph (red/blue) glasses just for the sake of it, though, on PS3? I mean, just to try it out. I've played a bit L4D on PC with those glasses, and it works great, though color sucks, obviously.

 

[patsu]

IMHO, it may be more worthwhile to forget about anaglyph 3D. It will build the wrong impression, and confuse the budding market.

 

[DieH@rd]

Does anyone knows how TriOviz 3D works?

 

[_phil_]

it uses the depth buffer and dirty fill the holes.

 

[patsu]

More details on Sony's 3D glasses:
http://www.sonyinsider.com/2010/03/22/sonys-active-shutter-3d-glasses-battery-life-revealed/

Sony expects the battery life for the TDG-BR100 and TDG-BR50 active shutter 3D glasses to be 100 hours of use. The glasses are only in use when they receive the 3D sync signal from the TV, otherwise they go into standby mode with no drain on the battery. At launch time Sony will only offer battery powered glasses, and have not detailed induction-based (e.g. Powermat) models. ... you can also use as many glasses as you want as long as they can receive the IR signal.

 

[DieH@rd]

it uses the depth buffer and dirty fill the holes.

Ok, but how does it work on a normal 60hz monitors? DigitalFoundry guys twittered that they saw the tech, hopefully they will post some impressions soon.

 

[patsu]

Walmart is going to fight with BestBuy over 3DTV market share:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wa...-unexpectedly-2010-03-23?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Gary Severson, head of Wal-Mart's entertainment division, said in an interview, declining to specify which brand manufacturers the company is in talks with.

"We are going to be instrumental in helping to bring the costs down and bring more affordable 3-D experience to customers," Severson said in the interview. "We are excited about it."

...

Historically, the Walmart chain would have been expected to carry consumer electronics such as DVD players once they'd reached 40% to 50% household penetration, Feldman said.

...

The timing of the 3-D introduction looks likely to catch many in the industry by surprise. Bob Perry, senior vice president of Panasonic Consumer Electronics, said in an interview earlier this month that it's unlikely that mass merchants such as Wal-Mart will carry the 3-D TV this year because of the education needed for the technology.

 

[MfA]

Ok, but how does it work on a normal 60hz monitors? DigitalFoundry guys twittered that they saw the tech, hopefully they will post some impressions soon.

It seems to be a form of anaglyph (despite the protestations to the contrary).

 

[sebbbi]

Nice to see the forthcoming consumer stereo TVs supporting encoded side-by-side, top&bottom and scanline modes (just checked the Samsung and Panasonic manuals linked in this thread). Checkerboard mode used by the old DLP TVs was a bit of a pain to render efficiently. Now that these modes are going to be widely supported, I estimate that HDMI 1.4 support is not going to be that important as the 1.3 standard already supports 1920x1080 at 60 fps. Half of the 1920x1080 (960x1080 or 1920x540) for both eye stereoscopic frames is already more pixels than 720p x2. The new HDMI 1.4 1280x1470p (2x720p) is of course tempting, but likely not better looking than encoding both eyes to a single standard 1080p frame (a technology already supported by both Xbox 360 and PS3 without any firmware updates needed).

In my mind rendering at native 720p no longer serves a benefit (at least if we are considering Xbox 360 with it's very good hardware scaler). Basically there are no HDTVs in the market with native 720p support (it has been always very hard to find a true 720p native HDTV). Huge majority of HD-ready sets are 1366x768 and all Full HD sets are always 1920x1080, so basically 720p will be always scaled (and thus softened like all the other so called "unstandard" resolutions).

I just don't get why they are all trying to push flicker based tech. They sell polarized sets to content creators.

Personally I like passive polarized stereo much better than active shutter ones. However so far I have only tested only two (quite cheap) active solutions, and the single polarized monitor I have tested costs around five times more than the both active ones together . I would love to see good quality passive polarized stereo TVs in the future, as I get bad headache if I use active shutters for more than an hour or two in a row. The passive polarized monitor I have tested (and still using daily) causes absolutely no headache at all. So it's perfect for me.

I'm getting tired of the word gimmick quite frankly. The gimmick of older 3D content was that rather than a shot being chosen for it's artistic merit it was chosen to show off the effect. Even Avatar fell into this trap at times. For video games this wont be such a problem as the camera is mostly concerned with allowing a player to play the game. It's like complaining about colour because directors started putting shots of pretty coloured flowers into films.

Agreed completely. I don't know about first person shooters, but for physics based side scrolling trial-bike games at least the added stereo perspective improves the gameplay a lot. With stereo 3d you can see the tire contact with the obstacles better (especially on very tight upwards slopes) and you can naturally estimate the object 3d relative positions quicker. So the stereo 3d doesn't just improve the graphics, it improves the gameplay as well.

 

[Danalys]

I don't know about first person shooters, but for physics based side scrolling trial-bike games at least the added stereo perspective improves the gameplay a lot. With stereo 3d you can see the tire contact with the obstacles better (especially on very tight upwards slopes) and you can naturally estimate the object 3d relative positions quicker. So the stereo 3d doesn't just improve the graphics, it improves the gameplay as well.

I think for first person shooters It'll be a lot easier to remember a room's orientation. There's just a lot more information that makes things more memorable and easier to navigate.

 

[Sigfried1977]

FPS games get a lot harder in 3d since it's very easy to lose track of enemies and other threats at various distances. You can't effortlessly focus on what's going on across the entire screen anymore. That's my experience so far of course. Prepare to get murdered online.
I imagine the tech would do wonders for 3d platformers where it's often difficult to judge distances.

 

[_phil_]

Inside view in motorstorm is way more practicable too with stereoscopy.It's an ortho stereo approach ,so everything is based on real world size.

External view has widen interaxial ,so it's miniaturised.

The new HDMI 1.4 1280x1470p (2x720p) is of course tempting

You can do frame packing 1280x1470 60hz on some hardware with hdmi 1.3...

 

[Danalys]

FPS games get a lot harder in 3d since it's very easy to lose track of enemies and other threats at various distances. You can't effortlessly focus on what's going on across the entire screen anymore. That's my experience so far of course. Prepare to get murdered online.
I imagine the tech would do wonders for 3d platformers where it's often difficult to judge distances.

So enemies actually standing out from the background doesn't help you an animal whose visual-spacial abilities are mostly for hunting ie acquiring targets, acquire targets.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Acquiring the target isn't the problem and the depth perception does help in games with extremely busy visuals like Avatar. It's easier to spot the tiny soldiers in the dense foliage. In a shooting gallery like CoD4 on the other hand, the constant re-focusing of my eyes whenever I move the crosshair to a different target definitely makes things a bit slower for me. Maybe it just takes time to adapt, but if you take a look at the Nvidia 3dvision message board, the general consensus seems to be that you most likely won't fare very well against players with 2d displays. It's not just me.

 

[Danalys]

Well that's interesting. It would be less a factor of refocusing but not refocusing when you would expect to,.since the screen is always at the same distance.

 

[_phil_]

Well that's interesting. It would be less a factor of refocusing but not refocusing when you would expect to,.since the screen is always at the same distance.

you have to converge a lot and not at the focus distance.

 

[grandmaster]

Interesting that at GDC Sony were discussing the implementation of the left eye + depth option (basically what Quaz51 suggested earlier in the thread) as a means of doing computationally very cheap 3D.

 

[patsu]

Under what context was this technique discussed ? Rendering or capture ?

 

[grandmaster]

It was discussed as an alternative for the double height framebuffer option used by the likes of Stardust.

Lower resolution framebuffers were also discussed which makes me think I'm right in thinking that the 3D Motorstorm 2 is sub-HD.