The Official AVS 3D Console Games Topic! - Page 29

Agree. I hope that some of the backlash I hear from 3D (and incomplete/bad 3D conversions, movie and music wise) don't kill it before the new consoles get a chance to play with this tech. Nvidia 3D Vision shows amazing potential, especially multi-monitor in triple screen 3D Vision Surround. But that requires almost $1k of GPUs to be at it's best. If the next gen of consoles can mimic this (3 screens, 3D) that would bring this to the masses. But I fear 3D (well done, like Avatar) gets a bad rap and it might never get to that point.

I have played many 3D games, and Crysis 2 was the only game I left 3D on for the duration, since the drop in resolution wasn't as obvious. I don't have a 3D capable receiver, so my PS3 has been hooked up using spdif for sound and I finally did away with that and consolidated to just HDMI due to my lukewarm impression of 3D gaming.

Believe me, I really wanted to like it, but I agree, these consoles just can't handle it. I've heard zero mention of the Wii U having that capability, so I don't think its even on the other manufacturer's radar.

3D movies are still worth it, though.

The last time I checked the WiiU's specs were comparable to current gen consoles so its hardly surprising that there's been no mention of 3D; Nintendo has always taken a minimalist approach to their hardware (their consoles can't even play DVDs) so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that 3D would be a no go.

As for MS as Sony, I'll be curious to see what kind of support (if any) 3D gets in their future consoles. While Sony isn't really pushing 3D like it used to, most of its high profile titles have some level of 3D support and as long as manufacturers continue to push 3D TVs I expect they'll continue to support 3D gaming to some level. MS is the wildcard; I'll be curious to see if their next Halo and Gears of War games support 3D (Halo Anniversary and Gears 3 both had pretty good 3D modes) as that will probably be as good an indicator as any about whether they think its viable or not.

So Gears of War 3 had real 3d?

If Crysis 2 was your best console 3d experience I can see why you are disappointed. That was fake 3d.

So you are telling me that you played Wipeout and Motorstorm and wasn't impressed with the 3d?

Gears of War 3 was "fake" reprojection 3D. Some liked it, some (including me) didn't.

Yeah, gears 3 was fake, but fake on an extreme level. I think the drop to half resolution (due to using the side-by-side format) hurt it more than the reprojection fakeness. It's also arguable that its 3d nature simply made it harder to play the game, since the enemies looked so far away and tiny. It also has pretty huge 3d artifacts--curvature of planes, and objects close to the camera getting severely warped....but I appreciate the effort. And yes crysis 2 is also fake, and probably not done as well as gears 3. It didn't drop in resolution (I don't think), but it was rendering in sub-720p on both systems anyway (even in 2d).

The only console game that I've played which had virtually zero performance or resolution impact when 3d is enabled is child of eden. Motostorm 3d rift and apocalypse are good, but you need to set the display size to the minimum of 10" to get a strong enough depth. I still think uncharted 3 with a display size setting of 11" is the pinnacle of 3d console gaming. But 3d without performance impact may be too much to ask in this console generation because virtually every game is aimed for a 2d resolution of 720p, which is already on the lower side of the HD scale. Forcing games which are already maxing out the hardware in 2d to render twice is going to have some or even a lot of performance impact, leading to close to even SD resolution in some cases.....but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it.

When the next generation comes out, everything will be sorted out as developers aim for 1080p in 2d, and thus giving ample processing power to render 3d in true 720p without any downgrades (as 720p is a bit less than half of the pixels than 1080p). Super stardust hd on the ps3 right now is a perfect example of this. And since the vast, vast majority of 3d displays in the consumer market can't show 1080p in 3d at 60fps anyway, the recipe seems ideal. I just hope enough developers still have 3d in mind when the ps4/720 rolls around.

Are you sure about that? To my eyes it looked like Gears of War 3 had a stereoscopic side-by-side 3D implementation. I say this because to my eyes the sense of depth in Gears 3 was far far better than in any reprojection game I've played (Crysis, Crysis 2, Arkham City and Ghost Recon Future Soldier) and I even noticed a drop in resolution, suggesting that the engine was rendering two distinct images.

I'm 100% sure about it. The resolution dropped because at the time it was released, the 360 was not capable of an hdmi 1.4 compatible 3d frame-packing presentation, so the only way to do 3d (true or reprojection) was by side-by-side or other automatically resolution-reducing protocol. The first game to do full frame-packing on 360 is arkham city. I agree that gears 3 has the strongest depth levels for reprojection 3d compared to any game I've seen (and I've seen a lot of them), but the trade-off is that the stronger the trioviz 3d implementation is, the worse artifacts you get (as can be seen by the hill-like floors when they should be straight, and objects warping when they are closer to you than your character. If you look closely at arkham city which is also an unreal engine 3 game using trioviz 3d technology, you can see the same "floor bending" but it's much less severe...but the overall 3d depth is also not as strong as gears 3. Though I do have to say the gears 3 implementation is a lot better than what I was expecting, since a lot of the time reprojection games only provide a slightly better sense of depth than what you get from looking at the image in 2d.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-gears-of-war-3?page=3
Edited by lunaluagua - 8/8/12 at 8:08pm

I'll second being 100% sure about it. Side-by-side is just the delivery method through HDMI, it has nothing to do with whether the 3D is rendered with reprojection or two cameras. The sense of depth also doesn't necessarily mean one or the other. The depth information is all there in the game engine (the z buffer) and reprojection can render as much or as little as the developer (and user) chooses. But as lunaluagua says, the more depth the more artifacts. I also noticed the floor bending. I mostly noticed haloes around the characters and other close objects as the engine has to guess what a second camera would see around them.

I'll third it. It's honestly one of the worst demonstrations of 3D I've seen in a console game - the floor curving/warping looks just painful. I thought Enslaved would be tough to beat, but gears 3 takes the cake for worst demonstration of reprojection.

I'd feel like the tech has almost zero merit, aside from the fact that crysis 1/2 really didn't look that bad. I dunno if it's something tha crytek is doing that everyone else isn't, or that reprojection just doesn't look good in 3rd person, but they succeeded where others failed.

Still, true stereoscopic is the only way to go.

It's very easy to recognize the reprojection aspect in Gears- much of the foreground is actually flatter than the middleground and background.

Yeah...it looks absolutely ridiculous. I don't understand how anyone could look at that and think its acceptable. You turn on 3D and the floor appears to curve. In enslaved, it was a totally abrupt transition. I mean, are the people implementing this blind? Was checking the 3D box so important, that it didn't matter how ****** it looks?

It's garbage like this which is giving 3D a bad name. Reprojection is a practically worthless technology - yeah, it might have some depth, it might be based on depth information from the game engine, but in almost every case, it does such damage to the overall image that it's almost always worse than plain 2D.

I can only hope next gen that the entire idea is abandoned.

Last gen the standard was 480i, this gen it's been 720p or even less, hopefully next gen will shoot for 1080p 2D and therefore have a chance at supporting 720p 3D, and then there won't need to be a faked 3D solution.

Praising reprojection and realtime 3D coversion can discredit the word of a 3D enthusiast, in my mind. There's no way someone can like that garbage AND fully appreciate what makes a movie like Hugo or Avatar so much better than average.

Agreed with the worthlessness of reprojection technology. It's so distorted-looking that I usually can't make up my mind if I want to play Batman: Arkham City in 2D or 3D. I haven't played Crysis 2 or SOCOM 4 or any others, but I can't imagine that they look much better.

I could understand if all that you value is resolution and frame-rate, but I don't see how reprojection could fully please any 3D enthusiast who has moved past the early stages of liking the crappy stuff. Hopefully next gen consoles can finally deliver enough video quality to interest more developers in supporting rendered 3D modes with custom depth and convergence sliders and fixes for 2D screen elements like HUD indicators and crosshairs.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 8/23/12 at 11:00am

I feel morally obligated to pile on. I'll take 2D any day over reprojection 3D. Unfortunately I had to do so in a number of games I would have otherwise loved to play in 3D, Assassin's Creed Revelations in particular. Meanwhile, 3D has been a no brainer to me for games that implement proper stereoscopic 3D at the cost of resolution (Uncharted 3, etc). The sad thing is very few people who take a look at reprojection 3D understand the technology and will be able to identify it as such. Instead, they'll see bad 3D and assume that 3D itself is bad, or that 3D doesn't work well with games. On the other hand, I see some people manage to like it, and I don't want to say they shouldn't have the option to use it. Ideally if developers are interested enough in 3D to include reprojection, they'd put in the extra effort (?) to do a proper stereoscopic implementation.

I've since gotten a gaming PC and enjoyed a great number of games in 720p, uncompromised 3D, including many games I had already played through on consoles recently such as Skyrim and all 3 Assassin's Creed II games. In retrospect, I never should have waited to get one. If you're a 3D enthusiast, and you can afford it, you owe it to yourself to get a gaming PC.
Edited by Airion - 8/24/12 at 12:14am

Yeah, at the very least I wish I was offered the choice. I bought AC:R not knowing it was reprojection....I almost returned it for my money back. It just looked awful.

Do you have any HUD/UI issues on the gaming PC? I take it you're using nvidia gear?

Yep, using Nvidia. No significant UI issues. I'd say though that PC 3D gaming brings both freedom and responsibility. That is, you have to know how to properly set up depth and convergence, and be on the lookout for 3D bug fixes (often user mods). However, I'd say anyone who has been fiddling with the PS3's screen size setting is ready and probably eager to handle such things without restrictions or training wheels.

So it does full stereo by separating into two distinct viewpoints? And it can just hack this right into unsupported games?

It's not that I don't believe it, I had 3D shutter glasses in the late 90s that could do this....I just figured with 3D game engines having gotten so complex that it wouldn't work nearly as well anymore.

Do you still have to buy the nvidia software that lets you do this over HDMI and 3DTVs? I had a gaming PC for a while, wanted to try it out, but wasn't willing to pay for something like that.

3D PC gaming is a niche in a niche and Nvidia is taking a risk in investing and supporting it. 3DTV Play is 40 bucks. Yes, I bought it.

Any Direct X game can be played in 3D using Nvidia's driver. Yes, it is true stereoscopic 3D. Two distinct camera views are rendered. It is a hack of sorts, in that most Direct X developers never thought about having their games played on 3D TVs. As a result, many games don't render well in 3D or have some problems rendering some elements in 3D such as lighting or shadows. But, compare the number of PC games which work 95-100% great in 3D compared to consoles, and PCs come out leagues ahead. This is just the list of games I've personally played that pass that bar in the past 4 months:

Skyrim (with user mod)
Mass Effect 3 (with user mod)
Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations (not reprojection)
Batman Arkham City (not reprojection)
Trine 1 & 2
The Witcher 2
Just Cause 2
Grand Theft Auto IV (with user mod)
Minecraft (with user mod)


There's a ton more out there, but I've been all too happy to sink hours upon hours into replaying 3 Assassin's Creed games and continuing my Skyrim save which I started on Xbox 360, in 3D. Skyrim, for example, is a game where the lead developer is anti-3D. Thanks to the PC and the core strengths of the game he created, it is widely regarded as one of the best examples of 3D gaming. It will likely never be available in 3D on consoles.

I appreciate your skepticism, but the bottom line is the PC is where 3D gaming enthusiasts deserve to be. It's not perfect, and it requires some knowledge and a little effort to configure games, but it's extremely rewarding.

I'm glad to hear it works well...I'm so close to jumping back on board with PC gaming.

How do I know if the 3D games I play (PS3) are using reprojection proper stereoscopic? And what's the difference again?

It's easy to tell the difference by looking at the 3D. Reprojection looks flat and warped, compared to the natural-looking depth in a dual-camera system.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/digitalfoundry-low-cost-3d-tech-focus

See:
Batman: Arkham City
Crysis
Crysis 2
Enslaved
SOCOM 4
Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Gears of War 3
and possibly Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Future soldier is def reprojection. Also add ratchet and clank all for one and mortal Kombat to the list of shame.

I haven't played Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One in a while, but I'm pretty sure it is dual-camera 3D.

I used to have All for One. It may have been true stereoscopic but the drop in resolution when in 3D was really drastic and noticeable. The color also appeared to wash out considerably when turning on 3D and the levels never really had a strong feeling of depth to them. The game also had some pretty bright static HUDs which could not be turned off and that was problematic for people with TVs prone to image retention. Overall it was one of the weaker 3D experiences on the PS3.

In terms of the game itself, I thought it was the most disappointing Ratchet and Clank game to date. The story and overall presentation definitely seemed to be geared toward a younger audience and the game was often missing some of the sly humor of its predecessors (Nefarious and Qwark had a few zingers but that was about it). Even the weapon upgrade system was changed, forcing you to spend bolts to buy upgrades rather than having them evolve with more use as in the prior games and given the campaign's brevity you never accumulated enough bolts to fully upgrade every weapon on one playthru.

Hopefull the Ratchet and Clank Collection being released on August 28 will fare better (at least I know the gameplay will be more fun).
Edited by TonyDP - 8/26/12 at 3:33pm

It took me a while to be sure, but I clearly saw the reprojection artifacts.

I find it's most obvious around the edges of objects, such as your character in a 3rd person game, around doors, edges of walls, etc, especially in motion. Here reprojection just has to guess what your other eye should be seeing.

The article BleedOrange11 is an excellent rundown of the technology. One little nugget I picked up is, it says all the artifacts are in the right eye. So the left eye gets the original 2D image and your right eye gets the messy interpolated image. I find reprojection unacceptable, and wouldn't you know, I'm right eye dominant! That makes a lot of sense. I'm willing to bet most people who don't like reprojection are right eye dominant (naturally focus on the image with artifacts), while those who find it acceptable are left eye dominant (naturally focus on the clean image). If that's the case, maybe it would be worthwhile to include an advanced user setting to interpolate the left image instead.

There's a few ocular dominance tests on the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance I'd be interested to hear others report their dominance along with whether or not they like reprojection.

I re-installed R&C: All 4 One and played through the first level to make sure. Its 3D mode renders very similar to Resistance 3's. The cutscenes may have gone through some kind of 2D-3D conversion process. They look abysmal in terms of 3D volume. Although low resolution, the actual gameplay is definitely dual-camera 3D. I get pretty strong depth with PS3's screen size setting at 10" and the in-game slider at maximum, and nothing looks warped.
Edited by BleedOrange11 - 8/26/12 at 5:29pm

That's an interesting theory. I'm left-eye dominant and don't like reprojection. Not necessarily because of artifacts around objects though--mainly because depth looks smushed and warped.

I would think that people who like reprojection are the ones with the eye problems, because the plethora of inaccurate 3D cues slips past their critical eye.

On Youtube there is a disturbing amount of completely broken, fake 3D that still manages to get a majority of positive votes. Joe Schmoe can't tell proper 3D from crap.
Edited by cakefoo - 8/26/12 at 5:45pm