3D Vision 2 brings a new level of immersion to Batman: Arkham City and Trine 2

GAMING with 3D Vision 2

Limitations of PC games affecting 3D Vision

There are limitations to some PC games that will affect the 3D appearance of some objects in the game in relation to others. For example, some effects may be rendered without full 3D information; common are heads-up displays (HUDs) or crosshair sights for targeting. If this happens, items like these will appear at the wrong depth relative to other items in the game and it can be quite disconcerting and/or distracting. This does happen in many games and it is generally best to turn off Post Processing and Motion Blur with 3D Vision.

In some of these cases, the game’s graphics effects can be disabled or minimized to work around these issues, and Nvidia’s 3D Vision GeForce driver usually supplies its own crosshair sight for these cases. To help 3D Vision users, Nvidia pre-defines six levels of game compatibility with 3D Vision and it pops up in hundreds of games as an green overlay that may be disabled or enabled by ctrl+alt+ins.

• 3D Vision Ready
• Excellent
• Good
• Fair
• Poor
• Not Recommended

There are more than a dozen games plus a few demos that are certified as 3D Vision Ready – the best ones that this editor have played so far are Trine 2, Batman: Arkham City, Crysis 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Batman Arkham Asylum and Mafia II. We also played Alice: Madness Returns from start to finish with 3D Vision and reviewed it here.

The majority of the 80-plus games that ABT has tested fall into the Excellent and Good categories – one outstanding game being Just Cause 2 which gets an excellent rating from Nvidia; especially for the breathtaking panoramic super-widescreen aerial views over Panau. Dungeon Siege III, although not a great game, also gets an excellent from this editor and Nvidia for one of the best-looking top-down RPG-type representations of S3D. And Duke Nukem Forever, perhaps unfairly panned by the critics, is another 3D Vision Ready game that works great in 3D Vision and also 3D Vision Surround to increase immersion many fold.

Some of the best part of the 3D experience in Alice: Madness Returns, for example, centers around the incredible detail in each level. You get to experience Alice’s double and triple jumps that generate flowers and butterflies that fly off deep into the screen; her dodging animations look great in 3D – even dying and disintegrating into butterflies takes away some of the sting of having to restart from a checkpoint. With each different and changing level, objects continue to move interestingly in a 3-dimensional space. Also, PhysX effects are rendered particularly well with 3D Vision.  And if this is true with Alice: Madness Returns, it is far more intense with Trine 2 which was created with S3D and particularly 3D Vision in mind.

We are going to focus particularly on two relatively new games whose stories coincidentally both deal with deadly sibling rivalry – Batman: Arkham City and Trine 2.  Batman: Arkham City was rated “Good” (now “3D Vision Ready” with the latest beta drivers 290.53) and Trine 2 is rated 3D Vision “Ready” by Nvidia.

Notice any similarities?

Let’s look at Trine 2 first.