3D Vision Mega Evaluation – Gimmick or Gaming’s Future?
The Eighty older games
The easiest way to catalog these games is by type – action/adventure RPB like the Elder Scroll and Gothic series; top down RPG like Never Winter Night; shooters, RTS, and others. We generally looked at games in our library that were less than ten years old. Much older games tend to have low resolution with low textures and their faults are often magnified by stereoscopic 3D – if you can even get them to work. If you like the games from the 90s, you will definitely need to visit Widescreen Gaming Forum and also Nvidia’s own 3D sub-forums for information.
Action Adventure RPG
Oblivion looks great except for the sky; it also looks spectacular in super widescreen 5760×1080 in S3D. There are also tweaks to make the sky more normal looking. Playing the expansion, the much more colorful world of Shivering Isles really lent itself well to 3D Vision and even 3D Vision Surround and it was great to revisit this world for many hours – this time as a high level character. You will also need a beefy PC to be able to run this game at 5760×1080 with 3D Vision Surround, but it is absolutely worth it. We are looking forward to Skyrim in 3D!
Gothic 3 may be a more beautiful world than Oblivion. Again it has some annoying issues with the 2D-rendered sky, but generally the incredible detail and the immersion of “being there” among the tall waving grasses is spectacular. Indoor scenes are also particularly well-rendered. It does not work in super-widescreen but the experience at 1080p in S3D is far better than at 2560×1600 in 2D in this editor’s opinion.
Fable II, Lost Chapters looks generally good in 3D Vision. Again, there are minor issues with the sky’s rendering and with some 2D elements also being rendered incorrectly. However, it was fun to revisit this world for a few hours.
The original Two Worlds is a little barren but lends itself OK to S3D.
The Witcher looks good in 3D as long as you follow Nvidia’s recommendations to set the shadows to medium. Subtitles are annoying and distract the player and they should be turned off. Other dialog is also 2D but not as annoying as white text superimposed on a 3D background.
Black and White 2 turned out to be just fair. There was a lot of tweaking needed and this editor finally gave up. The game has a lot in common with the view being similar to top down RPGs and zooming in and out while also trying to read the 2D dialog superimposed over the 3D world was a bit disconcerting.
Overlord was surprisingly excellent and there were no issues with ordering the minions to do their master’s bidding. On the other hand, the Overlord II demo did not look so good and there were many effects that need to be turned off. Overlord wasn’t on Nvidia’s 3D Vision tested list at the time of testing, but it is really a very (very) good-looking in 3D.
http://www.codemasters.com/games/?gameid=1998
Hellgate: London (single player) which looks great in 2D DX10 didn’t look so good in S3D – the convergence was way off and the DX10 effects together with the HUD ruined the 3D effects. Perhaps it works in DX9 better; this editor would much prefer 2D DX10. Hellgate London has recently been resurrected and is back free to play in the West again. It is only available in DX9 at this time for the online experience and this editor has not returned to the multiplayer game.
Top down RPGs
Neverwinter Nights 2′s gameworld doesn’t look bad with 3D Vision but the HUD doesn’t render right and the text is hard to read. You will be switching back and forth between 2D and 3D if you want to use 3D Vision. Not recommended.
Torchlight – It looked good but this editor didn’t spend enough time with it. Still some visual faults but overall playable in S3D.
Dungeon Siege II was simply too much work to configure including the widescreen resolution and when it looked half-OK, the 2D elements like the HUD did not render correctly. It is better played in 2D at a widescreen resolution than playing with 3D Vision in a non-widescreen one although it is a better game than its successor Dungeon Siege III which looks stunning in 3D Vision. It is not even rated by Nvidia. And it would be a “Poor” or a “fair”.
There are issues with running Dungeon Siege II at 1920×1080 at 120Hz and if you run it in 3D Vision, you may need to choose a lower native resolution. And if you want to run it at 1080p, you may have to set your display to 60Hz without S3D.
Dungeon Siege III is absolutely stunning for its genre when played with 3D Vision. See the game covered in more detail above. It is a bit tiring to the eyes but it’s a (mercifully) short game that this editor finished in 3 sittings.
Shooters
Valve’s Source engine games – from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Half-Life 2 onward through Left 4 Dead series also look and also run very well with 3D Vision even in 5760×1080 3D Vision Surround! The same thing can be said for Unreal Engine games from Unreal II (v2.5) to the Duke Nukem Forever version of latest Unreal Engine (v3.5). These cover a lot of games.
F.E.A.R. and its two expansions look great and Condemned Criminal Origins, although not a shooter, is even darker and more tense in 3D as it uses the same engine. Condemned Criminal Origins, gives good results with 3D Vision and is as yet unrated by Nvidia. The highest resolution the game supports is 1200×960 but it still works with 3D Vision. You might be able to get a higher resolution if you go to Widescreen Gaming Forum.
Serious Sam series remade in HD looks good in 3D Vision although some things render incorrectly. The Second Encounter looks better than the First game and this editor spent many hours replaying this game. Indoor scenes work better than outdoor scenes although with a little tweaking, it looks great.
Call of Duty 4 looks great and even Modern Warfare can be tweaked to give a more immersive experience playing with 3D Vision.
Max Payne 2, The Fall of Max Payne was a big surprise once we got it into 1080p resolution. It played very well in 3D Vision except for the cutscenes and it looked much better than playing in 2D. A big thumbs up for an older game!
Another big surprise was Clive Barker’s Jericho. This editor attempted to play it many times in the past but gave up on it after just a short time. This time the visuals are excellent with 3D Vision and only a few visual compromises needed to be made. The game became engrossing and we wanted to see what was around the next corner. Admittedly the game has its faults of being a corridor shooter that needs a lot more room for a team, but we were able to overlook them for the amazing 3D experience. If you have this game, give it a second chance with 3D Vision.
No One Lives Forever II is another old game on a custom engine that looks and plays much better in 3D than in regular 2D. This game was fun to revisit and brought back great old memories of playing it for the first time.
Painkiller and Bat Out of Hell expansion both look good in 3D Vision. They are also dark games with a lot of action and the visuals do benefit by playing with 3D. There is some tweaking you will want to do to get this game to look at its best.
Lost Planet looked pretty good in DX10 with 3D Vision but Lost Planet 2 in DX11, less so. The first game is also better and has a real single player campaign. The second game is better looking but needs settings turned down to optimize it for S3D.
Crysis 2 looks spectacular in S3D but Crysis much less so; this editor would prefer to play the original Crysis in 2D and it is a toss-up for the expansion Warhead.
Call of Juarez looked better in 2D even after attempting many adjustments. The 2D image is crisper and looks better in DX10 with no compromises compared to the settings that we had to lower for 3D Vision.
Gun looked pretty good in 3D Vision although we never got the resolution to 1080p.
The entire S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series looks very good with 3D Vision although there are compromises you must make with detail settings. S3D increases the immersion and the look and atmosphere of this game is really helped by 3D Vision. Unfortunately, although Surround and 3D Vision Surround work well with the game, the widescreen effect is mostly ruined by the menus that stretch across 3 screens. There may be a fix for this that is unknown to this editor.
Racing and Flying games
H.A.W.X. looks phenonemal in S3D and also in widescreen. H.A.W.X. 2 is a bit less perfect but the experience is immersive and far more engaging than in 2D. You can feel like you are fighting for your life at times and in Surround the field of view really expands to give a much better playing experience.
F1 2010 looks pretty good with 3D Vision although a few compromises need to be made. Racing and flying games tend to look great in at Surround/Eyefinity resolutions but perhaps less so in S3D.
DiRT 2 is fair with 3D Vision and can be tweaked until it plays satisfactorily but DiRT 3 looks pretty bad and you must turn off so many elements of the game that you might as well play it in 2D with everything maxed out and with better visual qualities.
Fighting games
See Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition covered above. Absolutely too cool in 3D Vision and a much better experience over playing in regular 2D. The amazing thing is that you can crank the settings and the AA to the absolute maximum at 1080p and the 3D Vision experience is absolutely fluid.
Action and Adventure games
Just Cause 2 is probably a shooter and it is superb playing this game in 3D Vision and even more extra-ordinary in Surround plus 3D. The panoramic aerial views of hanging from an aircraft over Panau are absolutely jaw-dropping in S3D.
Another surprising game that works superbly with 3D Vision is an adventure game – Dreamfall, the Longest Journey – with a cult following: http://www.dreamfall.com/ Nvidia has not rated this game but it could be considered very good and it is a game that children might also enjoy.
OLD games
You don’t really want to go back to old games. They look awful in S3D – like the old movies with 2D “cardboard cutouts” super-imposed over a semi-3D background. In this editor’s opinion, the year 2002 is about the cutoff for most games that have a good chance to work in with 3D Vision in 1080p without a lot of tweaking. Fortunately, this editor has a pretty large library of about 100 games over the past 10 years and found it well worth revisiting in S3D.
Max Payne II, the Fall of Max Payne looked really good as did Unreal II and No One Lives Forever 2. Unfortunately, none of the original games of the series worked at all. It was really cool revisiting these 3 old games in S3D and a new dimension is added to the replay. However, it takes a game made with 3D in mind for the top-down RPG games like Never Winter Nights 2 and Dungeon Siege II. The menus are confusing and a lot of it is still 2D over a 3D background.
Conclusion
3D Vision proved excellent bang for buck in revisiting our old PC game library. Most of the shooters and adventure-RPGs worked great with 3D Vision as long as you are willing to do a little tweaking and adjusting of in-game settings. 3D Vision Surround proved to be less bang-for-buck and we would recommend it to someone with a lot of money for hardware and the patience to tweak it for older games. For example, we had great results with Resident Evil 5 and with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series in 1080p 3D but serious issues with the menu in super widescreen resolutions. However, when everything comes together as in Just Cause 2 or in Oblivion, 3D Vision Surround is breathtaking and hugely immersive over playing in 2D even on a large single screen.
3D Vision is probably superb bang-for-buck considering that you can replay most of your games of up to about 6-8 years ago without tweaking and some even older games with tweaking. It is also bang for buck considering that every gamer should probably have a 120Hz display for fast-paced shooters, anyway.
Awesome!!! Loved the interview, the mention of 120Hz benefits over 60Hz, the performance comparisons, and the game evaluations! I think my GTX 460 1GB should be able to handle DNF in 3D just fine with almost everything at max.. but might have to upgrade for most other new games like Crysis 2.
Awesome article! I like it very much!
Thanks a lot for this great post. Really Enjoyed this.
Has anyone tried 3D Vision in a 720p projector? Will 2 gtx570 in Sli be a total overkill?