3D Vision Mega Evaluation – Gimmick or Gaming’s Future?

 How 3D Vision works

3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround

We received a 3D Vision bundle from Nvidia over 5 months ago that we have been continuously evaluating with more than eighty PC games for this mega-review at ABT. We have also played six new games from from start to finish and replayed most of them in both 1920×1080 in 2D and in 3D, plus in 3-panel 2D Surround and in 3D Vision Surround (5760×1080).

The Duke Nukem Forever review was our introduction to stereo 3D reviews at AlienBabelTech and to this 80-plus game mega-review of 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround.  The Nukem review was followed up by our evaluation of Alice: Madness Returns and we also covered the upgrading of Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition from Fair to 3D Vision Ready by a driver update.

3D Vision requires a Nvidia GeForce graphics card, the 3D Vision bundle consisting of the LCD shutter glasses and IR emitter that drives them (or the USB wired Glasses), and one or more 3D Vision-ready true 120Hz 3D-capable monitors. We are using three ASUS VG236H 23″ 120Hz displays.  This bundle including the ASUS display and the 3D Vision glasses Kit retails for about $550 and can be bought currently on Newegg for $464.99 with free shipping.

If you already have a true 120Hz display, Nvidia’s 3D Vision wireless glasses kit, besides allowing you play more than 550 3D games, will allow you to watch Blu-ray 3D movies, view 3D photos and videos, and stream 3D web content on your GeForce GPU-equipped PC or notebook. Best of all, back in March, Nvidia reduced the price of the kit (glasses, wireless IR emitter, cables, and software) to $149 – $50 less than the original price.  Plus, the glasses now provide 50% longer battery life from a single charge, 60 hours compared with 40 hours for the original version, giving you even more time for uninterrupted 3D entertainment.  Also, the price of an extra pair of 3D Vision glasses has been reduced to $119 (from $149).

For Nvidia’s Surround or 3D Vision Surround, you must use SLI or a dual-GPU video card like the GTX 590.  For best results you should use three identical displays so as to match color and characteristics across all of the screens. It will work, however, as long as all of the displays share the same native resolution, size and Landscape orientation.

3D Vision does not support Portrait mode.  Below is a typical 3D Vision setup with the three matched displays on the desktop.  The two outer displays are generally angled somewhat so that looking at the six feet or so of display appears most natural to one’s own eyes.  The bottom scene is from Duke Nukem Forever and is a professionally captured photo.

Using shutter glasses to create 3D Vision. each eyepiece consists of a single LCD screen that uses a polarizing filter. The screen can be made either transparent or completely dark by varying the voltage sent to it. As the frame of an image is shown on the main display, one eye’s LCD will be transparent while the other will be black.  When the next frame appears, the orientation of the lenses is switched and the screen that was black will now be transparent with the voltage toggling, and it is synchronized with the main display’s refresh rate using the IR emitter (or USB port for the wired glasses).  This is called, “alternate-frame sequencing”.

Simply put, 3D Vision works by sequentially displaying offset “left” and “right” versions of each frame in a game, and blocking the vision from one eye or the other by darkening the shutter glasses in synchronization with the display. Putting on the glasses and switching on 3D Vision immediately darkens the scene compared to 2D, and you will definitely need a bright display to compensate. The ASUS displays are excellent in this regard.

Using a 120Hz display means that the monitor can refresh the image 120 times a second vs. the standard 60. With alternate frame sequencing, it happens so quickly that the brain merges the images together creating the 3D effect.  The downside is that the eyes are now only seeing the image 1/2 the time, so the image looks dimmer than usual so you have to really increase the display’s brightness.

The 3D effect appears real as images seem to extend back into the space behind your 2D display, as if it were a window instead of a flat plane. You can even have objects appear to extend out from the monitor’s screen surface as most of most of Nvidia’s 3D advertising shows. Unfortunately, this is the best way to “show” someone stereo 3D (S3D) on a 2D plane although if it actually happens often in a game or a movie, it becomes quite disorienting since the PC screen is relatively close to the player.

Frankly, we believe that the illusion of 3D would be better demonstrated as by this mural illusion of a building damaged by an earthquake.  It is painted on an undamaged flat wall of a restaurant here.  The person with the red jacket is actually part of the painting.

These kinds of murals are getting popular on public buildings and this one in Honolulu actually stopped traffic when it was first completed.

For PC gaming, the best S3D appears to take place in a 3-dimensional space “inside” of your display – as inside of a clear-glass aquarium instead of on a flat screen and the illusion of depth is very convincing. Nvidia’s software works by examining the “Z” co-ordinates already programmed into every PC game which means it works with virtually any video game. Some games work much better than others with 3D Vision and some  games (all OpenGL games) are not supported by Nvidia’s 3D Vision drivers at all.

Please note that there are also performance penalties with Nvidia’s active shutter method of rendering 3D images. Two frames (left and right) must be generated for each frame in 2D, so your game’s framerate will drop by approximately half when 3D Vision is enabled.

Limitations of PC games affecting 3D Vision

There are also 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 occasionally in Alice: Madness Returns and it is best to turn off Post Processing and Motion Blur.

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

In addition to these six categories, there is also “not tested” and we will contribute our own findings for a few of these games that Nvidia has not explored – indeed, some older games have superb 3D Vision results. 3D Vision Ready means the game was designed with Nvidia’s 3D Vision and with 3D Vision Surround in mind.

There are 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 Crysis 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Batman Arkham Asylum and Mafia II. We were somewhat disappointed with Bulletstorm although it is rated excellent as the 3D effects are occasionally confusing; and it should not be that way.  Our interview with Jon Peddie on the next page gives hints as to why. We also played Alice: Madness Returns and reviewed it here.

Here are the games certified as 3D Vision “Ready” – Nvidia guarantees that you will get the optimum S3D experience from playing them. This editor has played nine of them (in Bold) and agrees that the S3D experience is extraordinary.

• Resident Evil 5
  Batman: Arkham Asylum
  Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  Metro 2033
  Just Cause 2
  Mafia II
  Dead Rising 2
  MoH (2010) Multi-Player
  Civilization V
  Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2
  Duke Nukem Forever
  Super Street Fighter IV arcade edition

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.

For the majority of PC games, the player may have to adjust or disable some settings and perhaps use Nvidia’s supplied crosshairs for the best experience. Nvidia even offers suggestions on-screen as your game loads.  A few of these compromises are necessary with Alice: Madness Returns; the post-processing effects are disabled for 3D Vision and motion blur must be off. Even so, it is difficult to make some jumps because of the depth (and especially because of the imprecise PC controls). This editor often switched 3D Vision on and off in some areas.  Fortunately, turning the 3D effects off are quick and easily accomplished on the fly in the game.  Just press the button on the emitter to turn the 3D effects on or off (and don’t forget to take off your 3D Vision glasses).

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.