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

This editor has been interested in modern Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) PC gaming especially since 2008 when Nvidia held their first Nvision08 and demonstrated 3D Vision for the first time in public to the attendees.  In fact, the first article ever written for ABT was, Nvision08 – Nvidia’s 3D Future Showcased.  And we have been closely following the “3D Movement” at the trade shows – the follow-up to Nvision08, Nvidia’s GTC 2009, and at CES 2010 and CES 2011.  We bucked the trend and correctly predicted at CES 2010, that the 3D HDTV adoption rate would be very slow due to a lack of 3D TV programming, but we were more optimistic about Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) PC gaming taking off more quickly.

In April of this year, Nvidia sent AlienBabelTech two 3D Vision Kit Bundles (two of each: wireless active shutter glasses, emitter, 120Hz 1080p display) and a third matched ASUS 23″ 120Hz display also for 3D Vision Surround evaluations at 5760×1080.  This editor then mostly set aside his hardware-reviewing duties and plunged headfirst into the world of 3D Vision and Stereoscopic 3D (S3D).  Evaluating S3D has been the number one priority for well over 5 months by playing more than 80 PC games with 3D Vision.

This 3D 80-game evaluation included playing 6 relatively new games from start to finish with 3D Vision; and we also invited about 20 friends, relatives and neighbors – in ages ranging from 8 to 86 – to audition it with us.  Here are the new games that we played with 3D Vision all considered to be excellent or even made with stereoscopic 3D in mind – 3D Vision Ready.

• Metro 2033
• Bulletstorm
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Alice: Madness Returns
• Dungeon Siege III
• Crysis 2

We also played or attempted to play more than 80 games from the past decade to the present with 3D Vision over this same 5 month period. However, before we get into the details of our 3D Vision evaluation, we need to give you some background on stereoscopic 3D (S3D) and the hardware required to play it. There are also many misconceptions about S3D and we will work to clear them up.

It doesn’t take much in the way of hardware to transform a 2D experience into a stereoscopic 3D one.  All it generally takes to turn a 2D HDTV display into a 3D experience is 120Hz support, an upgraded chipset and an IR emitter. Of course, we shall also focus on what 3D gaming brings over 2D besides “looking cool” and thus we will look at its value to determine if 3D Vision is worth the extra you must spend on hardware to enjoy it.

The 3D Vision movement

Cinema and movies are the natural leader for S3D with many new box office releases of 3D titles since they are making money from them.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of really bad S3D movies – mostly poor conversions from 2D – which are turning off consumers and giving it a bad name.  PC games and console games appear to be the next most popular platform as there is already a lot of 3D content that are automatically converted by drivers to 3D.  And 2D games look much better than 2D to 3D converted movies and there are literally hundreds of relatively new PC games that are well-supported by stereoscopic 3D drivers.

Unfortunately, 3D HDTV is caught in a chicken-egg situation where not a lot of sets yet offer S3D and therefore there is not a lot of programming for it.  Unfortunately, you can only watch a limited number of 3D movies on BluRay.  However, it is guaranteed that 3D TV content will improve. Just last week, Panasonic executives shook hands on a deal to broadcast the 2012 Olympics in 3D.  That will surely drive adoption of 3D by sports fans.

Currently last in popularity are the S3D mobile platforms which are sorely lacking in content as we note with Nintendo’s new handheld 3D system that required a major price cut to just save the possibly of its being successful.  However, we can expect that not long in the future, the handheld S3D devices will become the most popular S3D platform because they are by nature, “glasses-free” and they will be relatively easy to develop 3D content and applications for.

Glasses or Glasses free?

In survey after survey, consumers said that they generally have no issues with wearing 3D glasses.  If the glasses are comfortable and well-designed, as Nvidia’s active shutter 3D Vision are, they can be worn for hours upon hours.  Every one of our twenty guests tried on the 3D Vision glasses – some for hours – and everyone remarked how comfortable they were compared to the cinema 3D glasses.  And as long as the lenses are spotlessly clean, there are generally no issues with wearing the 3D Vision glasses over prescription eyeglasses.

Nvidia chose active shutter glasses for 3D because they consider that it gives users the best experience for PC gaming.  On the other hand, AMD relies on an open initiative with their HD3D and polarized 3D glasses seem to be popular with their partners.  There are also anaglyph glasses in use and each method has its own strengths and weaknesses for displaying the illusion of depth.  Polarized cuts the resolution in half horizontally.  Anaglyph has color and light transmission issues and active shutter is relatively dark.

Compatibility

One of the major stumbling blocks for stereoscopic 3D gaining widespread adoption in the home is that there are many suppliers of the S3D technology and no clear standard – not even among active shutter glasses.  For example, Nvidia glasses won’t work on a LG TV nor will LG’s active shutter glasses work with 3D Vision.  And there are companies (Toshiba) that claim “glasses free” is the only way to go, prompting bitter ad wars with their rival (Samsung) in the Far East.  However it is noted that glasses-free for larger TV sets have their own issues with multiple viewers.  And glasses free is much more expensive than using S3D technology with glasses.

Advantages of Stereoscopic 3D over 2D in PC gaming

The most important part of this evaluation addresses is what S3D actually offers the player over simply “looking cool”. Ideally, 3D should present a more realistic and immersive presentation, plus the advantages that depth perception can offer in something like a racing or flying game or even for a shooter. Unfortunately, most games are in the “looking cool” category – which in of itself can be great.

However, we need to explore how important that 3D look is when other elements of a game need to be downgraded in order to accommodate S3D. To provide a full 1080p stereoscopic 3D effect, game requirements including fill rate double, and its geometry also needs to be processed twice. This is why so many 3D games have framerates approximately half compared to playing the 2D version.  So again, we will be looking at the “worth it” aspect for PC gaming.

Demonstrating S3D

One of the challenges for S3D to gain mass consumer acceptance is to get people to actually see it for themselves in their homes.  It is impossible to demonstrate 3D to someone who has no way to see it properly on their 2D screen.  It would be similar to attempting to demonstrate color television to someone with a black and white set.  Actually a small percent of the population cannot even see S3D properly and it would be very wise to have a means to return the 3D hardware to the retailer/etailer if the experience proves to be unsatisfactory.

Let’s look at how the illusion of S3D is produced on a 2D display.

Stereoscopic 3D – Producing the illusion of depth

Anaglyph

It is natural to view objects in 3D.  Photography and film use 2D to represent our 3D world and the first attempts to make stereoscopic 3D began in the form of anaglyph.  The first method to produce anaglyph images was developed in 1853 by Wilhelm Rollmann in Germany.  Generally two images from the perspective of the left and right eyes were projected or printed together as a single image.  One side was processed through a red filter and the other side through a contrasting blue filter.  And it is still used today but now it is done by using an image-processing computer program to simulate the effect of using color filters.

Viewing anaglyphs through colored glasses results in each eye viewing a slightly different picture. In red-blue anaglyph, the eye looking through the red filter sees the red parts of the image as white, and the blue parts as black; the eye covered by the blue filter gets the opposite effect. Actual black or white are perceived the same by each eye so that the viewer’s brain blends together the image it gets from each eye, and interprets the differences as being the result of varying depth.

3-D films have existed in some form since the 1950s even though they are more expensive to make than 2D and there is no industry-wide standard. 3D movies later became popular again beginning in the 1980s mostly because of the IMAX theaters and Disney theme parks.  Mainstream 3-D films have became more successful recently, peaking with the runaway success of 3-D presentations of Avatar.

Anaglyph Games

The very first PC games to use 3D were released in 1982 for the arcade – SubRoc and Vectrex 3D used a spinning disk method to create their 3D effect.  Later, Sega and Nintendo brought out their proprietary 3D home console systems in the late 1980s that used active shutter glasses.  And of course, the 1996 DoS PC game, Duke Nukem 3D mostly used the anaglyph glasses for the S3D effects.

James Cameron’s Avatar the Game uses multiple methods to achieve the S3D effects – anaglyph, 3D Vision active shutter glasses and HD3D over HDMI 1.4.  The format “Frame Packing” (left and right image packed into one video frame with twice the normal bandwidth) is necessary for HDMI 1.4 3D devices. All three resolutions (720p50/60, and 1080p24) need to be supported by display devices, and at least one of them by playback devices. Other resolutions and formats are optional. HDMI 1.4 devices are capable of transmitting 3D pictures in full 1080p but HDMI 1.3 does not include this support.  In addition, 3D images may be displayed at lower resolutions including interlaced or standard definition.

The advantages to an anaglyph 3D system is purely one of low cost – it is very cheap and Nvidia also gives you a way to sample S3D with anaglyph glasses for free – 3D Vision Discover – as long as you own a Nvidia graphics card.   Unfortunately, this kind of 3D is dark and has definite issues with color transmission and reception.

Polarized S3D

Polarized glasses have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive – more expensive than the cheap throw-away anaglyph glasses but much cheaper than the active shutter glasses chosen by Nvidia.  AMD calls their passive implementation of stereoscopic 3D, HD3D and polarized 3D glasses seem to be popular with them and their partners.

Polarized cuts the resolution in half horizontally because a passive S3D system takes one HD image and splits it in two.  The result is that from an original 1080p image, each eye now sees a 540p image which is half of the combined resolution that an active system offers. Some feel that this loss of resolution results in less detailed images and a less pronounced 3D effect than the active shutter system.

The Active Shutter glasses

In 1999 Elsa’s 3D Revelator glasses came bundled with Elsa’s Erazor video cards and worked mostly with DirectX games.   These glasses required a minimum 100Hz refresh rate using a CRT display. Once LCDs at 60 Hz became popular supplanting the CRT, the active technology Elsa used wouldn’t work any longer.  The LCD’s refresh rate for each eye (half of 60Hz) is way too low for flicker-free gameplay and will cause eyestrain and headaches.

Recent history to present

The recent HD 3D TV movement began about 2009 where (at least) one major manufacturer (LG) promised that 3D TV would be in people’s living rooms by 2010.  This editor witnessed the frenzy of the media at CES 2010 where S3D was touted as the “next big thing” and immediate widespread adoption was promised.  Clearly the over-optimistic were banking on the success of James Cameron’s Avatar which was filmed in 3D and was wildly popular with the theater audiences.

Avatar is 3D unlike the 3D of the 1950s-1990s – all of which were also touted as the “next big thing” – but they never materialized as the technology was really awful.  Generally the early 3D films featured headache-inducing dark movies with scenes that included characters and objects that generally looked like 2D cardboard cutouts superimposed over a 2D background and with nauseating “effects” always popping out at the audience.

Today’s 3D is much better and the creators of S3D content have learned to maximize its effect while providing a solid movie experience with extra immersion.  Unfortunately, the predictors of the rapid adoption of 3D forgot one big thing: lack of 3D content for the home.  There are only a very few sports-related 3D programs carried by cable or satellite and few “native” 3D movies.  Not to mention that most Europeans and Americans have just finished upgrading to HDTV and would need a really compelling reason to upgrade further.

It has always been expected that 3D PC gaming would lag behind 3D HDTV because only Nvidia has been really pushing their own proprietary version of 3D gaming since 2009 called “3D Vision”.  During this same time, AMD has been mostly touting the advantages of their Eyefinity multi-display which can be driven off a single card (where as Nvidia requires SLI for their competing “Surround”) and is a few years behind Nvidia in developing a 3D ecosystem with their partners for 3D gaming with their own S3D that they call HD3D.  We expect that adoption amongst gamers will be more rapid beginning with the HD 7000 series as AMD begins to give more importance to S3D gaming.  We also expect AMD to copy Nvidia by offering HD3D across three display and perhaps one-up them with 3×2 Eyefinity – six screens in S3D.

Content

If television programming content is lacking for S3D, that is not at all the case with PC games.  3D is already programmed into each and every PC game by using the Z (“depth”) buffer.  Nvidia has rated over 550 PC games at the time of writing – six classes including, “3D Vision ready” (the best), “Excellent”, “good”, “Fair” and “not recommended” – and most of these games are good or better for playing in S3D.  This evaluation was also approached from the perspective of “value” – using S3D to possibly “reopen” a library of games that were never finished or to be replayed just for the 3D experience.

To this end, we installed over 80 games and played and replayed them with 3D Vision.  There are many more games that we installed, only to find that they were too old (the drivers did not work properly to enable S3D) or the engine is OpenGL-based (Nvidia’s 3D vision drivers do not support any OpenGL games).  Generally, we found that games after 2002 are largely compatible with Nvidia’s 3D Vision. And we found several really excellent games that play well in S3D that Nvidia has not evaluated that we will share with you.

Earlier games are  hit and miss – often we would spend hours tweaking the game or looking for ways to edit the game ini files; or to even make it compatible with widescreen gaming since we have a 1920×1080 120HZ 3D Vision ready LCD.  And the really old PC games look generally pretty awful – their faults are magnified by 3D.  Here were are taking about “cardboard cutouts superimposed over a cardboard cutout background” – just like the 3D old movies.  However, we have well over 100 PC games available to us in our library for testing that are less than 10 years old.

Some PC games we tested for only an hour or so; six brand new games were played from start to finish while others we revisited for many hours each – depending on the S3D gaming experience.  During this 5-month evaluation we have learned to ‘tweak’ 3D Vision settings and the game experience we have now at the end of this evaluation is much better than when we first started out.

3D Vision benefits from tweaking and there are keyboard shortcuts and hot keys to adjust it even in-game.  Nvidia also provides a general setting guide for every one of the 550 games they that they have tested, as well as 3D Vision blogs and a sub-forum [insert link] devoted to improving the 3D experience that Nvidia employees regularly monitor and contribute to.  We also tested some games that Nvidia didn’t and we will be glad to update you with our own ratings and suggestions.

Stereoscopic 3D at ABT

This evaluation is particularly devoted to 3D Vision and testing Nvidia’s proprietary S3D solution.  We will also continue to follow AMD’s competing HD3D solution and from time to time we will look at handheld and mobile S3D solutions.  For now, let’s look closely at Nvidia’s 3D Vision and how it works.

 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.

Before we look at the hardware requirements for 3D Vision and get to the game evaluations, let’s look at an email interview that we had with Jon Peddie at the end of May.  He is one of the leading analysts in the tech industry and he has a lot of experience with S3D, 3D Vision and Eyefinity configurations.

Interview with Jon Peddie on S3D:

ABT had an opportunity to interview Jon Peddie by email.  He is one of the leading analysts in the industry especially regarding trends in stereoscopic 3D HDTV adoption and regarding 3D PC gaming.  One of his own favorite systems is quite impressive with 5 Dell displays running 5400×1920 in a semi-circle running off of a single HD 6990.

[ABT] Have you found 3D Vision-ready games where 3D does not make for as good an experience as in 2D?  I can think of Bulletstorm where it is very good looking and plays smoothly on my GTX 590, however, so much is going on that it is confusing.  No adjustments worked for me and Surround made it much worse.

[JON -] Some AAA title games are designed originally for consoles, with the idea that the screen size will be an HDTV. The designers never considered larger viewing spaces or were restricted in budget from designing and testing for them, so didn’t have larger or more screens, assuming only the lunatic fringe would have such rigs and they didn’t represent much business. That’s not Nvidia’s fault, nor can Nvidia do much about it. In some cases you can tweak a setup file (sometimes called an INI file) and change some parameters but the results are not satisfying, even for the DYI “lunatic fringe.” These games and publishers are well known to the enthusiast PC gamer and they are despised for their business model and abandonment of the enthusiast PC gamer. That creates a self –filling prophecy the enthusiast PC gamers don’t buy the title, the publisher says see I told you there was no business there, no need to invest in that segment. The game publishers and their blind commitment to the Consoles is running PC gaming

[ABT] Have you found older games that you would never ordinarily return to, interesting again because they are now playable in 3D?  I am finding both Oblivion and especially Gothic 3 very playable again – and I never could return to them before.

[JON -] Absolutely. Stalker (all versions and mods), the original FallOut, the original Bioshock, and lots of others.

[JON -] I have tried AMD’s S3D on an HP Envy 17 and it was fine, take a look at: http://jonpeddie.com/reviews/comments/hp-envy17-3d-review-a-3d-entertainment-system-and-more/

[JON -] I have tried almost all the configurations – my favorite is 5×1 in portrait mode, with the screens wrapped around in a semi-circle. Take a look at:  http://jonpeddie.com/reviews/comments/testing-the-amd-hd-6990-with-five-screens-the-more-you-see-the-more-you-lik/

AMD works with partners, so if you got an EyeFinity system with 120 Hz monitors you’d have to find another source for the glasses, and then you’d be on your own to get it running. I haven’t found a company yet that is offering Multiscreen in S3D with AMD.

[ABT] What do you think of 3D’s value for the PC gamer

[JON -] More immersive game play – see stuff you couldn’t see before.

[JON -] It will be adopted as the content (games in this case) get better. The game developers haven’t fully committed to it at the design and development stage – there are things about S3D that have to be learned (e.g., how much to pop out, how much to pop in, how fast scenes can change and things move in them, etc.). Glasses and monitors prices are dropping as all things do. Word-of-mouth will help, and then if anyone sees it and is told they too can have it, it will take off.

[JON -] yes because of content and consumer awareness. Right now only Nvidia is beating the drum for S3D on PC, whereas there are a half dozen big TV suppliers pushing it and riding on the content from the movies.

[ABT] Do you believe that the next generation of consoles will support both multi-display and 3D gaming (across multi-panels)?

[JON -] If there is a next generation of consoles they will have to. However, if there is a next gen console and the design concept is single screen HDTV only then no multiscreen support, but yes to S3D. Sony already does support S3D with the PS3.

[JON -] No – that’s a red herring – almost every user survey shows that consumers aren’t bothered by it – they wear them in movies, and as I’ve pointed out – how many people wear sunglasses for hours at a time? The “glasses issue” is something for reporters and pundants to write about because they don’t know anything about the technology, market, or have any consumer data and feel they have to say something to get some words published and be controversial to attract attention (i.e., advertisers).

[JON -] If an acceptable technique was developed, sure. The small screen handheld devices using parallax barrier are great. Signage with multi-view camera content creation looks pretty good but still suffers from zoning. At the IFA conference in September in Berlin a big TV company will introduce a lenticular lens TV set.  If consumers become more comfortable with zoning viewing then glasses will be abandoned.

[ABT] Thanks, Jon!

In one of the above-linked articles, Jon Peddie mentioned the 3×2 configuration as having some issues with the action taking place behind the bezels which was quite distracting.  For some new games such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the devs actually designed the game so the action takes place in the main bottom center screen with the other 5 adding to the field of view and thus to the immersion.  And this game also supports AMD’s HD3D although it appears that in time Nvidia perhaps may have working 3D Vision drivers for it also.

Before we get back to evaluating games with 3D Vision, let’s check out the hardware that we used for our evaluations.

HW requirements for S3D/3D Vision

Hardware and System Requirements

GPU Support
NVIDIA GeForce cards have been capable of driving 120Hz for some time using dual-link DVI, however LCD displays up to now have not been capable of accepting this refresh rate. All existing GeForce 8 series and higher GPUs support dual-link DVI. Where a 120Hz display really shines is when running a top title on a GeForce 8800 GT or higher, 9600 GT or higher, or GTX 200, 400 or 500 series card.

Nvidia’s 3D Vision Kit includes:

•  One pair of Nvidia 3D Vision active shutter glasses with storage pouch, adjustable nose pieces, and microfiber cleaning cloth
•  Nvidia 3D Vision USB controller/IR emitter
•  Custom 5’ VESA stereo to 2.5 mm stereo audio plug cable
•  10’ DVI to HDMI™ cable
•  10’ USB 2.0 type A to 5-pin mini-B cable
•  6’ recharge cable (USB Type A to 5-pin mini Type B)
•  Quick start guide
•  Installation CD

The minimum hardware required to play is below:

3D Vision Minimum System Requirements

•  Microsoft® Windows® Vista 32/64-bit or Windows 7 32/64-bit
•  Intel® Core™2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ X2 CPU or higher
•  1GB of system memory. (2GB is recommended)
•  100 MB free disk space

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware:

• Intel Core i7 920 (reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.2 and 3.8 GHz); Turbo is on.
• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 18000 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
• Nvidia GTX 580 (1.5 GB, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
• Nvidia GTX 590 (3 GB, reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
• Galaxy GTX 560 Ti (1 GB, reference clocks) supplied by Galaxy
• EVGA GTX 550 Ti (1 GB, factory reference clocks) supplied by EVGA
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Noctua NH-U12-P SE2 CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• 3 ASUS VG236H 120Hz 3D Vision ready 1920×1080 23″ displays, supplied by Nvidia/ASUS
• 2 – 3D Vision Wireless Kits (glasses/emitter) supplied by Nvidia ( we and our guests appreciated the extra consideration – thank-you!)

Test Configuration – Software

• Eighty games tested; (five games, supplied by Nvidia: i.e. Duke Nukem Forever, Bulletstorm, Alice: Madness Returns, Dungeon Siege III, and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade, edition).
• Nvidia GeForce WHQL 275.33 and 280.26
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• DirectX July/November 2010
• All games are fully patched and updated
• vsync is forced off in the control panel but this does not apply to 3D Vision as it is forced by the 3D drivers.
• Varying AA enabled including FXAA and FSAA; some settings downgraded or disabled to get the best 3D effect
• All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used.

Let’s see how our PC performs with 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround:

Performance

The GTX 590

As we have noted before, driving 3D Vision takes a much larger performance hit from your PC than playing PC games in regular 2D.  Nvidia mostly recommends downgrading the anti-aliasing to 2X to get closer to to the 50% or less of a performance hit.  Playing with 8xMSAA is mostly wasted performance on S3D as 2X seems to provide the most IQ improvement without the huge performance hit.

Here is some of our testing from early on with highest details and mostly high AA enabled using our GTX 590 and our i7-920 at 3.8GHz.  What we are showing is “worst case” – not turning down AA settings and effects that actually when minimized, make the 3D experience better.  3D Vision really benefits from “tweaking” in every way – visual and performance – so that the user can tailor the S3D experience exactly to his or her tastes.  3D Vision is highly customizable and it works great with a GTX 550 Ti all the way to the GTX 590 and also with multi-GPU configurations.

Metro 2033 is played 1xAA with DOF disabled and you can see the performance hit is just over 50%.  It is a hard game on any PC and playing with 3D Vision looks great but drops to a slideshow at times if you do not compromise details.  Just Cause 2 will run considerably faster with 2xAA in 3D Vision and Resident Evil 5 with 8xAA is a performance waster although it is still fluid in S3D.  Far Cry 2 actually looks better in DX9 for 3D Vision than on the DX10 pathway and you must turn down some settings.

Using the GTX 550 Ti with 3D Vision

Here are the results of our benching with 3D Vision enabled versus 2D with the GTX 550 Ti. There is a significant performance hit because each frame is rendered twice – once for the left eye and once for the right. We will go into much more detail in an upcoming review of 3D Vision.  We tested and played two games – Batman Arkham Asylum and Resident Evil 5 at our display’s native resolution of 1920×1080 at 120Hz.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was played with maximum settings with a single EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti. Motion Blur is left off and AA is set to 2x as in our settings (above).

Here are Batman Arkham Asylum 3D Vision results:

	Minimum	Average	Maximum
2D	52	81	99
3D Vision	29	47	59

As you can see, it depends on the game as to whether it can be played with 3D Vision and an entry-level gaming card.  Batman takes less of a performance hit in 3D Vision than with some other games (and note that AA is reduced to 2xAA and motion blur is off).  In this case, Batman: Arkham Asylum is very playable in 3D Vision with a GTX 550 Ti and it looks great!  Let’s look at a more demanding game, Resident Evil 5.

Resident Evil 5 is a little more resource-hungry than Batman and we would recommend dropping setting further than what we used.  We did not play the game for very long (as we did with Batman) but will give you our performance results with a single EVGA-clocked GTX 550 Ti at 1920×1050@120Hz. Motion Blur is left off and AA is set to 2x while other settings are completely maxed out.

	Average
2D	54.3
3D Vision	28.2

3D Vision aims for 60 frames per second; 30 per eye. Triple buffering is locked on in the drivers and cannot be disabled.

3D Vision is quite impressive as you now have another dimension of depth to immerse you even more into your game with an entry level gaming card.  Best of all, as you can see it is completely playable on a single GTX 550 Ti.  Batman is described as 3D Vision “ready” and there are no oddities in playing this game whatsoever in the couple of hours this editor spent playing it.  There is no eyestrain, headaches or irritation to report as depth can be set easily and playing at 120Hz reduces flickering to nearly zero.  3D Vision is a way to immerse the entry level gamer into the action much better than 2D.

Using the GTX 560 Ti to play in 3D Vision, we get results in between the GTX 590 and the GTX 550 Ti.  Mostly Unreal Tournament 3.5 engine games (like Batman, Duke Nukem Forever and Alice: Madness Returns) are completely playable in 3D Vision as long as the AA is turned down to 2X and motion blur is mostly left off along with Post Processing.  The S3D performance hit generally is around 40-60%, depending on the game and the settings you turn down or off.

Now that we have an introduction to Nvidia’s 3D Vision and the hardware to play games in S3D and the performance penalties, let’s take a closer look at the 120Hz display required for 3D gaming; in this case, our ASUS VG236.

120Hz Displays vs. 120Hz displays – advantages for 2D gaming?

We are already seeing the next generation 27″ 120Hz LCDs that will not only support full 1080p gaming at 60fps using the 3D Vision built-in emitter, but they will also support the HDMI 1.4a standard which has the full 60fps at 720p and 24fps at 1080p.

This is the new breed of 27″ display that supports 3D Vision as well as via HDMI 1.4

Our 23.6″ ASUS 120Hz display is one generation older and supports 3D Vision but not HDMI 1.4

Here are the specifications for the ASUS display:

•  Display Size: 23″ Widescreen
  Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (up to 120Hz)
  Aspect Ratio: 16 : 9
  Brightness: 400 cd/m2
  Intrinsic Contrast Ratio: 1,000:1
  Response Time: 2 ms (Gray to Gray)
  Viewing Angle: 170º / 160º (Horizontal / Vertical)
  Color Saturation (NTSC): 16.7 M
  Connectors: Dual-link DVI, HDMI, Component
  Power Consumption: 60W On / 2W Power Saving / 1W Off
  Speakers: No
  Stand: +15° to -5° Tilt, Vesa Mounts (100mm x 100mm)
  Dimensions (WxHxD): 550 x 420 x 250 mm
  Weight: 15.4 lbs / 7 kg

120Hz displays are particularly well-suited for fast-paced shooters and playing these games on a 120Hz display versus playing on a 60Hz display is almost like playing a different game.  With a 120Hz display, you are getting every single frame at or below 120fps drawn to the display. At that high of a response rate, flicker is gone. The result is a similar kind of, ‘once you’ve experienced it, you can’t go back’

The image on the 120Hz display is not prone to tearing and blurring as on a 60Hz screen.  Look at the same scene from Mirror’s Edge, shown below.  Nvidia captured the left image on a conventional 60Hz display and the right one on the ASUS 120Hz display.  This is perhaps a bit more extreme blurring than this editor sees with live fast-paced action shooters – perhaps a “worst case vs. best case” scene; but the “tearing”, flicker and LCD blurring is completely gone on the ASUS 120Hz display.Unfortunately, these kinds of images are very difficult to capture and it is impossible to show any differences on a 60Hz LCD in a video for our readers.  In fact, most consumer high resolution and high definition digital cameras only capture at 1080p at 60 Fields per second and you will blur both images playing either of them back on your 60Hz LCD.

However, we do know how to capture these images and own a digital camera capable of recording 240 fields per second, and we will work to publish a further 120Hz versus 60Hz display comparison for you and we will post our own images of the differences that we find.

However, if you have a 120Hz display set up next to a 60Hz display, it is really easy to tell the superiority of the 120Hz display just by dragging a Firefox window across the screen very quickly.  The 120Hz display is crisp and there is no discernible motion blur unlike with the 60Hz display.

With a 60Hz display you have to make compromises with shooters – there is built-in motion blur and tearing without Vsync enabled and a 60fps framerate cap with it on. This not an issue at 120Hz.  Using a 120Hz LCD, there is no noticeable frame tearing that this editor experienced as vsync remains on all of the time and the 60fps cap is now gone. Hence the motion blur that everyone everyone else experiences at 60Hz and perceives as normal is also gone at 120Hz.

Of course, one can make a 120Hz LCD also tear or ruin the framerates if you bog your system down enough. However, in a practical way – one will experience a much better fast-action gaming experience with a 120Hz display over a 60Hz monitor, in regard to playing without tearing or severely capped framerates when one has a fast enough PC to keep the framerates well over 60 as a minimum.

To summarize, you have to compromise on a 60Hz display between high framerates with vsynch off and tearing, or no tearing and limited framerates.   On a conventional 60Hz LCD with vsynch on, tearing is eliminated; but the frame-rate is also limited, leaving significant performance on the table if you have a fast videocard.  On the other hand, 120Hz displays are no-compromise and you do get a superior no-tear/no-blur image in fast-paced shooters where your videocard is able to keep the framerate above 60fps.

What kind of 120Hz display is 3D Vision Ready?

3D Vision Ready 120Hz displays are capable of internal refresh rates of 120Hz and are driven at 120Hz via a dual-link DVI connection. This is not to be confused with “120Hz” HDTVs that only accept 60Hz content.   For 3D Vision Ready displays, 120Hz means that 120 frames per second can be driven directly from the graphics card to the display, with the LCD’s pixels being refreshed at 120Hz.

Now that we see the differences between the 60Hz and 120Hz displays and we have our ASUS VG236 23.6″ Pure Vision 3D Ready display, let’s open the box and set up our display.

Unboxing the ASUS 3D Vision Bundle:

The 3D Vision/ASUS Bundle consists of a large box containing the ASUS VG236 display and the 3D Vision wireless active shutter glasses Kit.

As you can see, “Trace free” is touted along with 3D and 120Hz and it is clear that the VG236 is accompanied by the 3D Vision Kit inside.  2ms is the quoted specification from gray to gray.  The precious contents is well packed for shipping.

You can see that the bottom stand is solid and heavy to provide stable support for the display.

Putting them together is a snap (literally, and a click) then turn the screw to lock it down.

Here is everything out of the box and ready for the simple assembly.

All of our 3D Vision accessories are here and unpacked and ready to assemble.  Below is the 3D Vision Kit included with the ASUS bundle.

One emitter is sufficient for multiple pairs of 3D Vision glasses.

The screen now tilts back and forth as well as lowers and raises.  You have to rotate the stand, however, to pivot your screen horizontally so that it may match up with two other displays for Surround gaming.

The controls are simple and easy to get to:

Here is the display from another view.

And here is the connection panel for dual-link DVI and HDMI 1.3; make sure you use the supplied dual-link DVI cable which is mandatory to display 3D Vision.  No DisplayPort or HDMI 1.4 connections, however.

It is a beautiful display with a really glossy screen (make sure to dim the room’s lighting) and our images do it little justice compared with seeing it live in 3D and in person.

When you first turn it on, the brightness of the ASUS VG236H is a bit of a shock compared to most LCDs.  It is extremely bright out of the box and it is almost unpleasant for 2D work.  Also, the color temperature is set too high and the gamma curve is set too low, meaning that the colors tend more towards blue with relatively light shades of grey that should be darker. These are not real issues for playing games with 3D Vision as the games tend to be dark using active shutter glasses although colors are reproduced accurately.

To make adjustments that will make the color temperature more accurate, simply set the color to “warm” and turn the brightness down to the mid-40s.  This will work well for all 2D applications. Now that we have our display more accurately “eye-calibrated”, let’s set up all three displays and remember to turn the brightness back up for playing games with 3D Vision.

[insert image 3x1080p]

Now that we have our 3 displays set up side-by-side, let’s look closely at the active shutter 3D Vision glasses before we install the 3D Vision drivers and hardware on our PC

The 3D Vision active shutter glasses

Nvidia’s 3D Vision glasses are reasonably stylish and one could wear them outside in public although it is not a good idea as direct sunlight is harmful for the liquid crystal display nor do they provide any UV protection.   Although they only allow a bit less than half of the visible light to pass, they would not make good sunglasses.

The 3D Vision glasses also have a protective mechanism and the lenses will darken and lighten rapidly when you are not gaming in 3D to remind you to take them off.   Nvidia’s following charts illustrate the functionality of the 3D Vision glasses and kit perfectly.

All of the electronics are located on the inner left side on the glasses and it appears to add no weight at all. The wireless glasses do not require a wire connection although the wired set does.

The wireless glasses are powered by a built-in lithium-ion battery and they will hold a charge for about 60 hours – not 40 hours as for the older edition as the diagram above states.   This is confirmed over months of using them.  The wireless glasses receive their synchronization signal from the IR transmitter and you may have an unlimited number of glasses receiving the same signal from a single emitter.

An on-off button and a Power Battery indicator are located on the top of the frame. The glasses shut down automatically after a few minutes of being idle and out of contact with the emitter. The lenses blink in order to remind you that you should take them off and and an LED also blinks red when the battery is low; it is amber when being charged via the USB cable.

A standard USB connector is included with the kit and is used for recharging the battery.  It takes about 3 hours from discharged to fully charged.  There were no issues for this editor or any of his 20 guests, even those who wore them over prescription eyeglasses. All of the guests agreed that the glasses were quite comfortable.

These glasses can fit most faces because of the 3 different-sized nose pads that are included with the 3D Vision kit.  This editor found no advantages to wearing contact lenses over prescription eyeglasses with the Nvidia 3D Vision glasses as long as all of the lenses were spotlessly clean.

The 3D glasses are automatically synchronized with the computer to dim the left or right lens simultaneously with the display. This is done by means of an infrared transmitter up to a distance of about 20 feet.  The emitter looks like a small black plastic (Mayan – not Egyptian) pyramid. The transmitter must be located in direct view of the glasses or the glass will not function; blink and eventually turn off.

The transmitter has a USB connector for connecting to the computer, a 3D VESA socket for TV-sets that support GeForce 3D Vision and a wheel for instant adjustment of 3D depth as well as an on-off button to turn off the 3D effects in game. Although you can change more parameters with hot keys, the wheel is conveniently and instantly available to use while gaming.

3D Vision is compatible with Nvidia’s video cards, starting from the 8800 GT and 9600 GT, and including the GTX 200/400 and 500 series of cards. Dual-GPU video cards are also supported including SLI configurations with two or more cards.  However, you do not want to use entry-level cards because the load on them is approximately twice what it is for 2D gaming.

Let’s install 3D Vision on our PC.

Installing 3D vision

Installing 3D Vision drivers is now completely painless for someone with a GeForce card.  If you have the latest drivers, the 3D Vision drivers are already included and there are no longer separate downloads for 3D Vision drivers and for GeForce drivers.  When installing the latest drivers from Nvidia’s site, you might consider using a “clean install”.  And it is always wise to keep your drivers up to date as 3D Vision improvements are often made from one driver release to the next.

After the driver installation is complete, go into Nvidia’s control panel and launch the 3D Vision Wizard which will take you step by step through setting up 3D Vision.  In just a few minutes, you will be playing your first game in 3D – assuming you can tear yourself away from the 3D sample demos and images.

Of course, it is step by step – select your emitter and plug it in; select the display and then the glasses … and now the 3D Test.

It will not let you proceed until everything is working smoothly.  You next get to choose from 100Hz, 110Hz or 120Hz for your display; 120Hz gives the least flicker and this is what we chose.

Then you get to the eye test to make sure that you can even see 3D properly.

There are a very small percentage of people who simply cannot perceive S3D and if you are one of them, Nvidia suggests that you do not use 3D Vision until you consult with your eye doctor.  If you can see the 3D image then you get a Congratulations and you can make a desktop shortcut for it and head right to the demo that Nvidia provides to help your adjust depth, or even watch a slideshow of impressive-looking 3D images.

Well, we passed the test and we will give our first impressions of 3D Vision after we tweak the settings.

Tweaking the 3D settings

In the same tab of Nvidia’s Control Panel where you set up Stereoscopic 3D, you now can set the keyboard shortcuts to adjust not only the depth but the convergence so that you can minimize crosstalk/ghosting.  After you tweak the game to your liking, you can even save the in-game changes so you do not have to do this more than once for each game.

If you are looking for advice on how to tweak specific game settings, Nvidia’s 3D Vision blogs are a wealth of information as are their 3D Vision forums.  Below are the hot keys, the most important of which is to adjust convergence and depth.  Alternately, you can press and hold the on-off switch on the emitter and use the wheel to adjust convergence.  Be aware that some games have locked the convergence and you cannot adjust it manually at all.

You also have the option to “Change the 3D Laser Sight”, the crosshairs for targeting.  As we learned, often the developers take shortcuts with the HUD or crosshairs that still look fine in 2D but are a bit confusing in S3D.  These sights will work with most games that Nvidia has drivers for, so that there is no depth confusion on what you are targeting.  And of course, most games allow you to turn off the supplied in-game crosshairs.

Tips for adjustments:

Convergence controls at which distance the left and right views will convergence into a single view. When this occurs, your eyes are focusing directly into the screen surface and viewing objects that are said to be at “screen depth”.  Ideally the objects at screen depth should be at a similar distance to the viewer from the screen.  In other words, if you sit two feet from your display, the objects in the game that are two feet from the camera converge into a single view at screen depth.  If you sit closer, the objects will “pop out” and if you sit nearer, the objects will recede into the screen

A rough rule in shooters is to walk your character as near as possible into a wall and change the convergence – without glasses – until you see the wall textures are not ghosting.  Then add a bit of convergence until the wall moves forward toward you.  Too much convergence will strain your eyes and if you force them to focus you will get headaches; lower the convergence in this case or adjust the depth and the separation.  Each game is different one from the other and you will want to save your settings when you have got them adjusted to your personal preference.

Pop out or Pop in?

If you are brand new to 3D Vision, it is wise to stick with the default settings until you get used to it.  If your have a game with a large GUI, you do not want pop-out; if you do, you will introduce confusion.  Your eyes may be telling you that an object is close to your face but covered by the GUI that is further away.  This is a way to get a headache very quickly as your brain tries to resolve an impossible situation.

Usually a good way to adjust this is to focus on distant objects – a landmark is better than the sky, however.  As you look at your landmark in the distance, increase the depth until the object really looks distant without looking out of place.  Your goal is to find the point at which your eyes are looking at the image in parallel without getting further apart than where your eyes would focus normally in the real 3D world.

There is a lot of trial and error at first – especially if you want more than just the default settings, which are really conservative.  In time. it becomes easy and natural to adjust your settings accurately for your within the first few minutes of starting a game.  Then save your settings so you don’t have to repeat the above steps.

Well, we are ready to play our first games with 3D Vision and will give you our first impressions.

First impressions

The initial impressions were of games that were already installed on the hard drive.  Batman: Arkham Asylum was a natural to run first as it is 3D Vision Ready – the highest standard for 3D PC games.  We followed the green on screen prompts that are overlaid over every game that Nvidia has tested with 3D Vision.  These prompts told us to turn off Motion Blur and lower AA settings from 8xQ down to 2xAA.  Generally, Motion Blur and Post Processing is turned off for the best 3D Vision experiences and AA is generally lowered to 2x.

Upon loading up a save and playing it in 3D Vision for the first time, we were totally impressed by the stunning 3D effects and nearly flicker-free images with only a hint of ghosting that was quickly minimized by the hot keys and by adjusting the convergence.

Batman is already a dark game, but 3D Vision makes it about 30% darker.  We compensated somewhat with the gamma and our screen’s brightness to make it nearly as light as in 2D and without washing out colors which were perfectly rendered with no color shifting at all.  Color is just as accurate with the 3D Vision glasses as without them.

The cut scenes of Batman appear to reach deep into the screen with only a few situations where objects projected out of the screen.  At first, we played with the depth relatively low, then experimented in later playing sessions with increasing depth until ghosting starts to occur.  Then the hot keys are used by fixing an an element in the near field and adjusted until the object no longer has an edge bleed and the ghosting nearly disappears.

The sense of immersion increased by playing Batman in 3D although it was neither easier nor harder to actually play the game.  The only thing really noticeable other than the pleasing 3D effect, was that the game was being played a little darker that in 2D and the images are slightly dimmer.  This worked well with Batman and after a few hours, we went on to play Resident Evil 5.

Resident Evil 5 is another impressive looking game with 3D Vision and the main characters have some great modeling that take full advantage of S3D.  Immersion is far greater in this game in 3D than in 2D and the intensity of the situations becomes more exciting as everything takes on depth.

First impressions are very good and we ended our first day with 3D Vision very early in the morning.  Our evaluation would eventually lead to playing 6 games from start to finish with 3D Vision and we would revisit about 80 other games.

Potential issues with 3D and 3D Vision

So what are the disadvantages to 3D Vision? They are relatively minor in this editor’s opinion.  Foremost is the darkness built into 3D Vision by wearing the active shutter glasses although you can compensate a bit with the game’s in-game gamma settings and by making the display brighter.  And likely future iterations of Nvidia’s technology will include some kind of light boosting technology.  The other issues include costs of entry, crosstalk/ghosting and performance issues.

Crosstalk or Ghosting

The ASUS monitor still exhibits cross-talk between the right and left images.  Nvidia’s 3D Vision system cycles between the left and right images at 120 times per second or 60 cycles per each eye.  Using the emitter, the monitors are supposed to switch back and forth between the left and right images, in perfect synch with the 3D Vision active shutter glasses to create the 3D effect.  Unfortunately, this process is not perfect as the pixels do not change instantaneously especially when transitioning from light to dark (and now you know why the 2ms response time is measured from gray to gray).  The resulting artifacts are perceived as a “ghost” image in gaming and also appears in 3D pictures and moves.

Crosstalk makes the image unfocused and leads to eyestrain as the viewer’s brain attempts to resolve the images back into one.  And of course, display technology is always attempting to improve response time and this is also why TN displays are so popular; other types of displays currently have too slow of a response time for displaying stereoscopic 3D.

Health Issues

Most of the health concerns have been really exaggerated by the media as Jon Peddie pointed out.  Actual studies point to issues with 3D viewing but are usually much more minor than reports suggest.  The fact is, if there is a lot of crosstalk and ghosting, you will feel more tired and even get a headache over watching the same program or playing the same game in 2D.  It is important to learn how to adjust your 3D Vision experience to minimize the bad effects and how to tweak the game or movie to your liking

The solution for most gamers is to have more frequent breaks from 3D gaming than with 2D gaming and to switch to 2D if one just can’t tear oneself from the game at all.  Switching back-and-forth between 2D and 3D worked well for this editor’s marathon gaming sessions and it is really a feature of 3D Vision to be able to do it near-instantaneously and in-game on the fly.    Sometimes we even forgot we were wearing the glasses until they started blinking when the emitter was switched off – a safety feature to remind you to take them off when not in use.

Glasses

Another media-exaggerated barrier to widespread 3D adoption is the glasses you have to wear. As Jon Peddie pointed out, people have no issues with wearing sunglasses for many hours.  This is a non-issue as long as the glasses are reasonably stylish and comfortable and Nvidia delivers in this regard.

The real “glasses issue” is with their cost. For the essential 3D  Vision glasses means that you will pay between $80 and $150 depending if you choose wired or wireless.  For a single wireless pair of glasses you may pay $150 and a second pair costs $120.  You do plan to have guests?  Then you will pay out over $250 just for 2 pairs of glasses.

And of course, Nvidia’s active shutter 3D glasses aren’t compatible with other brands of 3D glasses used by HDTV manufacturers – nor they with each other.   This makes sense since the different characteristics of 3D displays need to be accompanied by optimized glasses technology to get the best 3D experience.

Connections

To meet the demands of displaying a full 1080p HD 3D picture, technology has required the development of a newer version of the HDMI specification to version 1.4.  The popular version of HDMI v1.3 doesn’t work with stereoscopic 3D.  Fortunately, the newest desktop displays are not only reaching 27″, they also support 3D Vision as well as HDMI 1.4 giving the end user universal choice for playing S3D games and watching 3D movies and viewing 3D pictures and video. 

Conversion

Although not an issue with PC games, issues with 3D concern the way it is filmed. The only way to get a truly convincing 3D cinema experience is to use specific 3D filming techniques such as in Avatar.  The conversion film or films applying S3D only in post-production really ruin the experience and give a bad name for all 3D to cinema goers. And of course, some games are technically made for S3D but the effort is half-hearted and the end experience suffers.

It is going to take more research to develop standards for games and movies.  Generally, watching a movie on the big screen 3D HDTV, you want pop-out action; for the more intimate experience of PC gaming close to the monitor, more research is needed for determining what objects are best to pop out or not.  Nvidia recommends that developers only use pop-outs in cutscenes.  However, this editor can’t quite agree as the most memorable and intense experiences in gaming pop out of the screen.  Of course, anything overdone gets annoying.
Content

This is a huge problem for widespread adoption of 3D HDTVs.  Clearly cable and sports (and porn) will bridge the content gap until there is more mainstream S3D programming.  Fortunately for the PC gamer, his or her library of older PC games reopens to them and there are many older games released in the last decade that work really well with 3D Vision.  And Nvidia really needs to support OpenGL games with 3D Vision drivers.  Too many great games are OpenGL-based to ignore.

The Display

For the PC gamer, you need the largest and fastest 120Hz LCD that you can afford at 1080p and for the ultimate S3D experience, three matched 120Hz displays.  This is quite an investment into hardware and it also usually entails upgrading the PC to SLI’d video cards.  And for watching 3D movies, you need the biggest HDTV screen that you can afford to get the real cinema experience.

And naturally, there is natural resistance to 3D on the grounds that people have only just recently upgraded to the new HDTVs and aren’t likely to be buying a big screen TV again in a down economy just for 3D.

Stereoscopic 3D has got a long way to go before it hits the sort of mass market acceptance that HDTV has achieved – certainly more than 5 years  – but PC gaming can lead the way once 120Hz displays become popular (at the least, for playing fast paced shooters in 2D).

The games

We played 6 fairly new games from start to finish that were either “3D Vision Ready” or rated “Excellent” by Nvidia

• Metro 2033
• Bulletstorm
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Alice: Madness Returns
• Dungeon Siege III
• Crysis 2 DX11

We published two full game and performance reviews of Duke Nukem Forever and Alice: Madness Returns that covered playing them with 3D Vision within the past two months.  Feel free to read them for the full evaluation of the games and their performance.  Here we will give you a very brief recap of each game before we go into the general section with the 80 older games that we replayed for this evaluation.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 makes great use of 3D Vision and it is a very immersive experience playing it in S3D.  There are no problems with the HUD or depth although again it is a very dark game and sometimes it is a bit difficult to see (anyway).  The real S3D issues are that it is a very demanding game in 2D and you must make real compromises to run this game with 3D Vision – even with a GTX 590.  And we cannot imagine even trying it in 3D Vision Surround’s 5760×1080 resolution without Tri- or Quad-SLI.

Bulletstorm

There are some limitations for some PC games that affect the 3D appearance of some objects in the game in relation to others.  This is not so much the issue in Bulletstorm as that the action is somewhat confusing in S3D and it is magnified by 3D Vision Surround – too much is happening on the periphery and it is somewhat tiring.

Bulletstorm is an Unreal 3.5 Engine game and they all run well from a performance standpoint and they can also be well-optimized for S3D and 3D Vision.  Players have access to a large arsenal of over-the-top combat moves and large weapons featuring alternative fire. Bulletstorm also has a variety of “skillshots” which have ignited controversy in the press. The skillshot system rewards the player for dispatching enemy NPCs in the most creative and destructive ways possible.  It is a decent shooter with a pretty ridiculous story and totally crass humor which may appeal to some.

Since Bulletstorm was the first game that this editor played from start to finish with 3D, there was very little tweaking involved.  Returning to the game after a 4 months exploration with 3D Vision, and adjusting convergence and depth, we were able to alleviate some of the original issues and of course, on a second playthrough, the 3D effects did not confuse as before although playing it in Surround is over the top and not as impressive or immersive as in Just Cause 2, for example which had spectacular panoramic ariel views only enhanced to the nth degree by 3D Vision.

However, unlike with Just Cause 2 which needs some compromises, Bulletstorm can run really well in 1080p S3D on a single GTX 560 Ti and a GTX 590 can drive 3D Vision Surround so the experience is fluid.  Although it appears that the game could have been optimized for the actual gameplay better, the effects are still very good and the gore and blood-splatter is right in your face, adding to the overall experience.  5760×1080 Surround across 3 screens in S3D is possible from a performance standpoint with a GTX 590 – and by a stretch, a pair of overclocked GTX 560 Tis should be able to handle the game fluidly if you make a few compromises to the settings.

 

Duke Nukem Forever

Very few if any compromises are necessary with Duke Nukem Forever; only the post-processing effects (which are iffy anyway) are disabled for 3D Vision. For this evaluation, Duke Nukem Forever was played on a GTX 580 for the first play through in both 2D and 3D at maximum details. For the second play through and screenshot harvest, the GTX 560 Ti was the weapon of choice and for 3D Vision Surround, GTX 560 Ti SLI along with the then newly released 275.33 WHQL drivers, which included the 3D profiles for this game and the 3D Vision drivers

It also runs well on low to medium systems and upper-midrange PCs can handle it with all in-game settings fully maxed out at 1920×1080 resolution and even in 3D Vision! Generally, the minimum frame rate for the review PC (i7-920/GTX 560 Ti) as measured by Fraps stayed above 60 frames per second – or 30 FPS for 3D Vision – it is a very fluid first person shooter experience.

it is designed to run well on a Nvidia 8800 GTS so it will be absolutely fluid on a GTX 560 Ti – even playing fully maxed out at 1920×1080 with 3D Vision as we did. We started out by playing with a GTX 580 but soon realized it was completely overkill for Duke Nukem Forever

With 3D Vision, the post processing effects are turned off and it gives the best visual experience even over playing in 2D unlike some 3D Vision games like Bulletstorm where the stereo 3D (S3D) implementation is confusing and only gets worse in 3-panel Surround. The added illusion of 3D “depth” actually helps with the jumping and aiming – unlike with other new games (like Alice: Madness Returns where it helps to turn 3D ‘off’ to complete long jumping sequences).

Duke Nukem Forever is only enhanced by 3D Vision. There are no downsides to playing this game whatsoever in S3D and in fact there are advantages to aiming and visualization of your targets. The way enemies shoot back is more intense and you may find yourself flinching at time – much more so than just playing it in the traditional manner. Duke Nukem Forever gets two big thumbs up from this reviewer on the implementation of 3D Vision and also 3D Vision Surround – which is just “more is better” – the widescreen view adds to the game although fortunately most of the action takes place right in front of you.

The game itself is a fair shooter and perhaps deserves a bit more respect than the original reviews gave it.  We do look forward to further adventures of the Duke as the franchise develops and we hope they continue to optimize it as well for 3D gaming.

 

Alice: Madness Returns

For some 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.  Unfortunately, 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 but especially because of the keyboard/mouse imprecise controls.  This editor often switched 3D Vision on and off in some areas.

For this article, Alice: Madness Returns was played Core i7-920/GTX 580 for the first play through in both 2D and 3D at maximum details, with 3D Vision switched off for the really long jumping sequences. For the second play-through and screenshot harvest, the GTX 560 Ti was the weapon of choice and for 3D Vision Surround, GTX 560 Ti SLI along with the then latest 275.33 WHQL drivers, which include the 3D profiles for this game and the 3D Vision drivers

Some of the best part of the 3D experience in Alice: Madness Returns 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.   PhysX effects are rendered particularly well with 3D Vision

Alice: Madness Returns is quite stable and reasonably bug free and it also runs well on low to medium systems and relatively high-end PCs can handle it with all in-game settings fully maxed out at 1920×1080 resolution and even in 3D Vision! Generally, the minimum frame rate for the review PC (i7-920/GTX 560 Ti) as measured by Fraps stayed above 60 frames per second – or 30 FPS for 3D Vision – it is a very fluid shooter experience with PhysX on medium and settings maxed out.

Dungeon Siege III

This game is definitely the best looking of its genre – a top-down action-RPG in the mold of Neverwinter Nights II.  Unlike Neverwinter Nights II, the 3D experience adds to the game’s experience.  Unlike NWN 2, unfortunately the game lacks in just about every other aspect being quite an ordinary game, apparently dumbed-down for consoles and apparently not up to the standard of the earlier series.

However, the look of Dungeon Siege III is one designed for S3D.  It is about a 15 hour experience that looks quite good in S3D but must be adjusted or out of the box, the experience is somewhat tiring.  A rather generic story and lack of a real party detract although combat looks good in 2D and even better with 3D Vision.

The best part of this game is picking up cool weapons and armor and upgrading your character into a near-invincible god.  The worst part is having only one companion and having to wait to be resurrected as there are no healing potions and a lot of the joy of the micro-management built into RPGs has been stripped out of the game.

To its credit, in many other games, some effects are rendered without full 3D information.  Worst in this kind of game, are heads-up displays (HUDs), dialog boxes and crosshair sights for targeting. If this happens, items like these appear at the wrong depth relative to other items in the game and it can be quite disconcerting and/or distracting as in Neverwinter Nights II or even its predecessor Dungeon Siege II.  Not so with Dungeon Siege III which gives the best 3D experience for its kind of game.

 

Crysis 2 DX11

In this editor’s opinion, playing Crysis 2 with 3D Vision is done very well and gives probably the best overall 3D Vision experience without relying on pop-outs and it does it conservatively so that the player can play for many hours at a time without getting tired.  Playing Crysis 2 in 3D vision helps to immerse the player into the game more than playing in regular 2D.

The effects are not flashy and rarely does anything pop out toward the player.  However, the default depth is intelligently chosen and it appears that it may even help with judging aiming; it is that accurate.

The CryTek developers have minimized any 2D distractions and one can concentrate on the action without being aware that he is even playing in 3D – it is that immersive.  And of course, the graphics are outstanding anyway in DX11 with the high resolution texture pack.  Only motion blur – which is done very well in Crysis 2 – seems to benefit by being on ‘low’ with 3D Vision and you can choose for yourself what level of Processing Effects you wish.

When Crysis 2 first came out, it was only fair for 3D Vision and it would not work at all in DX11 for this editor and for many other players.  A beta driver from Nvidia shortly addressed this issue and changed Crysis 2 from fair to 3D Vision “Ready”.  It’s amazing to see what a single driver release can do for 3D Vision and it pays to have the latest (even beta) drivers installed.

The only issue with Crysis 2 is the steep hardware requirements necessary to run it at maximum details and also in 3D Vision.  A GTX 590 or GTX 570 SLI appears to be necessary to give the minimum 60fps (30fps per eye) for a fluid S3D experience.  And you can forget about 3D Vision Surround unless you are willing to compromise with settings – even with GTX 580 SLI.  Perhaps Tri- or Quad-SLI would be sufficient.  The good thing about playing games in 2D and then upgrading to 3D Vision, means that your old library of favorite games reopens to you and you can enjoy the experience again but in 3D.

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade edition

As with the rest of the Street Fighter series, it features 3D backgrounds with characters played on a 2D plane.  It has been developed particularly with S3D (stereoscopic 3D) in mind as a 3D Version has been developed just for the Nintendo 3DS.  Unfortunately, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition was only rated as “Fair” for Nvidia’s 3D Vision.  That means that you had to dial some settings down and even with the last WHQL 275.50 drivers, it is better to play in regular 2D.

However, everything all changed for the better with the latest betas from Nvidia’s 3D Vision driver team, R280.19 and the subsequent WHQL 280.26.  Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is now rated at the highest level of compatibility with S3D – 3D Vision Ready.  That means that you can now crank up the settings to the absolute maximum if your card can handle it.

Now you can max every setting including some really off-the-wall 16xQ AA setting in 3D and have the framerates completely locked at 60FPS (by the 3D Vision driver).  We played with a GTX 580 and it appears that a GTX 560 can also max out this game.

This is the classic fighting game for PC and the addition of intelligently done S3D for 3D Vision elevates it way over the 2D version and increases the excitement of playing the game and thus increases its immersion many fold.

v

Sold thumbs up on the implementation of 3D Vision for Super Street Fighter IV Arcade edition!

Eighty other games

Check out our desktop and our Steam game folder at the height of our 3D Vision evaluation.  There are far more games that we tried that we installed and uninstalled as our 500GB hard disk drive was simply too small to hold all of the games that we tested.  And of course, many games that we tried were either too old to work well at any modern resolution and looked awful; or were OpenGL-based and unsupported.  In fact, some games were so difficult to configure and work around (Thief: Deadly Shadows) that we simply gave up on trying the experience in S3D although Widescreen Gaming Forum offers many clues how to proceed.

However, there were so many games in our library that did work, that a 1-2 month projected investigation turned into nearly six months.

Here is another look at a different time with the Steam games library open:

It is really difficult to cover all of these great games in 3D Vision.  Besides the six games mentioned earlier, the ones that really stick out in this editor’s mind as being spectacular in 3D and better than 2D would certainly include Just Cause 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.  Both games take real advantage of the strengths of 3D Vision to provide a better experience than any 2D setup, plus Just Cause 2 is absolutely stunning for its super-widescreen (5760×1080) panoramic aerial views over Panau in stereoscopic 3D.  Nothing in 2D even comes close to this kind of exciting and immersive game-playing experience!  Let’s take a look at some of the older games we revisited in S3D.

There is no way that we could forget to mention that all the Unreal Engine games – from Unreal II all the way to the latest v3.5 for Duke Nukem, Bulletstorm and Alice: Madness Returns – look generally very good and perform well with 3D Vision.  Generally with a little tweaking, these games provide a much more immersive experience over playing in regular 2D.  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 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.

3D Vision Surround

Nvidia and AMD work to differentiate PC gaming from console gaming.  Besides better image quality and performance, PC gaming in Surround or Eyefinity across multiple displays give a wider field of view and a increased awareness of the overall situation.  Eyefinity was first with this technology so Nvidia upped the ante by making it possible to not only span 3 displays, but to also do it in S3D.

With 3D Vision Surround, the special 3D effects envelope the player on the sides as well as from the front screen and they provide for a near-ultimate gaming experience. The issues include the rarity of games – especially older games – that support super-widescreen resolution as well as the incredible demand on the PC, that of rendering the equivalent of six 1080p screens!

There are limitations to 3D Vision Surround.  Unlike with Eyefinity that can support 6 (even mismatched) monitors off of a single card, Nvidia requires 3 perfectly matched displays to be run from SLI’d video cards and those displays must each be 1080p (or lower) native resolution and they must all be in Landscape – Portrait is not supported because both the displays and the glasses are polarized.  You are also limited to TN panels for now.

Setting up 3D Vision Surround is just as straight-forward as setting up 3D Vision or Surround.  You start the wizard and follow it step by step until you are done.  The issues are purely one of performance.  Using a single GTX 590 or even GTX 580 SLI, the game will choke if they are demanding at the 5760×1080 resolution you need to run – and in 3D.

It is difficult to recommend 3D Vision Surround as readily as we can 3D Vision.  There are far too few games that work well at 5760×1080 that also won’t choke when 3D Vision is enabled.  The exceptions – like Just Cause 2, Oblivion and Duke Nukem Forever might well be worth it if one has the cash and one can always use the displays for productivity and in playing in 5760×1080 regular 2D Surround.

Conclusion

The Good

• 3D Vision when it works well is spectacular for some games, far exceeding the experience of the same game in 2D.
• S3D aids in immersion by making the action and the scene much more intimate; you are more easily drawn into the game world in a good game that makes intelligent use of S3D.
• 3D Vision Surround goes triple for the above with the caveat that there are few games that are that spectacular.  However, some racing games, flying games, action RPGs and the rare shooter can be worth the price of entry to someone with the money for a top PC with super-fast graphics and 3 matched 120Hz displays, and sometimes the patience to tweak the game and the settings.
• 3D Vision is Plug and Play.  It is so simple to set up and adjust and there is only one set of drivers to deal with.
• It is easy to turn on and off in game.  And it is nearly instant.
• 3D Vision glasses are comfortable and can be work for extended gaming sessions without issues.

 

The Bad

• The only technical issue that we have with 3D Vision is that it is relatively dark compared to 2D gaming.  And we understand that the next generation of 3D Vision may have some active light boosting techniques as Nvidia works to perfect their S3D solution for PC gaming.  And each generation of 120Hz display improves over the one preceeding it.
• The cost of entry is still a bit high.  Nvidia’s 3D Vision glasses are $150 for active shutter; compared to Samsung’s where you can buy almost 2 pairs for that price.  Wired glasses for $99 will still give you the same S3D experience and is a good step in the right direction.  However, there are advantages to buying a 120Hz display for gaming besides for 3D and adding the glasses is then not a big investment.

• 3D Vision Surround gets a special mention in regard to bang-for-buck.  It is not.  However, for the gamer with the money who demands the best possible experience, gaming in Stereoscopic 3D is mind-blowing when the game supports it well and the extra expense for top hardware and 3 displays can be easily justified.  If you want the Eyefinity or Surround multi-panel experience and like S3D, it might be wise to get matched displays that support 120Hz, 3D Vision and HDMI 1.4 to keep all of your options open.

The Ugly

There is nothing ugly about 3D Vision unless you are shooting at demons and monsters in 3D.  It is unfortunate that there is no OpenGL support at this time.  Maybe that will change with Rage.

The Verdict

With 3D Vision, the post processing motion and blur effects are turned off and it gives a good visual experience generally – even over playing in 2D. However, the added illusion of 3D “depth” doesn’t necessarily help with the jumping and aiming. Turning 3D Vision on and off is a easy as pressing a button and is nearly instant.  The performance hit is not that severe that someone with a midrange card like a GTX 560 Ti would really enjoy playing in 2D over 3D as few compromises need to be made except for the most demanding games.  The good news is that as graphics processors get faster, you will be able to revisit current games in the future playing them with 3D Vision just as your revisit your older games today.

In this reviewer’s opinion, 3D Vision is phenomenal and will eventually become mainstream and a standard optional feature for the majority of future PC games and console titles.  3D works well and it is a great step in the right direction toward even more immersion and realism in gaming.

What was particularly amazing was that every single one of this editor’s guests – from ages 8 to 86 and including hardcore gamers and non-gamers – all 20 were amazed.  Not a single person failed to say that they were impressed although not every game worked perfectly for every viewer.   The issue for everyone for everyone is cost.  If they have the disposable money, it may well be a future upgrade path for them; and my cousin is already planning for his own multi-panel and eventually stereoscopic  3D gaming rig.  It is that addictive and once you try it, it is true, it is hard to go back to “ordinary” 2D gaming.

During our 5 month adventure which also involved a lot of research, we found that most issues with S3D adoption will be resolved although the glasses debate will run until one technology finally wins out over another.  But that is not an issues as you can enjoy your PC games *now* with the added dimension of depth – even your older game library will reopen to you as it did for us.

You don’t have to wait for 3D content with 3D Vision.  Believe it or not, we barely touched on it and only covered the PC gaming aspect of it.  There is a huge online resource and community that Nvidia sponsors for their 3D Vision users to upload 3D images, photos and videos and you can also use 3D Vision to watch S3D content on the big screen.

There is only one ABT award that fits 3D Vision – a solid, innovative and well-thought out product – our highest award – Kick Ass!

3D Vision is highly recommended!   We will continue to feature 3D Vision reviews and performance evaluations along with our regular hardware reviews for the PC gamer.

Please stay tuned for our upcoming hardware reviews as we took a nearly six month detour with S3D gaming (much to our delight!).  You can still enter our muvee contest to win Reveal 8 (a $80 retail package) by creating a 1 minute video with the demo and posting it on Youtube.  And there are further contest to look forward to here.

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«1. Introduction2. The 3D Vision movement3. Producing the illusion of depth4. History of Stereoscopic 3D5. How 3D Vision works6. ABT's Interview with Jon Peddie7. HW requirements for S3D/3D Vision8. 3D Vision Performance9. 120Hz Displays vs. 120Hz displays - advantages for 2D gaming?10. Unboxing the ASUS 3D Vision Bundle11. 3D Vision active shutter glasses12. Installing 3D Vision13. First Impressions14. Potential issues with 3D and 3D Vision15. PC Games in 3D Vision16. Eighty Older games17. 3D Vision Surround (5760x1080)18. The Verdict19. View All»