Slashdot Mirror
The New Difficulties In Making a 3D Game
eldavojohn writes "MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called Killzone 3 and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems, like where to put the crosshairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads-up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model — the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3D while playing."
Make a 4D game then remove one dimension.
I can turn off sounds in most games as well. Including a toggle doesn't necessarily make it a gimmick, but rather if it hurts the experience and people prefer playing with 3D off.
...just make it work more or less like a real-world "red dot" gunsight: a translucent marker that appears to hover a few feet in front of the weapon, as long as the user is looking through the sight. I always thought it was a really clever optical design - it's as if (for aiming purposes) the weapon is a couple of meters long, which makes it much easier to determine where the shots are going to go.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I played WoW in 3D at the nVidia booth at Blizzcon last year and the game looked fantastic, it really did. However the interface was a huge problem. In 3D-WoW, the interface is closer to you than the game world, so if you're focusing on something in the world, your interface elements all split into 2. This is particularly weird when trying to click on things in the game world. If you focus on the creature or whatever, you have 2 mouse cursors. If you focus on the cursor, there are two creatures.
After a while you do get used to it, but it is definitely a huge gameplay issue that will keep 3D gaming in the gimmicky realm unless a game is designed to address it, either by having no interface or having an in-the-world interface, like Dead Space for instance.
But seriously, games do look amazing with properly calibrated 3d glasses (shutter or polarized, not red/blue lenses!) but it will most likely never be anything more than a neat gimmick.
When was the last time you could turn 'color' off in a game?
You mean like how televisions allow the viewer to reduce or remove the amount of color on-screen, whether the viewer is watching traditional programming or a videogame? Or like how during the transition from greyscale to colour broadcasting, it was important for most stations to make sure their content was useful to people with both types of television?
3D is a gimmic, and the fact they offer you the ability to turn it off WHILE playing means it's not required to immerse you in the gameplay.
3D isn't for everyone, at least in its current incarnation. That doesn't necessarily make it a gimmick. Is surround sound a gimmick just because it's not actually required in order to appreciate most films and games?
The developers in this case are smart enough to realize that not everyone who plays their game is going to have a 3D display. Therefore they have to make the game playable in 2D. Making a big-budget game that *required* 3D today would be commercial suicide.
I don't have a 3D TV, and I probably won't for quite awhile. But I do think it's an interesting technology.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
On a real weapon, the laser "paints" the target - it looks as though it's actually on the spot where the bullet will hit. Simulate this, problem solved.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Thats the answer. I had a aftermarket speed HUD in car that was designed to appear to be 20 feet or more in front of the car to minimize the need to refocus on a nearer object, but close enough it doesn't seem weird when tailgating or whatever. I understand this is done in factory models as well, and aircraft HUDs are also designed this way.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
>>Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies?
Yes, yes they will - but moreso, and with gusto. But gimmicky doesn't have to be bad - the Wii and Nintendo DS libraries are chock full of gimmicky games that are actually quite good. Actually, most blockbuster games in history have been filled with fairly new exploits of gimmicks hamfistedly attached to a narrative.
Video games are marketed on the idea that an analog of yourself is being placed somewhere, with something interesting to do. The very definition of a game is tied to goals that exist only for you to solve - its gimmicks all the way down to the simplest games of rocks and sticks.
Ain't nothing wrong with gimmicks.
Ryan Fenton
New engines are required for 3D rasters. No way in hell half-ass grafts gon' do the trick.
Maybe they should ask the guys that were developing 3D games in 1995. Descent 3D comes to mind so does Hi-Octane both of which had 3D modes compatible with LCD glasses. HUDs and crosshairs were 2D. I worked for 3DTV [http://www.3dmagic.com/catalog/consumerframe.html] company in 1995/6 - demo'ing Descent 3D at Comdex among other things. FU Microsoft for killing off 3D gaming for a good 10 years.
When you view 3D content windowed, it's fairly easy on the eye to transition between what's 3D and what's not 3D (neutral). So I reckon, just leave any panels neutral and hard alined to an edge. As a rule of thumb, I've found that anything the user needs to explicitly interpret (language and stats), is much better neutral. Leave the content to being the content.
As for the cross-hair, that's less obvious. My gut feeling is to leave it neutral since it's so small, it's not going to be _that_ noticeable that it doesn't quite comply with the depth of field. Having it hanging infront of your eyes is definitely going to be a distraction.
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
3D LCDs don't have focus. Your eyes are always focused on the same point since they are just a flat screen like a 2D LCD. In fact they ARE just 2D LCDs, just displaying left and right images in rapidly alternating fashion. They do stereoscopic vision but nothing else. So you don't really focus on different points. Stuff does appear in front or behind other things, but it is all in focus, unless the game engine chooses to defocus something.
Why am I not surprised to read that the gaming industry is struggling with how to handle splattering blood in 3D.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
When was the last time you could turn 'color' off in a game?
God, this makes me feel old but have you ever actually played/owned an atari 2600? That console actually had a switch to turn off the color in the game. Now get the hell off my lawn before I turn your ass black and white.
Monstar L
....getting anyone to want to buy one. Please let this 3D fad die already.
Uh, no. Not at all. All it takes is changing: frame.render_everything(position); to: lframe.render_everything(position - offset); rframe.render_everything(position + offset); Maybe not even that. Many of the PC 3d solutions do all that just in the driver. They run into some problems, primarily with the HUD, but they usually work just fine. Hell, OpenGL has had support for 3D at the API level for years, maybe since the beginning. Nobody uses it, but it's there. This is the reason why CGI films work better than studio films when converted to CG. All you have to do is render everything twice from a slight offset. This article wasn't really about the technical problems, which are minor. It was about the design problems: how do you present information to the player in 3D?
Check the Virtual Boy for prior art ideas. Obviously something so popular and successful can serve for further inspiration.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Not according to Panasonic. It's a big world out there.
Their market research shows that the take-up rate of 3D TVs has been greater than any other home entertainment. The sceptic in me thinks that excludes the iPhone/iPod - but impressive none the less.
heh, only a slashdotter would consider iPhone/iPod to be home entertainment, I suppose.
Where was this tirade? Appears that the only one freaking out is your cowardly ass. I don't care what happens with 3d, I think it will fail as I really don't think enough people care about it for it to succeed. Its been tried and failed many times before, the only thing new now is that the glasses are more expensive and there is a smaller viewing angle, neither of which I see as much of a bonus.
What I really don't understand is how its "fans" are so rabid about it, and seem to take any negative comment about the technology as a personal attack against them.
I still remember the discussions on how much 3D was Wolf3D almost 20 years ago.
Place a thin translucent line to show the bullet path instead. Like the do for grenade thowers.
Don't apologize for your own behaviour.
Really? I've had the capability to use 3D in many games since the late 1990's with the Elsa Revelator brand of Riva TNT cards, that supported hard-wired LCD Shutter glasses, meant to be used with CRT displays and refresh rates of 100Hz+. NVidia has had 3D support for a long, LONG time now (Check out the "Supported games" list). That they're now posting guidelines for it, and helping developers out if they request it (Their TWIMTBP program) doesn't negate that.
... I feel that I might have some worthwhile knowledge of Stereoscopic 3D games.
First off, 3D in games isn't as gimmicky as 3D in movies, not by a long shot. If the dev programs the game with 3D in mind, then things like the UI, blood splatters don't pull you out of the 3D experience.
Like games that have the blood splatter on your screen? Looks killer on 3D.
Games like Left 4 Dead (1 & 2) the 3D is very, very good on it. It makes zombie killing a little more realistic.
Need For Speed World? While the 3D isn't perfect on it (some ghosting), the game is a lot better to play in 3D.
Titan's Quest and Torchlight in 3D is have to play to understand. The game looks like toys or something while you are playing.
Some games, like Alien Breed the lighting is messed up on it, so it doesn't look good in 3D, but if they fixed that, would be killer.
As for the gun sight, ya, that matters. What nvidia does with 3D Vision is has a "laser sight" you can toggle on and off (you have to turn off ingame targeting crosshairs) if the game doesn't do the 3D on it correctly. I don't use it much, but some games like Fallout 3 you have to use it. And yes, Fallout 3 is better on 3D.
Honestly, dev's don't have to do much extra but test their games under 3D to see what elements need to be fixed. Games that are made in a 3D engine already have what is needed. Unlike TV or Movies, the games are made from 3D models, so getting the 2nt camera viewpoint is easier to do, and why games look way better then any 3D movie can.
Plus I don't think people understand, buying a 3D TV doesn't mean you can start playing 3D games. For example, 3D Vision users need the 3D vision hardware, a 120khz Monitor (that's supported, currently most tv's aren't) to get 3D gaming. Cost is just over $500 (Acer GD235HZ 1080p monitor & 3D Vision). Not to mention running a game is 3D means your cutting your normal frames per sec down by half. So you need some powerful video cards to play the latest games (that are being made with 3D in mind) with decent frame rates, which normally mean 60fps.
Need for Speed World. Normally, I can do 1080p at 60fps with all settings maxed. But to get 60fps, I have to cut the graphics down to medium. If I don't, the 3D in the game doesn't look right, tends to cause headaches & eye strain more. Which is more or less true with most of the games.
Granted the Nvidia GTX 460 1G cards are cheap and give great fps, mainly in sli. but still, that's another $500 cost.
So $1000 will get you a great 3D gaming setup, that can play 3D movies, if you get a bluray player for your computer.
3D in games is great as long as it's does right. And it takes some playing around with the 3D to figure out what works for you. Will most gamers want/need it? No. Besides entry cost is sort of high, it doesn't work good for every type of game, and there's sort of a split on what to get between PC & consoles/tv/bluray 3D players.
I think the biggest problem with 3D is no standards. This isn't a case of tech that is going to be adopted by everyone, so having standards is important for market growth.
You don't want to have to buy a 3D HDTV, a 3D bluray player (ps3), and a 3D Monitor & 3D kit for your pc.
Like with 3D bluray movies. With hardly any of those movies being released, they stupidly make them exclusive bundles with 3D hardware. I mean, wtf? Instead of making 3D movies easier for early tech adoptors, they make it harder.
I still haven't found any decent 3D movie downloads yet, so I don't even know how they look on my setup. But I got it for gaming, and it does gaming well, and I'm very happy with spending the money I did on it. Anyone that comes over and sees games in 3D, start wanting to get it.
Be seeing you...
All I know is that I won't be happy till I can play games on a holodeck. That said, 3D for games makes way more sense to me then for movies or TV's.
I had 3D glasses for my old games computer a few years ago. (The drivers only worked with CRT's.) Some people had no problems, while others got headaches after just a few moments. I was fine for an hour at a time. I think newer tech makes 3D much more comfortable though.
Anyway, stereoscopic gaming was great! A couple of experiences:
WoW
Wandering in a cave, cave walls are made up of mottled bitmaps...
Monoscopic: Even though the map shows a branch in a cave, it can sometimes be hard to find it, and one walks back and forth to see if it's there.
Stereoscopic: You simply cannot miss the branch. The cave now looks like a proper shape, that just happens to be patterened with mottled bitmaps.
Rome: Total War
- You get a better feel for distances, so you can see exactly when to tell the archers to unleash a volley of arrows against advancing troops for maximum effect.
- You get a better idea of how well catapults will be able to shoot over the crest of a hill, or whether the rocks will hit the hill/fly over the enemy.
- Also, position the camera among those being shot at, and see the cloud of arrows coming at you. Awsome! =)
Basically, with a sterescopic view, you get a much better idea of the lay of the land, and distances (and therefore timing).
To me, 3D vision helped so much, that it almost felt like an unfair advantage. Almost.
Don't use the Lord's name in vain, man.
What are you talking about, I didn't even mention Shatner's name in my original post.
Monstar L
You mean "If you can turn the feature off, and not miss it, then it is a gimmick".
Just like anti-aliasing, higher resolutions, lighting and shader effects, high-detail textures etc etc, right? All just a gimmic!
Not to mention that you want people who don't have 3d tvs to be able to play, and also people that don't feel like going 3d, or who complain 3D gives them a headache. Whom I put in the same class as my father who, a number of years ago, had a go at Quake and got motion sickness.
Color transmission was supported by b&w TV sets from day one. The protocol was designed to be backwards-compatible, b&w TV just ignoring the color-bias component while keeping the luminance component.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I won't have a 3D TV until (a) they don't require dorky glasses and (b) that eye of mine starts working again.
1. Says you. 40 Million PS3 owners would (mostly) beg to differ.
2. People buy tvs more frequently these days than ever they did before, and the 3D premium on top of a normal HDTV is small and shrinking.
3. You'd be surprised ho few people care about the version of the firmware on their ps3. This may change with the PS3 jailbreaking stuff going on at the moment, but there are not a large number of people who give much of a crap.
4. False. You do not need to buy move to play or enjoy 3d games.
And if it's a Sony misstep then it's also a Samsung, Panasonic and LG misstep. I find that less likely.
For games, stereo is not the right approach. Viewpoint adjusted by head tracking is. For recorded images like TV, you don't have the data to do that. But for a game, you have full 3D models and all the necessary graphics hardware. And, as that video shows, it just takes a few Wii Remote parts to do it. The effect is that, at long last, the screen becomes a window, rather than a surface.
Since games tend to be played by one player per screen, the restriction that the view only works for one person is fine. Unlike stereoscopy, there's a big win for gameplay - you can move around and change your viewpoint. You can duck behind on-screen obstacles, so you can actually use cover in a shooter.
You can hang stereo and depth of focus on this, too. And it will work better, because the system knows how far away the viewer is.
When this is done well, the visual effect is spectacular.
If you are watching a "regular" movie, be it photographic or CGI, the 3D world is mapped onto the 2D screen When your eyes see this 2D image, you brain is able to use all the cues that are available in the mapped 2D image and it reconstructs the 3D world that was used to create the 2D image. Therefore, a "regular" move IS IN 3D.
When you see a stereoscopic "3D" image, even if it is an old ViewMaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewmaster, all that you are getting is extra horizontal parallax that is provided by having different 2D images for the left and right eye. You are not even getting vertical parallax, so you can't see the top and bottom of things, just some extra details on the left and right of objects. Although this is noticeably different then the 2D picture image, it is still not the same as natural real world vision. So in a basic way stereographic images are not much closer to 3D then a regular image.
Because of the very limited and specialized nature of the stereo information, it is easy to create situations that cannot occur in the real world, resulting in a very confusing experience. Breaking frame is one example. This is when the "3D" object crosses the edge of the image, and it can completely destroy the illusion. Also, normal "flat" cinema uses foreground/midground/background to organize the visual composition of shots, and this becomes much more complicated when stereo is involved.
In some ways "flat" 2D is better, because it uses a uniform transformation to map from 3D to 2D. In doing stereo, the scene composition has to include intra-ocular distance information, and this adds difficult decision making for composing the scene. (Yes, the stereo mapping is mathematically uniform, but the composition restraints are different depending on the shot set up.)
There is a massive body of knowledge in how to use "flat"images that goes all the way back to he introduction of perspective in the Renaissance, and has been further developed with the invention of photography and moving pictures. Stereo has yet to prove that it really provides any kind of advancement for image presentation.
Why is Snark Required?
Just like a real gun sight, you only look through it with one eye. So just put the crosshairs and other HUD elements on either left or right eye (configurable), then when the player wish to aim better, he can close the other eye (just like aiming a real gun).
For iron sight, even better, only the right (or left) eye would be aligned with the iron sight, the other eye would be looking down the barrel a but from the side.
The HUD elements would appear as if the player is wearing a transparent display over one eye.
Oliver.
3D shutter glasses have existed forever on high-end workstations, and remained a niche for a reason. Back in ~1995 when Descent 2 came out with 3D capacity, I rushed out to buy a pair of compatible glasses (~$150, a lot of money for a college student), and was promptly underwhelmed.
The game did a great job, but I remember one of the problems was that the small computer monitor (compared to the silver screen in a movie theater) makes the 3D effect extremely unnatural, almost like peeking through a tiny window into a midget infested world. On the other hand, when looking at 2D, I think the brain knows it's fictional and automatically applies suspension of disbelief and subconsciously scales things up. I suspect the whole situation is not unlike the uncanny valley in robotics.
Or maybe it just takes some get-used-to. In any case, it's definitely a gimmick -- like others said here, but not a gaming-changing one (pun intended).
P.S. You can still download Descent 1 or 2 for free. After almost two decades it's still more playable than most modern flying/shooting games out there.
Don't use the Lord's name in vain, man.
That's fine, I'm cool with it.
I can understand this is maybe not of so much interest for console gaming since often you are talking playing in a room with more people on one display and this is a one person only technology. However PCs are designed for single person use, so this would work well. What's more, it would be rather cheap to implement. No new display needed, just a cheap IR camera to mount on the PC and something to wear on your head.
I won't get a 3D glasses display for the computer. You need a new monitor, that does not have very good colour or viewing angles for the cost, glasses, and a really high end 3D card since you need to double the FPS. I would get something that does this since it would integrate in to my existing setup.
Not everybody can see 3D on these TVs, and some people get headaches from viewing 3D content. So there are good reasons for letting people turn it off.
Having actually played 3D games, I can tell you that it is not a gimmick. Especially for racing games, 3D helps you figure out where to drive to, and it helps you gauge distances.
Are you entirely sure? This is something I haven't experienced while playing 3D games, and it strikes me as extremely strange, since your eyes don't actually change focus when you play 3D games. They always focus on the TV. Even though some things appear to be farther away than other things, they should all be in perfect focus.
To put differently, you have infinite focus when playing 3D games, unless the game itself decides to artificially put stuff out of focus, but in that case, changing the focus of your eyes wouldn't do anything either, since the game would determine to focus point.
I don't understand how 'focusing' as you describe it can be a problem. Regardless of the simulated 3d, the distance your eye focuses on is the distance from you to the screen. The 3d effect is due to your eyes getting different pictures, not because you eye is actually focussing at different ranges.
This is my main problem with 3D (live action) movies, the 3D effect is fine when you are looking at what the camera is focussed on but if you try and look at something in the foreground or background the effect is ruined because that area remains out of focus no matter how hard you look at it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Not quite that simple. You need to:
cross product of camera.up, camera.viewdir
shift camera.pos 0.5x eye_separation -1*cross_product
shift camera.lookat 0.5x eye_separation -1*cross_product
DRAW
shift camera.pos 0.5x eye_separation cross_product
shift camera.lookat 0.5x eye_separation cross_product
DRAW
Eye separation will be dependent on a few things but a generalisation is 1/30 of camera.lookat-camera.pos
I imagine that to get better than generalist would require quite a bit more work.
.
Try this experiment: Hold your finger about half way between your face and the computer monitor. Look at your finger. Without moving your finger look at a specific icon computer monitor, preferably something directly behind your finger. Without looking directly at your finger how many fingers do you see? (The answer should be two). He's talking about the same effect, and it has nothing to do with the actual focus of your eyes, but rather which direction your eyes are pointing. See Stereopsis.
When was the last time you could turn 'color' off in a game?
God, this makes me feel old but have you ever actually played/owned an atari 2600? That console actually had a switch to turn off the color in the game. Now get the hell off my lawn before I turn your ass black and white.
Now if you were REALLY old it'd be black and green, or even black and orange. Black and WHITE??? LUXURY!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I think by "focus" the parent really means the effective 3D distance - that is, the amount by which your eyes have to "cross" to align the two images... sort of like how a spot on the windshield drives you crazy, because when you're looking at the road, you see two spots - but when you look at the spot, you see two roads!
I don't care at all for this stereoscopic shit they call 3D, what ever happened to the good old 2D platformers such as Sonic & Mario and all the others? Why is it that the majority of games these days are FPS of some variety that basically suck donkey balls? It used to be about fun, now it's about polygon counts & gore.
It's a valid counter point. Apply the original argument to the Atari 2600 (that you can turn off colour, ergo it's obviously just a gimmick) and all games today would still be black and white. Who is to say that in 30 years time all games won't be in 3D by default and even the idea of having a switch back to 2D won't be seen as quaint (I hope that's not the case, 3D movies make me feel sick enough, but it may well be - just because something's new and there's an option to turn it off doesn't mean it's nothing but a gimmick).
I would think that would make it much easier. It's one thing to see the pixels of a reticule covering someone's head, it's a whole different experience to see the reticule projected onto their head. I would think the latter would be much easier to react on quickly and accurately.
It's easy to tun 3D off... just close one eye
'Focus' is the wrong word.
Long ago, when I had a CRT, I played Everquest with 3D shutterglasses. It was amazing. But he's right about the interface elements doubling up. Your eyes don't have to refocus, but they do have to change alignment so that both pieces of whatever you're looking at are in the center of your vision. The greater the 3D effect, the more you'll notice this.
And for the record, it was amazing in 3D. At the time I didn't think it would be that much different, but it was somehow so much more amazing just by adding the 3D effect.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Rick Dangerous. I had the Atari ST version, and hitting the space bar at the title screen would switch it to black-and-white mode.
Not all color content is universally useful on a B&W TV though. Sure it displays, but if the game show uses a bunch of colors with the same luminosity, you aren't going to be having much fun watching.
I turn the music off in most games. It is an unwanted feature :)
If you pay close attention to the sound in most FPS games you'll notice it is awful. Not as in the quality of the samples; but the depth of noise. I remember a moment whilst playing Crysis ages ago. I was in the middle of a thickets of woods right next to a beach and the only sound being played was my foot steps. When I stood still it was almost silent. Ambient track 1 playing or something; but it was out of context. It needed crashing waves, wind in trees. Noise from military action miles away and 1001 other things.
We still have a very long way to go for sound in games, game devs may not think it is a gimmick; but they do seem to treat it as one.
They used to teach see a sound hear a sound at Disney, games need much more than that.
For great visual 3D they are going to need better soundscapes.
Don't use the Lord's name in vain, man.
If Indiana Jones taught me anything, its that the Lord's name is Iehova
Still, ALL b&w content is useful on color TV. There was no need for color/b&w switch.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm wondering more how they will be dealing with things that aren't 3D... it's a shooter, and I'm betting that, like most shooters, it has scopes on at least some of its weapons... a scope is inherently 2D, not 3D... is it going to change from a 3D image to a 2D image when you're using the scope? What about shooters who leave their other eye open when they look through a scope? (I used to do that when I was in the military, was classed as a marksman, too).
You're right that they have a long way to go with realism, but sound is only a small part of the equation.... they need people who've actually experienced what they're trying to recreate to help with the realism, I think.
Jehovah (Iehovah) is just another word for God, which is his job description, not his name. The name of the deity in question is Yahweh. (which is actually in the torah/bible, if anybody bothered to read it)
Which is why I giggle a little whenever I see somebody write out "g-d" in order to avoid breaking the commandment... his own followers don't know his name, and think that they're blaspheming when they refer to him by job description. Le sigh.
Actually, Crytek uses a post-processing effect in the deferred renderer for the two viewpoints for CryEngine 3. Rendering everything twice would obviously half the fps, but they state that they only get a 1.5% degradation using their technique.
Actually, that switch existed because a lot of Atari users didn't have colour TV's (this is a time when there wasn't even a TV in every house, and when a "big screen" TV was 26".) Older B/W TV's didn't handle colour signals properly, and with some of them, sending a colour signal could result in a seriously distorted and unusable image. Turn colour off, and you could use it on your older TV.
Displaying a 3D interlace on a TV that doesn't display 3D will result in a jittery image that bounces back and forth (if it displays at all, depends on how they're encoding the image), and would be very difficult to play on. There would need to be some way to turn the display mode off in the software, for exactly the same reason that the Atari had the ability to turn colour off. :)
I think it would be ok to swap from a 3D image to a 2D image for a scope. The swap may even add to the effect.
:)
As for the scope thing. Hmm...
You'll need scope with a little LCD screen in it. No no that costs too much. Hmm...
I KNOW! They give you a little inscreen picture. It's a circle, 3-4cm wide (left or right hand side as needed). They put the zoomed up image in that. The rest of the screen is normal.
All you need to so is Duck Tape the correct number of toilet role tubes to your head until they reach the monitor. There - You have your two images. You'll have lost all depth perception now, so you don't even need 3D at all. Toilet role tubes and tape not included.
I bet someone here could code that up in quake or doom by the end of the day
True, which is why most TVs do not have one. What thy do have is a color saturation control, which is basically an amp offering gains in the range of 0-2 or so on the color signal, before it is applied to the luminosity signal. This actually makes sense, as the luminosity and color signals are not broadcast on the same carrier frequency, so different antenna designs may have the color signal come in with greater or less amplitude relative to the luminance than is expected.
The ability to have the amp go all the way down to zero would have been easy enough to design, and would allow color televisions to be used to determine how an image would appear on a B&W television, so being useful and very easy to add since the amp was already there, it was added.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Most modern PC games are in 3D already, just rendered in 2D. It's comparatively trivial to render the 3D environment in 3D... just set two cameras slightly apart, and the hard work is already done for you.
nah, you are making it too complicated by thinking in world coordinates.
You can transform points in normalized device coordinates (after applying the projection matrix).
The transformation from one eye's coordinates to the other is just a 3D homography, so you can map a point in left eye's coordinate to one in the right eye's coordinate (assuming a symmetric frustum) by multiplying it by the matrix
[ 1,0,-d(f-n)/(2fr),d(f+n)/(3fr)]
[0,1,0,0]
[0,0,1,0]
[0,0,0,1]
where r is the location of the right plane (and -r of the left plane), f is the location of the far plane, n the location of the near plane and d is the eye displacement.
the last entry in the first row should be d(f+n)/(2fr) ;)
Last time was about two weeks ago when I was playing Serious Sam - First Encounter HD. It has same possibilities than the earlier engine, to turn all colors off.
Same thing was with a Far Cry that you could tweak colors. Altough I am not sure could you dim them to gray.
Does this accurately compensate for occlusion? Wouldn't mapping a prerendered scene to the other eye would have some problems with edge cases like that?
IANA3DP (I am not a 3-D programmer)
Sorry, but stereoscopic vision is stereoscopic vision -- 3D by triangulation. This is only required for static depth perception.
Parallax is an effect that is caused by motion. It is depth perception due to motion on a PARALLel AXis. Even Wolfenstein 3D had parallax. Strafe sideways -- horizontal movement, horizontal parallax. Die -- fall down the vertical axis, vertical parallax.
All 3d games already have two dimensions of parallax, and the addition of stereoscopic vision is one more element in building the 3D experience. What's missing? Well, as yet focus pulling is beyond our computational means, so we don't get to blur things that the player isn't looking at. Some of the light/contrast effects (eg mach banding) are still too complicated. But all in all we're getting there step by step.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Stereo vision is far less important to people than most think. Beyond a short distance (I've heard values ranging from 10-30 feet) we don't rely on stereo vision for depth perception at all because our eyes are so close together. The angular difference between the two images becomes too small for our brain to accurately measure.
As a result of the above swapping to 2D won't really have much of an effect. This pdf describes how depth perception works in much more detail http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~salmonto/vs3_materials/Lecture12.pdf
You'll need scope with a little LCD screen in it. No no that costs too much. Hmm...
Yeah, why not simply render the zoomed image on Eye 2 with a vignette, and a non-zoomed image on Eye 1 with a scope occluding part of your sight?
Then in options you can pick which eye you prefer to use to look through the scope.
This will be disorienting for some players, but you can also select in the options to blank out the unzoomed eye completely, or to show zoomed sight to both eyes in monoscope.
For those who prefer to play like GP, you get the advantage of either
A> closing your unzoomed eye for an authentic experience. You can even switch eyes like a human marksman, closing zoomed eye for big picture, closing unzoomed eye to retrain fine targets, or
B> Keep both open like a lazy-eyed gangsta
Yes. You will get more headaches than an actual sniper would from how they use their eyes in the field, but welcome to stereoscopy and thanks for all your dough.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
Does this accurately compensate for occlusion?
Just cull for a scene from two points of view instead of one. Portal has been doing it for years.
Either change and re-optimize your culling algorithm to respect both camera points, or if you're in a development rush run two culls — one from each viewpoint — and only cull polys marked cull from both positions.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
3D will never be for everyone. I can't see in 3D, even in the real world. In order for a game to look 3D to me, it would have to be more real than reality and probably input directly into my brain. I don't think the industry needs to bow to the afflictions of a couple of weirdos like me, but it sure would be nice if I had the option to turn it off and pretend it wasn't even there. And before you ask, yes. 3D movies do look kind of funky to me, and not in the good way. More in the, "I can see the artifacts that are supposed to trigger stereoscopic depth perception and they look like ass" way.
I'm not going to play a tiny violin for the developers. I'm talking about the cost in computing power. It's not like there's a tiny little scene inside your PS3 and this new stereoscopic 3D just adds a second camera to film it. The PS3 needs to render the same scene twice, from two different angles. Even if you can turn off the 3D they're not going to throw all that extra computing power into making the "2D" version look even better. Else all the people who bought their overpriced 3DTVs would start crying about how it isn't fair that their new toy isn't magical.
Stone him! Stone him!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
the normalized device coordinates is still a 3D space, it is just rectification that transforms the view frustum into a cube such that all rays converging to the eye become parallel to the z axis.
Occlusion is handled in this space through z-buffer: each point is mapped to normalized device coordinates and then the value stored on the z-buffer at its transformed x,y coordinates is confronted with the transformed z coordinate. If the value on the z-buffer is bigger the point is drawn and the z-buffer updated, otherwise the point is occluded. The transformation I propose comes before occlusion detection and you still need two z-buffers, but you can compute transformation for each triangle only toward one eye and then transform the coordinates to those of the other eye.
If your entire focus is on making games that involve running around shooting things, then of course you will have problems with the crosshairs. If the game isn't focused on that, and instead is based on...I don't know, plot and trying to use your brain to solve problems instead of shooting everything that gets in your way, then the game may not have any of that sort of thing to get in the way of the field of vision. What these so-called game designers are running into is being sucked into making new versions of the same old military "if it moves, shoot it" type of game. How many World War II combat games can they come out with before they lose their audience? Ok, future version with lasers and larger explosions, but the same basic gameplay....it runs out of steam eventually.
So, focus on making a game that is fun, and where you only end up in "combat mode" a small portion of the time, and the rest involves playing without the obstructions. Come up with NEW ways for players to play, from the violent methods, to diplomatic, to stealth. The game industry really started in the 1970s, and it is amazing that the focus has come down to different flavors of the same game, with some rare RPGs that show up less and less frequently.
I agree. I can't watch 3D comfortably at all because my eyesight is so horrible, I can barely see without my glasses.
We all know how troublesome it is to have to wear two pairs of glasses (at least, those of us who've done it)
In my science class sometimes I have to pick between not being able to see, but with eye protection, OR without the eye protection, and being able to see. Then again, they say that glasses can be used in place of the safety goggles, so...
I probably will never buy a 3D TV, though, since I don't like the 3D effect.
He wasn't talking about z-buffer occlusion. He was talking about occlusion done before the drawing step. For example, if you had an algorithm to determine if an object was off-camera and remove it from the drawing tree. Or a BSP tree that removed occluded objects. An object might be off-screen or occluded when viewed from one eye, but visible when viewed from the other.
I was thoroughly confused by this article until the end of it, when I realized they meant "new" 3D (aka glasses 3D). Sigh.
I am not devoid of humor.
Play Free Dress Up Games