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Sony's Solution To Split-Screen Multiplayer
We discussed Sony's E3 announcement of the pricing and details of the Vita portable console (hands-on report), but they also made a stronger push into the 3D space, revealing a 24" display specifically designed for 3D gaming. Most notable about this display is that two players wearing 3D glasses can use it to view separate images on screen. This means that when playing with a friend, you need not sacrifice 50% of screen real estate to accommodate the other player. The Guardian has a good run-down of Sony's other E3 announcements.
I loathe split screen multiplayer, and wish they would come up with a solution giving 2 players the whole screen to work with.
Definite case of "YMMV" there, bud.
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True, if you're a pedant. The words "Split Screen Multiplayer" do not define a problem.
However the problem of how to sensibly divide a screen for two players is quite nicely addressed with this tech. Not that I'll be buying it, because I already have a TV and this is a Sony.
I presume this halves the refresh rate rather than quartering it?
This is actually pretty darn clever. Maybe I don't know of the prior art everyone and their brother knows, but colored me impressed by a company I no longer expected this from. Not just in realizing this could be done, but in the executives allowing it to reach market.
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What about people who aren't playing and want to watch?
You can't take the sky from me.
Surely now the problem will be if the PS3 can produce two 1080p outputs off its GPU or will the graphics have to be degraded.
If I understand things correctly, you could wear a pair of glasses not in this mode, then simply close one eye to see you opponents screen and close the other to see your own screen.
I should sign in...
We had a console using glasses before (though not in the configuration with an extra monitor) and it was a trainwreck..
"3d" (stereoscopic) tv is also failing because of the mandatory glasses.... so why should it be different for ps vita?
Come back when you do it without glasses. (At least for stereoscopic imaging we know for quite a while that it is possible, also would love to see volume displays sold to common people).
All this kind of stereoscopic hype is so 19th century!
I still say fuck'em.
Check this out, you can do it yourself:
"Full screen-split screen with any game."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJcVPvjUJo
They're using cheap glasses from going to movies with one person having two left lenses and the other two right lenses.
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old hat, been known about for ages. How long before they patent n player games, and then say 'wow, now we can do 3d for 4 players... only 1/8 framerate, and luminosity so low you can't see to complain'
Some dude on reddit posted a link showing the same technique on existing hardware with polarized lenses (lower resolution).
video
Downside: Half the vertical resolution.
Upside: Bystanders don't have to pay for active glasses; it's already available.
>"This means that when playing with a friend, you need not sacrifice 50% of screen real estate to accommodate the other player"
Right, it means you sacrifice 50% of the refresh rate instead. And with all the 3D TV's I have seen so far, that means FLICKER!!
The second 3d tv's came on the market almost ALL gaming forums were full of the "Screw 3d, how about full screen for 2 player co-op?"
Sony steals that idea and patents it as their own.... Nice.
Thanks sony!
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Is it just me, or anything putting "sony" and "solution" in the same phrase just don't make sense anymore?
-><- no
It is not only about refresh rate and shutter speed. One key problem is brightness and ghosting. If you do basically a time multiplex and want to achieve the same brightness level you have to boost the amount of light coming out of the screen quite a bit. Additionally all shutter glasses are not 100% dark, so even now you often see ghost images.
Hahaha how can anyone be talking about Sony and multiplayer in the same sentence now.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
But with that you still have the problem of having a restricted view. With ACTUAL full-screen split-screen, you can see an entire screen's-worth of the playing field. With that workaround, you still only see half a view stretched over the entire screen. It does seem like a neat way to stop screen lookers though.
I have a two-yea old, mid-range 42 inch Panasonic plasma and it suffers from smearing. Even though it has a refresh rate of 200hz, it is noticable on fast panning action.
I assume other large TVs also suffer from smearing.
With this new 'solution' I imagine seeing a ghost image of the other player's screen, or am I way off the mark?
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I loathe split screen multiplayer, and wish they would come up with a solution giving 2 players the whole screen to work with.
They did, and it's called "network play", where each player sits in front of his very own monitor, yet people play against (or with) each other! I know, amazing concept, that! What will they think of next?
Ever since I saw Marble Madness and Populous split screen played with two mice on an Amiga, I have wondered why people want to crowd in front of a single monitor when they don't even look at the same thing. Do they like each other's body odour or something?
Some sat-navs do this but without the glasses by having a holographic screen. From the driver's seat you see the navigation display and from the passenger seat you see a DVD.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Why when I heard SONY and SOLUTION I immediately thought "They came up with a way to have people who want to play split-screen to pay for two copies of the game instead of one. Some licensing/payment/authentication scheme that enables split-screen only if both players purchased the license."
I know, I know. Don't give them ideas. I hope they don't read Slashdot.
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I'm not so sure that PC gaming is the target market with this "multiplayer without the split screen on your TV" technology.
Can you honestly not imagine, oh, I don't know, some crazy and ludicrous hypothetical situation where two people own one console (a young engaged/married couple living together, siblings, you get the idea) and would want to play multiplayer together on it with each other but don't want to deal with the split screen? How about having friends over! That's a case where one person owns one console but would appreciate this technology. Since this requires a 3DTV, it's not going to be tiny either, which means no cramming together and smelling each other's asses is even necessary!
Do you have that much trouble thinking outside of your own little world, or did you just want to come in here flexing your "back in my day" memories? Or do you just believe that everyone should be like you, that is to believe that networked multiplayer gaming is the only kind of gaming?
How about having friends over!
This tech will be useless for that. All your friends would need glasses too, and would only be able to see ONE of the two screens. So it's actually anti-social, excluding your friends compared to a normal game.
As for multiple TVs, I believe the average number of TVs in a household is now above 2. And a games console is going to be cheaper than the glasses needed for this. So what's the problem, again?
On a sadder note, DUST 514 is going to be ps3 exclusive?!?!?!? WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!1!
Look up "defensive publication." It's done all the danged time.
But his requirement be that it's free. Something like halfbakery.com is probably what he's looking for. The WP article on it lists some of its competitors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfbakery
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Make sure that Russian hackers have all your personal information and credit card numbers.
i don't care what you create... not now not ever.
Fuck you Sony.
If it requires glasses, I don't want it.
I already wear glasses, your glasses will not fit over them. I am not buying another special pair of glasses for your broken system. 3D is a failure, I don't want it in my home.
But it's irrelevant anyway, after the removal of features from your console and recent blunders in security, I'm not buying another Sony console again.
is there anything they can't do?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
"wearing 3D glasses"
Never mind. Still nothing to see here.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It looks like a great 3D TV, until they gain enough popularity and Sony decides to remove the multiplayer feature.
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This article was posted exactly one year ago:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/07/08/on-tap-at-microsoft-a-3d-display-without-glasses-and-multiple-programs-at-once/
You lose 50% of the refresh rate (e.g. 120Hz appears as 60Hz for each player). After all, I'm assuming that they're using the glass's active shutter system to display half the frames to one player and the other half to the other player. Or did they do something different?
Like many have said, I think this is a great idea. One of the things I dislike about multiplayer on the same console is the amount of screen you lose. This would be great for two vs. two as well; both players on one team can only see their teammate's screen and not their opponent's screen.
The downside to this is you can't have people watch you play. They're either going to see your screen or their screen, they won't be able to see both. I imagine games that use this technology will have a "traditional" multiplayer for when there are more than two people in the room.
Regular 3D just looks blurry to someone without glasses beacause the two images are pretty similar. What happens when the images are drastically different? It will be impossible to watch.
And a games console is going to be cheaper than the glasses needed for this. So what's the problem, again?
OK, so now tell me this...how is the price of buying a second console PLUS buying an extra copy OF EVERY GAME going to compare to the cost of the glasses?
The single worst thing about traditional split-screen play, though, is that you can see the other player. This solves that, so that you can for once actually use tactics and sneak up on them as opposed to being restricted to bashing at each other because you both know where you are at all times.
You can do this with two machines networked together, but that's cumbersome. If you use a 1080P TV, it's essentially a 1000X1000 square that you'll be seeing - plenty of resolution to play a good game. (I'm figuring about 100 pixels at the bottom for status messages and so on)
this:
http://caia.swin.edu.au/reports/021224A/
would have to annoy their patent lawyers....
Would it be possible to use this concept to allow only one person to see what's on a screen? This could be a potentially powerful tool for security and secrecy.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Pretty sure that video shows an ACTUAL full-screen image for two different players at the same time.
:(){
What about multiple display output? You could get the same effect (with the same drawbacks) from having a second video out on the console. Even better, you could choose to rotate the displays so that the other player can't see your screen.
Course, you'd have to write the games to be compatible
Ooh, even better, you could use two output displays and two consoles! Then you could connect them via some sort of network.... uhm... oh.
Er, nevermind.
I'm really happy that this is coming to market, but it would be nice to get some credit. I implemented and published work on this about a decade ago.
Single Display Privacyware: Augmenting Public Displays With Private Information
Garth B. D. Shoemaker and Kori M. Inkpen
In Proceedings of ACM CHI 2001
You can read it here:
http://www.garthshoemaker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/shoemaker_sdp_long.pdf
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No, it shows a half-screen image stretched to the full height of the screen. You're still missing half your FOV and everything looks all wonky.
....they'll have us sharing workstations and monitors!!
After convincing you to buy a $500 (cheap) 3DTV to play multiplayer games with a "friend", they give you just one pair of 3d glasses.
Buying the other one is another $70.
So really, it's $570 for a 24" 3DTV which you can use for multiplayer.
Also, no mention of - when in this multiplayer mode, is each person seeing 3d or 2d? My guess is 2d but interesting how TFA or the summary didn't bother mentioning that. I also guess that all the sony sales ppl will not mention the multiplayer 2d mode or will simply lie about it.
you need not sacrifice 50% of screen real estate to accommodate the other player
Yes you do, the 3D display process is already halving your resolution - which is exactly the same thing: you lose 50% of screen.
But I read on anyway and it still sounds bizarrely bizarre. Like, you're going to have friends round to play a multi-player game, and they're not going to bring their own laptop? Weird concept. How are you going to swap porn and jack off together. Yeuch - the very idea of jacking off onto someone else's keyboard is ... strangely appealing.
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