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Don't Go 3D For 3D's Sake, Says Sony
Sony is determined to push 3D graphics into the realm of gaming, but the company seems to be aware that quality, not quantity, is what can win over gamers. They've been telling game developers to take the plunge only if it makes for a better gaming experience, and not just to take advantage of an industry buzz word. Sony's Mick Hocking said,
"We need to, and we're trying to encourage everyone to learn about 3D properly and come and talk to us so we'll support them when they convert the games. But only deliver the best quality 3D. As we've seen in some other industries, if you make great quality 3D, in film you could say Avatar – it's the most successful film of all time, it's the highest grossing film of all time – but since then that hasn't been followed up with the same degree of success. ... If people see great quality 3D it does enhance the experience. It's a great feature for a game. But if they see poor quality 3D it can put them off. Unfortunately some people are producing poor quality 3D, in all mediums. Over the last 12 months we've seen TV, film, some games, where the quality hasn't been there. It's just a case of people need to understand how to work with 3D, how to make it technically correct and then how to use it creatively. Only add 3D where it makes a difference to the gameplay experience. It must add something. Don't just add depth for the sake of it."
Just imagine Duke Nukem 3D!
The handful of games and handful of 3d blurays available do not make 3d in the home compelling.
Put aside complaints about 3d tech, stupid glasses, whatever. Heard them all, I don't hate the tech like a lot of other folk. I even bought a 3d tv because it was a good tv in the price range I was looking for anyway.
I never get to use it!
And here in Australia they seem to want $60+ for a 3d bluray version of cloudy with a chance of meatballs, or Monsters vs Aliens. Seriously. Bad selection, bad prices. These things will kill it stone dead even if all the naysayers don't.
Dear James Cameron,
Why, oh why, couldn't you just stick with 2D filming? (Worked fine for Titanic, right?) You have caused probably a decade of suffering. We can only hope that eventually the 3D fad will die out and only be used in projects where it is appropriate.
Sincerely, pretty much all Slashdotters.
It's a buzz word, so people will go with it. Sony can warn them all they want, but people just want to gain from someone else's success. If they can turn an ordinary game into a 3D game with little effort, and boost their sales (on the short term), then they will do it.
I predict a 3D sudoku before the year is over.
Developers can't make 3d-centric games because no one but an incredibly small minority of people with gaming rigs and/or consoles would be able to play them.
Customers don't buy 3d-monitors and TVs because there's no content worth watching on them.
End result, 3d is used as an afterthought or marketing gimmick. It makes no sense to spend a lot of funds developing a feature almost no one would use.
I just hope they consider that there are some people, such as myself, that get no actual use out of 3D. In my case, it's because of a blind eye.
How about making a decent game without stupid gimmicks or one that doesn't play a cutscene every two steps.
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The problem is that we've been screwing around with the 3d word. Remember when "3D" cards came out. The original OpenGL spec also defined a left and right frame buffer. And then there were Shutter glasses going back to things like the Sega Master System.
3D never, ever, works. The primary problem Nintendo learned with the VR boy. People get headaches from it because it's impossible to calibrate them to work with every pair of eyes. Everyone gets motion sickness or headaches with a "VR set" and when you put it on a flat screen, you force the eyes to go cross-eyed, resulting in headaches and eyestrain.
In the theater, they use polarizing glasses, which work in a pinch but require the picture to be much brighter than normal. The problem again being that not everyones stereo vision is calibrated the same. Like for me, with the exception of a few key scenes in Avatar, 3D is lost on me, the brain tunes it out after 5 minutes. I still see some films in 3D because they're the only properly calibrated projection screens, but overall it's never been worth seeing anything in 3D, since 3D adds very little value.
Now here's where I think we can make a difference, but I don't think we'll see it in current generation systems. Take the Kinect device and combine it with a auto-stereoscopic monitor. Now you have a true 3d interaction. Until this is possible, 3D will remain as glue and sparkles, looks pretty, but functionally useless.
There is some promise for 3D, but I don't see any games being able to make use of 3D without completely doing away with the glasses. Any real benefit to 3D stereography would require being able to see light bounce off 3D objects, which doesn't happen, hence why it fails. There's no depth, so the eyes can't focus.
Avatar was good, but if you turn the 3D off, most people wouldn't have noticed after the first 10 minutes.
Mind you, I've only seen the 3D portions of Gran Turismo 5 and Sly 3, but each of those games only seemed to have a divergence of about 5 horizontal pixels onscreen between the 2 views even at the farthest Z-buffer depth. The actual 3D effect was incredibly understated and pointless. Sure as a graphics geek, I'm all for having superfluous 3D just for random kicks once in a while, but even from that end of things it did not deliver.
Every 3D game should have a configuration for adjusting the "strength" of the parallax divergence, especially as display sizes and other factors could benefit from them. Neither of those 2 games I tried seemed to have that at all. Trying to make a "safe" default divergence strength makes the gimmick effectively disappear.
(If I understand correctly, the 3DS has some sort of depth adjustment slider. Does it affect the rendering convergence, or just help focus at the hardware level?)
Sony needs to recoup their investment in 3D technology by making sure the public sees value in 3D, so they will buy into it.
Game developers need to recoup their investment in the game by making sure their most recent game sells; i.e. use buzz-word technology.
It is not in the game devs best interests to ignore short term profit; in fact, it is in their best interest to have this type of tech die out in a few years so they can focus on new buzz-words that sell.
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Watched the new Harry Potter last night in 3D at the behest of my housemate. It was a good story told well but 3D added nothing to it. The depth of view effect was nice but having to accommodate 3D filming means they rely overly on slow panning shots and the like a lot of the film's shot selection seemed to be based on trying to shoehorn the direction into the format. Also due to the limitations on frame rates many of the action shots simply became a blurry jaggedy mess.
Sincerely, pretty much all over the age of 14. FTFY. And I agree Ferngully II...errr...I mean Avatar would have been just as nice and MUCH less of a skull thumper without the 3D. I thought Cameron had the better idea years ago, when he was talking about 60FPS film instead of 24.
And am I the only one that just gets massive headaches from the crap? If anything this new stuff gives me worse headaches than the 70s crap did or even the 90s Nvidia crap. And I've noticed that even though the stores are pushing 3D TVs like crazy everyone I know that has bought a new big screen didn't go for the 3D and when I asked them why there was always someone that it didn't work for, be it the husband/wife or BF/GF. I have a feeling a lot of folks are just gonna avoid it like they did in the last three go arounds.
And do we REALLY need crap jumping out at us as we play our games? with a good widescreen there is already so much purty and boom booms on your average AAA FPS that I find it hard not to just gawk and get my ass blown off and they are already so much immersion they can make you jump, so do we REALLY need "Dr Tongue's 3D house of bullets" to enjoy the game?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I suffer from a lazy eye (strabismus), so my perception of depth is very limited. You can tell this simply from the scrapes on my cars' bumpers (fenders). I took my 4 year old to see Shrek 3D not so long back. The glasses were wasted on me, and too big for his head. We spent 90 minutes watching a blurry mess, at only twice the cost!
I love 3D and always have. I admit it's gimmicky, and usually done poorly, but I still like it.
For games on the PC, especially first-person games like Fallout New Vegas and Portal, it adds an element of depth to it. I really feel like I'm more into the game when playing in 3D. I've started to dislike games that the 3D doesn't work right, and I have to play them without the glasses.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
How about you just don't make ANYTHING unless it is using high quality components? A sucky 3D movie is somewhat more annoying because of the extra $3, but it's not like spending $10 to see a sucky 2D movie is a great alternative.
I'm partially with you Sir.
Well as with all inventions you have to use them well in order to achieve brilliance. HP for example had very nice 3D effects that some might argue made the movie come alive...
just some issues I have with 3D in cinemas:
Isn't the whole point of 3D to aid immersion? I cant remember having the world selectively going blurry on me.
In the end of the day I still will need anti nausea medication and painkillers after attending a 3D movie but at least I won't be pissed with the director/cinema...
-- no sig today
How DARE you compare Avatar to Ferngully! I am Outraged! OUTRAGED i tell you!!!11!!1one!!
Avatar is CLEARLY actually Pocahontas... IN SPAAAACE!!!!
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Actually I don't think 3D would help in that situation, and here is why. When you jump IRL, there are several factors automatically processed by your brain, such a your weight and your balance, and then taking this data along with the softness of the ground and how much traction you are getting then and ONLY then do you try to make the jump.
Without virtual reality even with 3D you are only given the visual cues, you can't for instance tell how much force your space marines legs generate or how much distance he needs to be at full speed. Hell there really isn't any difference in most of those games when it comes to jumping between a space marine and a 14 year old girl scout, since they are both simply avatars.
So if anything I'd argue it would probably make jumping worse as they never seem to get the scale right on a 3D plane instead it always devolves into "Dr Tongue's 3D house of shit thrown at you" and the lack of all the non visual context would just make you more inaccurate.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.