The New Difficulties In Making a 3D Game 190
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."
Crosshairs shouldn't be that hard (Score:4, Interesting)
...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.
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It's interesting that you mention red dots; the way they work is with a parabolic mirror with the LED at the focus, so to your eye it appears at optical infinity. You also never look down a sight with both eyes; you'd probably strain yourself trying to focus on the dot. Were I developing a realistic stereo shooter, I'd have it work similarly to the real world; the "scope" mechanism would only be visible in the player's dominant eye. No depth, no problem.
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Serious Sam's crosshair was dual-function. It had a minimum size where it behaved like a normal crosshair and then it could also appear as though it were being projected onto whatever was closer than it's maximum distance.
That was NINE YEARS ago.
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He said "You also never look down a sight with both eyes" which is completely different than saying "you never use both eyes while aiming."
His solution, to show the crosshair to the dominant eye only, would emulate the behavior that you describe.
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Think about developing a handheld game that needs to work on all screen sizes (iPhone, iPad, Android, Simbian, etc etc....). There have been efforts [yahoo.com] to minimize [phonegap.com] these problems [android.com].
Then think about the UI for a web page or game. There have been some pretty successful [thesixtyone.com] results [tumblr.com], while they are anything but simple.
Now think about adding a 3rd dimension to all those problems. It's not as easy as saying "just make it realistic". There is a reason why lives [humanfactors.com] are spent on UI [amazon.com]. It's n
Interface, biggest problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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either by having no interface or having an in-the-world interface, like Dead Space for instance.
I would think the easiest solution, which keeps current UI design relatively intact, is to transpose the interface on to whatever depth the item it's over is. For the mouse, that would be the click pixel. For the toolbars, put them at the depth of the environment.
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In the article, they mention a problem with crosshairs popping forward and back too rapidly in 3-space. You could probably do something with a spring system and friction. And you might want to do some degree of scaling up and down for distance, but not a real amount. That's all degrees of polish, which we won't really understand well until several titles come out attacking the problem in different ways.
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The things about games is because there are never mission critical is that they do not have be designed conservatively. They can push the hardware, the interfaces, to the point that other applications would never attempt. Any game w
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I get the feeling you're not talking about the remakes, greybeard :).
So, are we going to get Pac-Man 3D: The Pill Quest anytime soon ?-)
How does 'focus' effect things? (Score:3, Informative)
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 effec
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The subject of my post asked how it effected things. My comment said I don't understand it. I did not question his personal experience or say he was wrong.
I am more than happy to admit a lack of understanding (while explaining what I do understand) in the hope that he (or someone) can enlighten me.
Unfortunately I got an ass like you replying instead.
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Your eyes converge and focus to the same depth usually. Your eyes cross so that a normal line from each pupil intersects at the object you're looking at. The focus works a similar way where each eye twiddles itself to converge at that same point.
3D video messes with this. Your eyes converge like the objects is 20 feet away or 3 feet away, but
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You're saying that the current interface will kill 3D, but it's more likely that 3D will force game-makers to make a better interface. One that doesn't kill your immersion by making you use a mouse cursor to do things. One that doesn't make you look away from the action to make a decision.
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Or show the interface to just one eye.
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'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
Very simple. (Score:3, Interesting)
20 feet. (Score:3, Insightful)
Little different (Score:2)
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.
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When you "focus" your eyes on something in 3D, you do two things: you adjust the lens of your eye so that the light rays from the object are focused on the object, and you also adjust the convergence of your eyes to put the image of the object on a corresponding region of the retina of both eyes. With a stereoscopic image, you don't have to do the former, but you still have to do the latter.
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Oops, that should have been "the light rays from the object are focused on the retina.
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Which gives very strange effects sometimes, when the creator decides to make parts out of focus. I had this when watching Avatar. Often they use the 2D technique of focussing on a person while blurring the background (to make it stand out). This looks natural - when you focus on something close by the background naturally becomes blurred (due to depth of vision and the double-image issue). However when you decide to have a look at the background instead, it suddenly remains blurred. While in reality your ey
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Yes, I noticed this with Avatar also. You feel like you should be able to focus your eyes, because you have converged the images, but you can't. Film directors like to use focus to direct attention, but I wonder if in a 3D film, it would be better to have everything in focus. Of course, that would require either a very stopped down lens (and a lot of light) or some fancy digital post-processing. Or perhaps it would seem odd to have everything in focus. I wonder if Cameron did experiments on this.
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To me this looked like one of the "rough edges" of 3D tech of today. It looked like a 2D movie with 3D effects added to it. Those floating subtitles (I watched a Chinese subtitled version - not that I can read Chinese but that's how English movies are shown in Hong Kong) were also really weird. But reasonably easy to ignore.
And Avatar also has a 2D version (if only to be able to release them on DVD/BR). So that would basically require them to make two movies, as a 2D movie with everything in focus will loo
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The glasses are big enough to fit over regular lenses. Avatar was designed from the outset to be 3D, and Cameron did substantial technology development, but it is still early days for 3D as a serious filmmaking technique.
The problem with the "helmets" is there that is no way that you can actually run around in the 3D world because you'd bump into walls and trip over the furniture, so you still need a controller. Directing your gaze with a helmet instead of a joypad is not enough of a convenience to justify
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The other problems with helmets are:
1. Resolution. They're tremendously expensive to make at any sort of resolution. You know that super-high definition LCD screen they finally came out with for the iPhone? That's still way too big for one eye of a visor, and not high enough resolution. Lower resolution screens just look like lots and lots of pixels.
2. Focus. Because of 1, there are lots of optical tricks used to get a higher-resolution image from a larger source down to the size needed to display at yo
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Other people being unable to watch you play has not impeded the popularity of hand-held gaming systems and phone games. Even for games on console, the social interaction is mostly one way: people can watch you play, but you are too involved with he game to interact with them (an exception being turn-based games like bowling). But
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It has been worse:
Try Wario Land for the Virtual Boy. There are levels where the far background does not parallax (appear to scroll more slowly because it is farther away), but does appear to be farther back in the 3D effect. The worst is a moment in level 2, where the background appears to be deep away in 3D, and it parallaxes correctly horizontally, but breaks parallax scrolling completely vertically. I nearly threw up when I saw that.
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How about using the same type of lenses (in the 3D-glasses) that are routinely used in progressive bifocals, only rotated 90 degrees? That way, you could make the lens work harder to focus on something closer (have the lenses be more powerful closer to the nose) and relax more as you approach infinite convergence (when your eyes are parallel, whatever that is called).
It still wouldn't solve the problem of actually blurring everything in the background when you look at something close (and vice versa) but it
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I get the idea - works if all you do is looking straight forward, up or down. Not if you start looking left or right, then it breaks down horribly with both eyes effectively having different lenses through which to look.
Not sure what the headaches come from really (I didn't have this issue when watching Avatar nor with some earlier 3D movies), but I would guess parallax may be a problem. Difference in distance between the eyes, some people may have their eyes so far apart or close together that the two ima
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In games this is not a problem, since everything is in focus anyway, unless the engine goes out of its way to defocus. In a movie, the only real fix is to also have everything in focus - impossible with a lens, methinks - or use an optical phased array for both recording and playback; in other words, a hologram that would let you focus on what you will.
Gimmicky? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>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
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I'd argue that 3D for games isn't just a gimmick, but actually makes you a better player.
In driving games, knowing how far away a corner is can mean the difference between success and crashing horribly. Similarly, if you're lobbing a grenade at an opponent, you need to have an intuitive sense for how far away they are. In traditional 2D games, you have to build in lots of visual cues (straight lines, false shadows, distance blur, etc) to get even partway decent 3D estimations by your players. 3D screens,
This is hardly news. (Score:2, Insightful)
living down to expectations (Score:2)
Why am I not surprised to read that the gaming industry is struggling with how to handle splattering blood in 3D.
The "Real" Difficulty in making a 3D Game (Score:4, Interesting)
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Lol.
Just because *you* hate it doesn't mean everyone does. Now that it's not much of a premium on a decent LCD or Plasma and the big manufacturers (Sony, LG, Panasonic, Samsun) are all in on the game, I don't see it going away any time soon.
Why is it that the collected geeks of /. have such a problem with it anyway?
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Because the stuff where HD and 3D would be used best is not the stuff that makes it to the TV or theaters.
Planet Earth [wikipedia.org]? Fuck yes!
Your every day sitcom or cop drama #52938? No thanks.
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Largely the only people who don't hate it are people who were suckered into buying a 3D TV, and are now in denial over what a ridiculous waste of money it was.
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I'm sure there are a lot of people in your situation, but that's always the case. I won't be buying a new computer monitor either. But I was recently in the market for a new tv and thought "what the hell" and got a 3d plasma, as it was in the same sort of price range as the other similarly sized plasmas.
There are enough people like both of us to ensure that uptake is slow but existant, IMHO. And probably a few folk lusting after that newer, bigger, faster screen, because that's what they do, or because they
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I remember people saying the same thing about CD-ROM games. The first ones sucked, and many people could not imagine the technology ever being used for anything worth playing.
Same for polygon-based games, actually. They looked awful, and everyone was like "what a useless gimmick, hand-drawn sprites look so much better, 2D will never die".
The naysayers have always been wrong, time after time after time. Why do you think this will be the one time they're right?
Ask Nintendo for advice! (Score:4, Funny)
Check the Virtual Boy for prior art ideas. Obviously something so popular and successful can serve for further inspiration.
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Oh if I had mod points, I could mod this "Funny as hell".
I've seen the videos of the Virtual Boy and that itself is a laugh worth.
Some guy tested it out, with all the games it had.
Wasn't it the Angry Nintendo Guy or something?
Re:Ask Nintendo for advice! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like PowerGlove foretold the failure of the Wiimote?
Will the real 3D please stand up (Score:3, Insightful)
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We just need more people to point out that it's not 3D but rather stereovision.
Seeing as I own 3D Vision... (Score:5, Informative)
... 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.
Experiences: 3D adds a new dimension (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Not stereo "3D", head tracking. 3D. (Score:2)
For games, stereo is not the right approach. Viewpoint adjusted by head tracking [mynokiablog.com] 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
I don't get why this isn't done on computers (Score:2)
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
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While that technique is really, really cool, I don't move around much while gaming. That means the effect is pretty much lost.
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Dedicated head trackers like TrackIR and Freetrack have allowed this for quite some time now.
> When this is done well, the visual effect is spectacular. [youtube.com]
This "window" effect only really works if you close one of your eyes though. In a video it looks good since you have no depth perception, but when you look at something like this with both eyes you constantly see that it is just a flat surface that is displaying a moving image and the wanted effect largely goes away.
Sterio vision is NOT 3D (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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.
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Of course, for stereo vision at home you need a display capable of 120 Hz cycling, a little bluetooth dongle for timing, shutter glasses, and a relatively recent iteration of HDMI. All of these things the television makers have already done, and done cheaply. Now they're hoping to upsell this existing technology for a premium,
The Sega Master System had 3d shutter glasses almost 30 years ago. It worked rather well, actually. But without the CPU strength to do much with the 3D, the $100 premium that the g
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To some extent. On the other hand, most people can tell the difference between a "regular" movie, and a "3D" movie/game. Regardless of whether or not you say a "regular" movie is in 3D, there is some distinction somewhere in the brain, and thus there is room for preference.
Put crosshairs on only 1 eye (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Or, if you're cool like me, you can relax the muscles in your eye, and entirely defocus and ignore one eye. :D
(Interestingly, my mother can do this too. I wonder if there's a genetic component.)
You've got to be careful about putting stuff only on
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I can do that with both eyes!
But not one at a time, no...
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Only amateurs close other eye when aiming.
I can shoot as well with both eyes, by both sides. No matter do I keep a rifle or pistol in my left or right hand/shoulder. I sometimes even aim by crossing the sight line. Few persons only can aim correctly without aiming by other eye only. Both my eyes are as well dominant. I can choose which one I use as primary. As a special jäger and a sniper I had lots of benefit from that in the army. All the close quarter movements inside buildings were easier as I had
Fuck it (Score:2)
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You might want to have a look at Owlboy [dpadstudio.com], then. A 2d platform'ish game coming to pc and xbox. It's also the winner of Norwegian Game Award 2010 [gameawards.no].
From the jury's description:
The game has a distinctive 2D retro style and is full of neat little details and surprises. It stays true to its 8- and 16-bit legacy while adding its own qualities and avoiding the risk of becoming just another bland copy. We believe that the mix of puzzles, smooth platform gaming and beautifully pixeled graphics will make Owlboy appeal to a wide range of age groups and gamer types, and each member of the jury would happily buy the game as-it-is today.
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Re:If you can turn it off (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 re
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Still, ALL b&w content is useful on color TV. There was no need for color/b&w switch.
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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
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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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
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IANA3DP (I am not a 3-D programmer)
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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.
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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!!!!
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:4, Funny)
What are you talking about, I didn't even mention Shatner's name in my original post.
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Don't use the Lord's name in vain, man.
That's fine, I'm cool with it.
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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.
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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 (
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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.
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Rick Dangerous [wikipedia.org]. I had the Atari ST version, and hitting the space bar at the title screen would switch it to black-and-white mode.
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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.
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heh, only a slashdotter would consider iPhone/iPod to be home entertainment, I suppose.
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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 ab
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
There's an old joke. An engineer and a mathematician go to a lecture on quantum physics. After, the engineer turns to the mathematician and says:
"That stuff is so crazy! I just have such a hard time visualizing 11 dimensional space!"
The mathematician shrugs and says to him:
"Oh, it's not so hard. Just imagine n-dimensional space and set n equal to 11."
I figure that's how these computer programmer folks do it.
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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
Re:Out of the box (Score:4, Insightful)
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