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.
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.
Very simple. (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Real" Difficulty in making a 3D Game (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Little different (Score:3, Interesting)
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 eyes will focus on the further away object, changing the lens and the angle of your eyes.
For a more realistic 3D experience the display would have to follow your eyes, and see what you focus on. As bonus such a tech would allow the rest of the screen to run in lower resolution (less work to render an image) as what you do not focus on you can not see so well anyway. That's simply how our eyes work. But I think it will need a long time to get to such a stage. A very long time.
I'm no gamer, won't be playing anytime soon, but this is why I do follow these stories. The user interfaces. Lots of interesting stuff is being developed for games that may trickle down to the desktop interfaces.
Re:If you can turn it off (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Little different (Score:3, Interesting)
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 your eyes. That all takes focusing of various lenses, and that all goes blurry the moment you do anything unexpected.
3. Lag. Your brain immediately notices when the world isn't following your eyes. They're getting better, but lag on these things (last time I tried one) doesn't seem to be going away entirely.
4. Head Mount. You can spend hours fitting a bicycle helmet to your head, and it still wiggles like mad. Head Mounts just aren't that solid. Which means the helmet wiggles a bit around your head. Which means the world wiggles a bit around your head. Ew.
5. Too Private. This is a big issue that Nintendo bumped up into with the Virtual Boy. If nobody can watch you play, playing video games becomes an inherently anti-social activity.
By the way, Full-sized parallax barrier screens, like the one in the 3DS, have been available in Asia for some time. Due to content shortages, they're mostly relegated to displays. But they're out there, and they work.
Re:Little different (Score:3, Interesting)
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 might help with the head aches some people complain about by making the experience more natural on the eyes themselves.
Re:Put crosshairs on only 1 eye (Score:2, Interesting)
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 no problems to use weapons in both sides. Same thing was with forrest in quickshootings where I could easily take the best position on cover, without caring on which side the cover was. With two pistols it was very easy to aim trough both iron sights. And if you need to shoot different sides, it is even easier when you do not need to rotate head but just watch that side iron.
But there is as well bad sides from it. When waking up or very tired (3 days a row) I can loose the control and I can see two images both times. It actually takes a second to close eyes and open again first the other to gain back the control. It is not good feeling when both eyes are trying to find point of the focus in different distance.
Thats why I as well like FPS games where you can switch the side from which side you look (if from behind). And I hate when you can not switch the side depending the situation or when you can not lean. It really breaks the illusion what is there (they are games after all).