3D Graphix Support? X-Rebirth

[masterw3]

i've got a Vizio 42" 3D passive TV.
expecting to hook it up to my Nvidia Video Card and go at it.
They finally updated their Drivers to Support HDMI and Passive TV's, though it utilizes "3D TV Play" from nVidia. which has a 14 day free trial, and is $40 to purchase once you verify it works for you.
(without the trial or anything, it lets you see the test Stereoscopic 3D, so that you can see if it functions on yours).

So i've played many games with 3D since 1999/Half Life.
With advent of new shaders and layers, shadows, etc. many games use different techniques to get those visuals.

if everything is calculated with the WORLD environment as it's relation, things work out great.
then you skip to "The HUD"
the HUD is almost always done as a 2d overlay, rarely does this work out very well.
Your eyes have to ignore the doubling as you focus on the objects in the distance, and when you focus on the HUD to read, you se massive doubling in the world.
Until they can use head tracking AND eyeball tracking to change the focus of each eye independantly, we'll have to make do.

X3 so far works for the most part, but the Starfield background ISN'T set up for this, it's in front of the ships, not "in the distance" behind everything (not calculated for 3D Space)

and the hud is still "on the screen".. so when you try to focus on the ship in the distance, there's a green or red box on the screen dead in front of you up close (hurts eyeballs).
If the Hud boxes for the Ships , stations and whatnot were rendered to be at the same depth as what they are locked onto, it would fix that, and help immensly.

---
I bring this up, because games like Grand Theft Auto, the shadows aren't rendered based upon the sun in the worl, they are based on the character, time, etc, and aren't rendered properly on the surfaces in the world. so you have to disable them to get a better experience, while losing some graphical detail.
almost NO games use a crosshair designed for 3D.
the Crosshair shouldn't be SET on the screen, but should be projected onto the environment.
So that whatever target you are aiming at, the crosshair is on them, in 3D Space, so your eyes don't see two crosshairs when focused on the object in the distance.

Then i spark up Borderlands 2.
Oh my Gollishness
the hud is arced.. in 3D space.. the health and whatnot is rendered at an angle not flat with your screen, the menues are popped out and tilted, averything seems to be MADE for 3D, the crosshair and subtitles aren't though.
but with only those 2 things to whine about so far... they did it right..
as developers, i HIGHLY recommend you check out the game in 3D, and see if you can get your HUD to do the same.

for 3D to work, i have to set graphix to a specific resolution and Hertz to get it to work at all.
if the game doesn't support it, it won't work, at all.
ever.

1080p @ 24Hz
720p @ 60Hz

obviously the 1080 has the best effect (1 for 1 on the pixels)
---
i still play X3 in 3D though for as long as i can stand.. be nice if a mod could help adjust the focus or transparency of the hud icons.

The thing i like most about nVidia and EgoSoft...
they listen to the community that play their games, and insert things the community wants into the games.
The X-tended mods, giant superstations where you fly a freighter into..
i did this in 3D for the first time when i found the Station in Kingdoms End...
flying my not so tiny freighter into the Station's Core Hanger Bay... felling like i was in an Octopus compared to the immense epic size of the Boron's greatest station.. so massive .. the ripples of the organic design as you coast by, the reflection of the planet on the metals and skin.. i'll never forget that moment...
beautiful, serene, jawdropping, as i used the "hat" tolook around as i autopiloted into the hold...

in a dogfight, weaving through the stations many pipes and structures.. trying to trail the many missiles into the station instead of me, while trying to get a bead on the next of my dozen attackers, trying to stay alive in my M5, all by myself. Epic Battles are often the small ones.. but in 3D, it was so much more, seared into memory, skimming across the surface of a Solar Array,through the supports... oh yea.

ok, i've started to ramble, time to bail.
though the skimming brings to mind.. collisions.. physics reguarding them ..

[amtie]

ok, i've started to ramble, time to bail.

Can I take your ship?

Ahem. Only problem I can see is that not everyone prefers 3D or even those who would want 3D wouldn't have 3D screens (e.g. monetary reasons, incompatability). Presumably it would involve more work that would be reasonable; the cost of making stuff 3D-compatible would outweigh the gains (financial or otherwise) that Egosoft would make from doing such a thing. Just like making any feature and it ends up being used by a small minority of users.

But that doesn't mean I don't like it. It's a good idea, but I personally think it's unlikely to happen (at least not intentionally).

[NLS]

I have a 3D monitor but I don't count on support by X:R (or support of anything for that matter...)

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

As I understand it, support for displaying 3D graphics on 3D displays is just a matter of selecting the correct full-screen graphics mode on the card. Providing the software does not restrict this and displays all available options then there should not be a problem.

The only case where real software support (i.e. bespoke specific coding) is required would be for head/face tracking kit where what is rendered depends on where you are looking in the real world.

[EDIT]That is providing the 3D and 2D are rendered properly by the software so that the graphics card can interpret the displayed information correctly regardless of if it is outputing to a 2D or a 3D display.

Some graphical software cheats will work fine on a 2D display but will look weird on a 3D display. It is debatable as to if these cheats actually save anything in terms of development time or computing resources.[/EDIT]

[elexis]

Throwing a hardware switch compared to a game properly designed for 3D is like Avatar compared to a crappy movie converted to 3d after filming.

Btw, I would super wide screen support over 3d anyday (3x2560x1440 for the win)

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Throwing a hardware switch compared to a game properly designed for 3D is like Avatar compared to a crappy movie converted to 3d after filming.

Not quite...

For movies to be full 3D then they need to be filmed from at least 2 different angles or be full 3D CGI rather than cell-like rendered 2D CGI. What is done to make a 2D movie look 3D is basically to post-process the material and apply a "faked" depth map to it.

On the other hand, modern computer games like X are using 3D from the outset for most things (HUD items are normally displayed on a 2D overlay in order to save on 3D rendering resources).

If you take X2 with the cockpit overlays, then I suspect the cockpits will look flat but the rest of the universe will be rendered properly by the graphics card (probably behind the flat cockpit). Depends if the cockpits are mapped to a 3D geometry or if they are just a 2D overlay (like I suspect).

To a point, the 3D hardware demands of the software will increase with the quality of the 3D experience. Given this, with gaming software it is a bit of a balancing act between supporting lower spec 3D hardware and supporting a fully immersive 3D experience on 3D display equipment.

[EDIT]In the case of X-Rebirth, I suspect the 3D experience will be similar to that of the X3 games.[/EDIT]

[EDIT]Had a quick review of the nVidia Stereoscopic 3D game compatibility list and noted that one of the factors that seems to break the 3D experience are some implementations of post-rendering effects (e.g. lens flare and glow). This happens even with recent titles such as Assassins Creed III and CoD.

In the X games, the gamer has typically had the option to turn such effects off.[/EDIT]

[Bazza]

If Rebirth is dx9, then any problematic shaders for 3D can be disabled or fixed using the Helix Mods.

I play almost exclusively in stereoscopic 3D (3DVision). Games like Far Cry, Skyrim, Batman AA/AC etc all look and run great in s3d (some of these games requiring Helix mods for dx9).

One of the bigger problems is screen depth for HUDs. Problems are caused when some icons (say enemy ship satus) end upo at screen depth even though enemy fighter is deeper into screen. Aiming crosshairs can also be an issue. It doesn't take much for developers to provide depth information for these things apparently and whilst some can be fixed by 3rd party mods, life is made easier if the developer makes only a minor effort.

[shadowrunner85]

I have 2x gForce gtx690 and 3x27 Asus active-3D monitors in surround. I whould love if X:R will have good suport for tripple 3d monitor gaming.

the things that bugs me the most is streaching (fish eye) on side monitors, and that menus text and other stuff gets placed without depth, and hurts my eyes in 3D. plz keep 3D in mind making this game, we 3d tripple monitors gamers are rearly considerd.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Considering triple head design is not a simple task. The positioning of the monitors (and variable dead-space between displays) can make a significant difference to the experience even in the context of 2D displays never mind 3D displays.

The easiest approach to a multi-head solution for a game like X is to allow additional displays to be used for components that would perhaps be otherwise displayed as additional HUD items (e.g. Radar, maps, menus, etc).

Providing support for spreading the 3D environment across multiple displays would notionally require some form of end-user calibration so that the software can take into account the user's personal positioning of their monitors. Either that or the user would need to adjust the positioning of the monitors to match the software's assumptions (which is not always going to be possible).

[shadowrunner85]

The dead space between monitors aka bazel, is not a problem, nvidia has bazel correction tool, so you make a fake resolution, the effect is that the screen is mimicking streaching in to the bazel, you can see this when moving the mouse courser from one screen to the other with bazel correction calibrated, the courser has to travel the with of the bazel to get to the next screen, this ofcourse works the same way with Images and 3D content, it is like it was a 2,5m wide screen with 2 strips of tape on it.

The problems I have, and I hope ES wil look in to it is that the longer out of from the senter the FOW is the more streach the image becomes, this fisheye effect can be reduced if they plan for it. all games has some fisheye effect, it has to be this way, or you whouldent see 3D depth. You have to look closely on a single monitor to notise it, but on triple monitor setup the streach becomse wery apparent.

The second thing is menues, text, and other stuff that is not put in the 3D environment feels like it gets stuck on your eyeball and is hard to focuse on, and hurt your eyes. I hope they plan for this, it would be a butiful game to view in super widescreen in 3D, will feel very immersive.

[Night Nord]

I would rather wonder about Occulus Rift instead of 3d (which is done by drivers/GPU/monitor anyway).

[ei8htx]

Would be awesome if X:R supported Nvidia 3D vision. This is the direction new games are going, and I can't think of anything more awesome than running around space fully immersed in 3D.

[Bazza]

I am playing all games recently in stereoscopic 3D via either 3DVision or TriDef. Is rebirth likely to support 3DVision ootb?

<Merged with 3D thread. There is also an active German thread on this here if you can follow the posts. Alan Phipps>

[Liquidpinky]

The problems I have, and I hope ES wil look in to it is that the longer out of from the senter the FOW is the more streach the image becomes, this fisheye effect can be reduced if they plan for it. all games has some fisheye effect, it has to be this way, or you whouldent see 3D depth. You have to look closely on a single monitor to notise it, but on triple monitor setup the streach becomse wery apparent.

I have asked for the FOV slider to go down further to try and alleviate this a few times for X3R. Setting FOV at 50 or 55 tends to make the fish eye effect pretty negligable in most games.

[Rabiator der II.]

Throwing a hardware switch compared to a game properly designed for 3D is like Avatar compared to a crappy movie converted to 3d after filming.

Not quite...

For movies to be full 3D then they need to be filmed from at least 2 different angles or be full 3D CGI rather than cell-like rendered 2D CGI. What is done to make a 2D movie look 3D is basically to post-process the material and apply a "faked" depth map to it.

On the other hand, modern computer games like X are using 3D from the outset for most things (HUD items are normally displayed on a 2D overlay in order to save on 3D rendering resources).

If you take X2 with the cockpit overlays, then I suspect the cockpits will look flat but the rest of the universe will be rendered properly by the graphics card (probably behind the flat cockpit). Depends if the cockpits are mapped to a 3D geometry or if they are just a 2D overlay (like I suspect).
[/EDIT]

Essentially, the engine would have to render the image on the screen twice. Once for a camera POV that corresponds to the left eye, once for a camera POV that corresponds to the right eye.

Should not be too difficult to add to the engine, but the cost is in FPS. Worst case, you have only half the frame rate of 2D (there may be some optimizations possible for objects that are too far for stereoscopic view to make a difference).

[Zloth]

Actually the NVIDIA drivers do a lot of the heavy lifting. They just take the camera PoV then render two images from two PoV's slightly to either side. That lets you set depth and such at the driver level.

However...

Games often take shortcuts and render some things in 2D. Shadows do this pretty often. Everything looks fine in 2D but in 3D that shortcut looks horrific. Flames and other effects may do the same thing.

Also, assuming this game will be like the original series, there's some HUD elements to worry about. You know those squares around distant ships? Well, the square is at screen depth and the ship is distant. That's trouble. Put your finger up between you and your screen. If you focus on your finger you'll see two screens and if you focus on the screen you'll see two fingers. The same thing will happen with that HUD element.

These aren't impossible to overcome by a longshot (for instance, you could render the HUD square at the same depth as the ship) but they do take some work on the part of the developer.

I really hope they get it done, too, though I would be fine with doing it six months after release.

[robalexhall]

Would stereo 3d add much if you're looking at things hundreds to kilo meters away?

Panoramic/multi screen/head tracking is a bigger deal for flight sims.

- I guess I'm asking the original poster. Did you find nvidia 3d gave you the right sense of scale in x3? Did you feel like x ships were star destroyer size behemoths or like plastic ducks in a bath tub?

[Zloth]

You can set it either way. I set it to "realistic" which meant that the triangulation just told me everything was far unless I was repairing a ship or in a really tight dogfight. Other folks like to mess with convergence so everything looks small but you can tell the difference between something 2km away and something 1km away. (That's actually called "toyification" so the ducks in the bath tub is a nice choice of words! )

Rebirth will have an actual cockpit so there is going to be a better sense of depth there. It's hard to predict what scales we're going to see. Are we going to be guiding repair drones? Will we be flying close to space factories? What about walking around in our own ship? What about mining asteroids?

Head tracking is certainly good stuff, too. I'm looking forward to it!