Tomb Raider: Underworld demo in S3D

[distantreader]

Totally surprised of how fantastic it looks with my old setup (CRT,7900GS,162.5 driver pairs).

-Water with reflections looks superb, the best I've seen.
-Except for the couple pieces of 2D vegetation that are supposed to be at the horizon but appear at the wrong depth when I'm out at sea where the game starts, all other objects so far are 3D.
-Just spent about half an hour ogling the scenery of the game and found myself thinking, this must be the game to beat as far as S3D goes.

PS. Once gotten my feet to the cave leading inland I was stopped with this wide gap that has a pole stick out from the side wall. How the h*ll can I grap that pole and swing to the other side of the crevass ? Tried several times to jump and grap but always find myself in the water.

[Tril]

If it's the same as in the Xbox 360 demo and you are talking of the first pole seen in the demo, look below when you get close to the edge. There's a slope at 45 degrees. You have to walk past the edge, slide down then jump.

[distantreader]

That must be it. I'll try that slope before jumping this evening. BTW, is there any other moves in this game beside the basic a,w,s,d,q ? Thinking of buying this game since the demo looks so fun with S3D.

[distantreader]

Tried the demo and bought the game. After 18years playing games only in S3D I can now be properly in awed with the beautiful beyond imagination level designs by these artists. Truly the best and situated at a far distance from any other games in its S3D effects. Looking at the ocean on the boat, the swelling of the sea give flashbacks to stormy and dangerous water of years past, diving under is an experience that I had to hold my breath. Into the caveneous ruins, the grandeur of it all practically blow my brain out. Rushing out a sinking cargo ship doesn't compare to a Titanic experience in my imagination but what a adrenaline rush that no other games could give. And Thailand coastal level, which is featured in the demo, is the most wonder of it all so far ....

My system:
Core 2 duo 2GHz
2GB RAM
7900GS, 256MB
Forceware 162.5, stereo driver 162.5
AA: 2X
Texture: Medium
Filtering: Trilinear
Water effects: ON
Reflection: ON
Volumetric: ON
Fullscreen eff: ON
Shadows, triple buffer, vsync: OFF

Resolution: 1024x768


With only 256MB video memory, it takes time to load and swap texture for new scene. In melee and heavily graphics demand scene, it becomes choppy and hard to play. Regardless of all this, the immersive of the level design keeps pulling me in irresistibly despite the fact that I'm a flight sim/ racing fans and not into FPS nor Adventure/Action type of games.

Most Highly Recommended. If there is only one game one should have for S3D, this is it. IMHO.

[Likay]

I do have some graphic glitches in 3d, like fire, watersurfaces and some lightsources. Not really bothered since they don't appear so much in the game.
And i agree! I've played all tomb raidergames from the 2'nd to the final release and enjoy them all! TRU is outstanding! And even more in 3D!
If you're into adventuregames and likes legend or anniversary TRU kicks a**! Beware though: The computerdemands are pretty high. Download the demo to checkout.

Cheers!

[distantreader]

Fotgot to mention those glitches - I've also seen them but the overall S3D effect of the rest of the game is so overwhelming they become negligible for me. I think it would be perfect if those can be remedied with a patch. I'm not a adventure games guy but with this TR:U I've already ordered Legend and Anniversary copies.

[distantreader]

Update:
Since the 7900GS cannot handle "Tomb Raider: Underworld "well, and thanks to VaderApps with his solution to the 8800GTS S3D Nvidia driver compatibility issue, i thought it was riped for me to upgrade and bought an used 8800GTS 640MB from Ebay for 90 bucks shipping included (due to a 10% Ebay promo., otherwise it's 100 bucks, btw the promo still on until Nov 30th) and what a difference. Smooth likes butter at 1600x1200 even with all neccessary effects that work in S3D on. Best bang for the bucks upgrade for me in a long time. Hope this helps someone with the TRU setup using Nvidia:

Specs:

Forceware 180.48, S3D driver 162.50
8800GTS 640MB
1600x1200
AA => 2X
Texture => High
Textutre filtering => Trilinear
Full Screen Eff => ON
Reflections => ON
Water Eff. => ON
Volumetric effects => ON
Shadow => OFF
Triple Buffering => OFF
Vsync => OFF

EDIT: Croft Manor level is unplayable in S3D, also not playable in 2D if Anti Alias is on. I had to turn it off to play in 2D -

[Likay]

Lol! Unfortunately the manor is the first place you play in the real game. With all the fire (trufire don't work in 3d, just gives vertical patterns) around in the manor you better turn of 3D. Else from that: Keep it on for the rest of the game! Myself using iz3d 1.09 drivers satisfactory.

[distantreader]

With the 7900GS I could actually go thru the Manor in the intro level in S3d and still benefit a great deal due to the S3D to shimmy and jump - albeit with the fire's flames at wrong depths - however with the newly acquired 8800GTS it's a complete mess in both S3D and regular 2D playing. Had I seen this kind of bad 3D effecs in the demo I would never have thought of buying the game and likely missed the rest of the great level designs. I thought the artists who did the Croft Manor related levels are subpar in many ways compared to those who designed the Thailand, Mediteranean, and Mexico (I'm only at the beginning of Mexico now) levels.

Should we somehow give feedback to Crystal Dynamics so that the next TR release hopefully will be S3D compatible ?

How about give a link to our Tomb Raider related thread to their Technical Support or general discussion forum ? Any other suggestions ?

[Likay]

I already made some wishes for s-3d compability (for tru quite some time ago) in the tombraiderforums. But i really doubt any developers saw it anyway.
There's also a post in the eidosforum about s-3d but there are no other replys than Carl Kenners and mine. I recently added another reply on the actual game but let's see what happens. Maybe you could bump a line too?
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=81850

[distantreader]

good idea! I've just posted at these two forums:

http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthr ... ost3268031
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread ... post903908

Hopefully the S3D future will continue to have better behaved pp effects games.

I already made some wishes for s-3d compability (for tru quite some time ago) in the tombraiderforums. But i really doubt any developers saw it anyway.
There's also a post in the eidosforum about s-3d but there are no other replys than Carl Kenners and mine. I recently added another reply on the actual game but let's see what happens. Maybe you could bump a line too?
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=81850

[The_Nephilim]

Hmm Wierd I installed the Demo and rani the Graphics are corrupted with the 3D Enabled?? I have a GeForce 7950GT 163.75 Drivers 162.50 Stereo and it does NOT work ;(

How can I get this Game to work in 3D?? I had Oblivion IV work in 3D that was a Treat almost like this game

[Likay]

Maybe forgot to say. I use iz3d drivers and tru is great with those. Absolutely not 3d without flaws but nonethless very enjoyable!
Note: The burning manor is the first place you play in the game and flames are rendered totally wrong! Just run through it and forget you've seen it. I haven't tried with nvidia drivers because of the hardware demand of tru. Don't think my 7900 will do too well. If nvidia drivers works as well as the iz3d driver for tru than you'll have quite an experience. Tru is awesome in 3d even if the graphic reproduction isn't 100% perfect.

[distantreader]

Since I first posted about the TRU demo I've tried the following:

1- Nvidia 162.50 pageflip mode + XP + I-Art Eye3D shutterglasses
2- iZ3D 1.09 + Anaglyphic (thanks to Likay who kindly sent all the way from Europe to US his precious red/cyan films)
3- iZ3D 1.10 Beta Interlaced mode + I-Art Eye3D shutter glasses
4- Nvidia 182.25 pageflip mode + 3D Vision

The game started out with severe rendering errors with (1) & (2) setup in the prologue (Croft's manor), the flames were a complete mess in S3D and there was no way the level could be played in S3D. Flames in subsequent levels were also erratically rendered. The appearance of ocean surface was always great in all cases, but underwater was still having graphical errors such as pink polygons from a far distance or the water was completely transparent or both. All setups always had the problem of 2D tree tops and skys scattering here and there in the games but not impacting S3D effect much. With all these issues the game still provided a breathtaking experience in visual and therefore gameplay immersion.

With (4), the whole experience was yet lifted to still another level of enjoyment for me due to couple of factors: firstly the 3D Vision glasses are lighter, brighter and give a warmer palette than the Eye3d counterpart and I find it jive well with my visual taste. Secondly, the new Nvidia driver eliminated all the above graphics issues except the 2D treetops and sky patches which actually belong to game dev's domain. I'm going thru the prologue and enjoyed the S3D flames tremendously now. The water under the Mediterranean sea is murkily real, and I was surprise to see the coastal Thailand water, in contrast, is freshly clear. I don't really know whether they suppose to be like that in real world but this difference between the ocean water qualities in the game is, in this case, somewhat an indicative of the effort behind this visually impressive game.

Even though the game is getting older for me, I have it for three months already, its visual has been getting younger and younger with each S3D driver release. Those two opposing force so far has been balancing out and so my feeling about the game is still consistent with the first impression with the demo after several setups: Beautiful!

[Neil]

Wait!

Are you reviewing the game in S-3D, or the solution in S-3D? 8)

Lara Croft has nothing to do with how light the glasses are, unless they are connected to your eyebrows!

Regards,
Neil

[distantreader]

It's just my personal experience of the game with various S3D equipments thru time. No more no less.

[Neil]

I know I may seem a bit hard on you, so don't take it as an attack. You're obvious working to contribute, which is awesome. These are just ideas so your work will be more memorable. We want people to look forward to what you have to say with great interest!

First, a review is useless unless it has some kind of base or reference point. If you want to review the hardware, that's easy. Get a few solutions together, compare the experience between the hardware, but use the same 3D software each time.

If you want to compare a game experience, that's a software issue, keep the hardware consistent.

What you printed here comes across as an "I love NVIDIA no matter what" post, and I don't think that's what you intended. What happened to option 3?

Regards,
Neil

[distantreader]

You lost me. I'm posting because I like S3D gaming and want to share my experience with people who share the same hobby, this forum sounds like the right place but if it becomes hostile there are others. What I write will be just that and I don't ask for any "constructive" criticism from anyone. However, thanks for pointing out the missing (3) from the previous post. When I feel like it I will edit it.

[Neil]

Wasn't my intention to come across as hostile. I just wanted to get more out of your work. I'm a bit of a lecturer, huh?

Pity my wife!

Regards,
Neil

[Likay]

For information: Both iz3d betas 1.10.... fixes the flames as well as wrongful rendered watersurfaces. Lightsources as well as hudelements are totaly wrong though. Fortunately there's a setting where these effects are rendered outside the visible scene so at least they don't bother.
The "1.10beta2" is different from beta1 in the matter that i actually can see hudelelements now (not at screendepth and not at "appropriate depth"). If you make the stereosettings in a certain matter the pls (Lara's personal light source) can be rendered accepteable most of the time. This was the most "annoying" thing in the previous beta. However: The beta1 fix (shader3fix) that fixed the fire and watersurfaces ingame was indeed a great improvement!
The burning manor is great now as well as the Doppelhoe scene in the manor!