Hi,
i've been working on TM forever beta tests, but i'm not part of NADEO game studio, i was just an external beta tester who was in charge of testing the stereo features of the game.
I can give you my feedback on the stereo feature.
I used to had 3d revelator shutter glasses which i loved but which i wasn't able to use anymore since i switched to an LCD monitor 3 years ago.... it was the good old days when nvidia drivers were working and up to date... so i already had some experience with S-3D.
For these tests i only had anaglyph glasses. and it's been a real plesure to get the sense of depth (even in anaglyph) after so many years stuck in flattened 3D.
S-3D gaming is something very difficult to talk people about, when the people you are talking to have never experienced it or don't even know it exists.
I truely believe that having this game support S-3D natively will make lots of people aware S-3D exists. And anaglyph is the cheapest way to see the depth effect, allowing more people to take S-3D more seriously and maybe jump in.
The game graphics were working quite well for me (i have an nvidia 8800GTX, with current standard non-S3D drivers, on windows XP).
The following full screen FX don't work in S-3D :
-bloom
-dynamic colours
-motion blur
-advanced HQ-AA (advanced software antialiasing only available in replay editor shooting mode : up to 25x AA)
these FX can easily be disabled in the game launcher advanced configuration.
everything else was working perfectly (including Anti-Aliasing).
I also started the game once with IZ3D active in the background (in anaglyph mode). the depth effect was almost identical to the native one.
There was only one problem with IZ3D, the game produced wrong computation during the "prelight" of races in multiplayer (in the stadium environment). I don't know why i was doing this when the driver was in "activate by hotkey" mode (i had forgotten to switch it off after an UT3 game). I didn't take the time to troubleshoot this bug since i'm a total IZ3D noob and that since the game was in beta (and under NDA) i couldn't ask here about it.
But in the end, the most important S-3D feature of the game in my opinion is the ability to shoot replays (render a replay to .avi video) in side-by-side-dual-images.
With this feature, you can render true stereoscopic videos and then if you've got enough time and motivation, you can edit these videos and make you own clip or small movie : in true Stereoscopic HD format.
I tried this : i just took one of my previous edited clips (called Vertigo) and re-shot it in 720p HD Stereoscopic video.
I found out that it wasn't that hard to edit your clips in Stereo, even in a standard video editing software.
There are a few tricks, some parts of the workflow are a bit long and require a lot of caution, but it works. (of course it's not like having a dedicated Stereo editing software, but at least it's not impossible).
I'm showing you the result :
please note that it's still a "work-in-progress" version, (there is a little bug in the compositing of the main title, one of the images is offset a bit). Do not post the link on other forums (especially Trackmania forums) since i'm waiting until may when lots of players will have their glasses (there is a trackmania magazine coming out in may with anaglyph glasses included). I'm also out of internet at home because i'm currently moving to an other city : Once i get it back i'll also have to write a very long "howto" tutorial to explain the trackmania french gaming community how S3D works and how to play / edit 3D videos, because they're all completely new to S-3D, and i'm pretty sure that most of them didn't even know S-3D existed before Nadeo announced the native stereo feature. (and they're very bad at English)
here's the link :
http://starbuck.sk8network.fr/blackshar ... s-XviD.avi
open it with your favorite Stereo video player
image configuration : LEFT image on top, RIGHT image below.
I've seen lots of trackmania video makers very interested in the stereo feature. You can expect to see more and more Stereoscopic videos coming soon from the Trackmania video making community.
@ NEIL : i'm sending you a private message with how to get in touch with Forent Castelnerac (head of nadeo) i'm pretty sure he'll be happy to answer your questions.