By Neil Schneider

Introduction
General Game Review
What is 2D+Depth?
Stereoscopic 3D Review
Conclusion
Introduction

Taking place on a jungle filled tropical island, the original Crysis was released in 2007 and was one of the first titles to feature DirectX 10 graphics support on PC.  Visually ahead of its time, Crysis pushed graphics beyond the norm and is a shining example of an FPS that takes video game stories off the rails.  Its only problem was it was too far ahead of its time, and required more processing power than was readily available (or affordable) for most gamers.

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Just a heads up that I adjusted the conclusion of the review. There was a misunderstanding that console was somehow superior to PC in 3D, and this isn't the case. It's the display size that impacts 3D effectiveness with Crysis 2, and I had this cleared up in the review.

Please share your findings so far!

Regards,
Neil

Well I'm not finished playing it yet. though I'm deeeeep into it. I'm going to give it an 8.5. I'm playing on a Panasonic 50" VT25 with a PS3. If the hardware to run this game with dual render existed and was as widely avialable as consoles. It would stomp all pryor games into the ground and be crowned "best game ever". 2D +depth is just transitional tech until the good stuff is more widely avialable and resonable in cost. So we are left with a game worth owning and a glimps into the future. This is basically a superb game with mediocre 3D. In a couple of years we will have quality games like this with quality 3D with out the need for $1500 equipment.

cheers everyone

It should be noted that I hardly notice any "artifacts" from the reprojection process. Nor did the weak 3D make me ill. I have had 3D of this kind make me fell sick before. The Demo for this game was very very poor in the 3D dept. It did make me sick. But the full version of the game did not.

cheers everyone

This is totally bogus. I'm not sure I even want to give Crytek my money. They could have come correct with this, but they punked out. I can play Crysis and Crysis:Warhead on my PC in 3D. It looks great (aside from some glitches, like with the shadows). PS3 games like Killzone 3 do 3D and arguably have better graphics than Crysis2. I don't understand why they didn't go all the way.

I didn't see ANY playable s3D until the below patch & nVidia lastest drivers 280.26 WHQL
Release Date: 2011.08.09, here's the release note quote:

"Update the following 3D Vision game profiles
Crysis 2 – rating changed to Excellent. NVIDIA recommends using the v1.9 game patch."

It is the best 1st person shooter implementation to-date, especially as it was un-viewable before. Does anyone know how they made such a massive improvement? Seriously, it has to be seen to be believed, its like night and day, definitely deserves it's new "Excellent" rating from nVidia. So glad I hadn't finished it & will replay again with pleasure.

Wow Silversurfer, I do find that very interesting. If your getting that good of 3D in you set-up. Well, I envy you. I played through the entire game. As a game its really quite excellent. I did enjoy it very very much. If your getting quality 3D the game is probably gonna knock your socks off.

peace

silversurfer, can you tell if your update is allowing dual rendering? or is it refined reprojection?

peace

Sorry about the delay, my ISP sucks.

I'm not sure what you mean with dual rendering or re-projection, or how to check in game. If you mean 2D + depth and dual rendering a standard stereo 3-D then I would have the hazard a guess that we've jumped from 2-D + depth to stereo S 3-D. As I say this is only guesswork as I don't know how to check in game etc, can anybody enlighten me?
but all I can tell you is that what ever the initial S3-D method before this upgrade it was unreviewable. but now it's on par with Lost Planet 2 (8.5/10 only drops 0.5 of a point for cut scene 3-D problems), UT3 (9/10), which in my experience of FPS games are the standout PC titles I own.

Neil it would be interesting if you could clarify why I'm seeing a dramatic difference before and after the Nvidia drivers and game patch?

Are there any out of screen effects? Do you get some kind of convergence control? This would help determine if there are some real differences.

How about performance? Is there a big drop in performance since the change? That too would be an indicator.

Regards,
Neil

Thanks Silversurfer, try this. Each gun thats in the game has a bluring around the edges. This is an artifact from the reprojection process they used. Some guns its less pronounced, so you may have to flip through a few weapons. If you are not seeing these artifacts. Then I believe that would constitute evidence that it is indeed dual render stereo 3D.

peace

Real easy. Press ALT+F1 and take a 3d screenshot. Then post it here. It should be easy to compare to previous screenshots I took to figure out what they have done.

So?!?!?!? What is the verdict?

Regards,
Neil

mega busy at the moment, but I will definitely try it this weekend

Ok I know this topic has gone off the boil but for what it's worth here are the images. It would have been useful if I had the previous images for comparison but take it from me they were a jumbled mess!

To be honest, its hard to tell what it going on with those shots. Its certainly some sort of 3D, but who knows...

On the second image the parallax goes from 0 to 36 pixels for the farthest objects (buildings), which is not really an impressive value. I've not seen the images with my S3D rig but judging by this number I don't see anything that has changed since last time screenshots were posted.