Meant to be Seen

It's been a bit of a slow newsweek at MTBS, but only because this is the calm before the storm.  We have a special treat for you in the works!



Jens Schöbel, Technical Designer for Crytek is going to be making a special appearance on MTBS to talk about stereoscopic 3D gaming and...Crysis 2!

We met Jens at FMX 2010, and he is a true advocate for stereoscopic 3D gaming.  We've seen our share of presentations, and we can tell you how refreshing it was to see the enthusiasm and brilliant ideas demonstrated at his presentation.

This is the best part. In addition to working on answering and getting approval for our onslaught of interview questions, Jens is letting us open the floor for MTBS members to ask questions of their own! Ask away by commenting on this article and/or its related forum thread. Jens won't be able to answer all the questions, but we will try our best!

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great that the Crytek folks are adopting this whole "3d" thing
my question is, can you provide the full list of natively supported 3d displays/devices/formats?

Hello,
I am concerned about the PC version obviously, these would be my questions regarding Crysis2 / MP (awaiting in anticipation).

1. Crytek have ties yet with the "force feedback pistol grip" manufacturer Novint ? If not , can we expect full support later on? -They are working on a mouse emulation tool, just in case, so that later date might be a matter of days afaik.
This would boost 3d immersion a great deal to me.

2. A question of big importance to me. Is the PC version of cryengine3 capable rendering flamethrower alike fluid based weapons , in detail like we never seen before? I consider this a serious flaw in todays MP games, won't provide any means to make "scorched earth" tactics viable.Hell, I can't even imagine how good this would look in s3d!

3. Do we get analytical anti aliasing like that of Metro2033, Uncharted2 (MLAA) ? -Because once we have AAA , plain 720p would be just enough for a lot of us. I consider FullHD fatally overrated, and AAA looks much better than MSAA to me, so this feature really sets a technically advanced game apart from the rest.

4. Once we have "AAA 720p", and zero perfomance hit 3d , does that mean we can expect to play objective/team based multiplayer with vehicles , and all that jazz, with smooth 60fps , 50 players, even on relatively aged PC's ? That would be like a hyperspace jump compared to what we have now.

5. Can Crytek do something against the utter dominance of Valve software when it comes to multiplayer games?

I understand we can't discuss the upcoming titles in development , but theres a serious market gap when it comes to team based sci-fi / jetpack shooters like Unreal XMP or Tribes. Several comitted modders would be enough to make this happen, and a lot of people consider those games the best form of online entertainment ever, myself included. XMP became one of the most underrated multiplayer games ever , but EPIC has its share in this, by abandoning PC platform entirely. That was XMP: http://files.aybab2u.com/u2xmp/videos/xmptv/

+1 . Bonus question, those with better PC's can force "true stereo" ? I consider the method crytek came up with more than worthwhile approach, but surely , it would be interesting to compare the two.

This is Fantastic !!
Here's my question : Will we have the option to adjust the convergence in game?

Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions to the Crytek team Neil.

In your crysis 2 3d video game is there going to be real good 3d lighting effects and background volume/poput dimension for an ultimate 3d world. Like windows in the buidling showing depth from the street level. And a brightness lighting enhancment for around the player in 3d because of shutters blocking 50 percent light.

Hi Jens, thank you for answering our questions. It's great !

How did you convince your colleagues at Crytek to develop the 3D features two years ago ? (before the actual big 3D Avatar hype began). Was it hard battling with the other devs wanting to spend resources on other features or was it an easy sell ?

How much work was actually involved in making the stereo 3D capable engine, I remember a quote from you at Siggraph saying the basic stuff was done in a couple of days, but how much time did it take to finish the feature ? I guess you had to do a few tweaks to the UI, but did you also have to modify gameplay to improve the 3D effect ?

One major issue I have with FPS games is the gun you constantly have in your field of view at very close range, preventing you to play with the convergence setting (you get an overly doubled gun that is painful for the eyes), did you find a solution around this issue or did you keep it easy on the convergence setting ?

Only 1.5% performance for stereo is amazing ! Can you give us some info on how you did it ?
I have tried yelling a few magic formulas and even throw some pixie dust on my game CDs but I have not had any success, what is your trick ?

Will we also have the jungle in 3D ? Is there a chance to see a patch that applies the 3D magic to Crysis and Crysis Warhead ? Or maybe be able to load the Crysis/Crysis Warhead maps into Crysis 2 ?

At E3, a 3D trailer for the game was shown during the EA press conference, can you publish this 3D trailer so that we can enjoy it and see some bad ass Crysis 2 3D awesomeness ?
Can you show us something more ? Some 3D gameplay videos / 3D screenshots ?

At E3, we saw Crytek and EA doing some bold claims : something like "Crysis 2 will be the first 3D game on all 3 platforms" (PC PS3 X360)
To my knowledge Avatar : the game has already done it 6 months ago, so is there something more (hdmi 1.4 direct support without the need for firmware updates ?) or was it just the PR department jumping the gun.

Is the setup menu going to be like how they did it for "Avatar - The Game". Meaning, you select what type of display you have, select the size of your display, and brightness/gamma control. Avatar-The Game looked great in S3D, and the setup menu was simple to use.

Can you explain more about the method you are using to produce stereo 3d visuals. It was said that you guys are not rendering each frame twice, instead rendering only once and doing some post-processing to that frame. I am assuming this is some type of 2D+depth algorithm. In your tests do you think this produces comparable image quality to a true stereoscopic render or was it merely a matter of the performance gain? If this is 2D+depth style system can you explain how you dealt with re-creating the missing data from occluded areas? This seems to be a big issue with techniques like this. Thanks again.

cybereality wrote:Can you explain more about the method you are using to produce stereo 3d visuals. It was said that you guys are not rendering each frame twice, instead rendering only once and doing some post-processing to that frame. I am assuming this is some type of 2D+depth algorithm. In your tests do you think this produces comparable image quality to a true stereoscopic render or was it merely a matter of the performance gain? If this is 2D+depth style system can you explain how you dealt with re-creating the missing data from occluded areas? This seems to be a big issue with techniques like this. Thanks again.

This doesnt sound good. They are going to try and pass of fake 3d to us?

Is the weapon rendered at the same scale than the rest of the world? (This may be similar in content to the BlackShark questions about weapons)

Are there any iron sight weapons? If so, is the sight aligned with the right eye to aim closing the left eye?

I want to thank you for visiting us! Others have told some very interesting questions (all i wanted to ask and a few more interesting ones).
One things is for sure regarding native 3d: The best experience in front of my screen is without doubt "Avatar the game". The gameplay/game is mediokre but the experience is breathtaking, least to say and a lot of it because the perfect stereo. I've got a strong feeling it's going to be widely surpassed by Crysis 2!
I'm really looking forward to a future where gamedevelopers competes trying to make their games best in 3d.
Crytek always proved they are a step ahead with farcry and crysis. The later info of cryengine 3 really shows promises!

Cheers!