My PS3 3D Gaming Experience

[lnrrgb]

well I have looked everywhere except in the Japanese store - I can't find it. Another lesson in patience I guess.

[Chiefwinston]

The Crysis 2 demo has made its appearance on the PS3. I've only had a few short minutes on my grandsons XBOX 360 to try it. Not enough time to try and maximize my 3D experience. so I know have the PS3 version and some time to try a multitude of 3D settings. I will be buying this one on the first day. I am ,however, quite disappointed in the 3D. Its barely 3D. I'm hoping that much of the gun right in front of you issues are resolved. For me the gun geometry is poping in and out depth wise- Very, Very poor. I actually think the 3D is of poor enough quality that its going to make me feel sick even at very low 3D settings. Long gaming sessions in 3D might not be possible. I know Cyberreality has his explanations for the poor 3d around the gun and has documented it with photo's in another thread. I actually think its a deeper problem of the 3D depth map not aligning properly with the 2D image. I think that is what is accuring around the gun geometry. they probably, should have skipped the 2D +depth 3D on this title and gone with a straight up dual render through some video card drivers. I'm going to recommend people try a PC dual render solution with this title for now. I'll play the game and give a final verdict once it hits the streets. Though I'll shoot straight with all ya. It doesn't look impressive from a 3D stand point. I'm giving a very poor rating for now.

cheers everyone

[Vic]

The Crysis 2 demo has made its appearance on the PS3. I've only had a few short minutes on my grandsons XBOX 360 to try it.

The xbox demo is not real 3D, it's using the same technology as Enslaved.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/3d-in ... ctually-3d" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cybereality]

I can confirm that this fake 3D business is also happening on the PC demo (and presumably the full title as well).

Here is one image, with the offset adjusted:

Crysis2Demo_Fail.jpg

EPIC FAIL

[Vic]

I just played it on PS3 and it was so bad I had to turn it off after 5 mins. Kept playing for another 2-3 hours. There's a bit of a response delay for the controls, like KZ2.

Anyone know when the Motorstorm Apocalypse demo will be back? I looked in the NZ, UK and US stores last night. They delayed the release in NZ because of the Christchurch earthquake, but then Japan ruined it for the whole world delaying a game like this won't make a difference to earthquake survivors. They might as well delay the next Saw movie every time someone is murdered.

I also finished KZ3, then went back to Prince of Persia and it was amazing how much better it looks than KZ3. So sharp, the depth is clear and definitive. Plus there's another 2 games included, such good value.

[Chiefwinston]

Thanks Cybereality, your last post brought hours of laughter for me. I watch some depressing news from Japan. Turn that off and switch to your last post and I'm okay agian. I'm going to re-evaluate my options with Crysis 2. It's going in the to "rent" column for now. Don't get me wrong guys its a superb 2D FPS game. I'm only really interested in the quality 3D titles. So If it passes the rental test I may buy it.

Thanks Cyber- you cheered a depressed man up.

cheers everyone

[cybereality]

Well I think Crysis 2 as a game is actually really good. Well worth buying on the gameplay aspect alone. But the 3D is weak, I find it hard to believe that's the best they could do. There were already console titles in true 3D (Avatar, etc.) and they looked fine. Crytek could have optimized the game and made it run in real dual-render stereoscopy (ie with aggressive LOD, low-res textures, reduced resolution, etc.). I hope people realize its all a sham. Its the Clash of the Titans of the 3D gaming scene.

[AntiCatalyst]

so that's how they kept the framerates so high

seriously now, this is sad.
Crytek just spent millions of dollars developing a layered 2d game, while marketing it as the "avatar" of 3d gaming. I don't even think it's intentional, the way they've hyped up the 3d aspect of it just suggests they don't even know that they did something wrong.

Imagine the awkward moment when they realize that they had the wrong idea on how to "do" 3d.

Apparently they've shown it to James Cameron too. If this is what he saw, he really must've gotten the wrong idea of where 3d gaming is today. Or, for that matter, where it's been at for the last decade.

[Salenkova]

Hi there, Unfortunatly for North American people i read today that Motorstorm Apocalypse is delayed to an unknown date... This game is the Best 3D one I played.

Concerning Crysis 2, i tried it on PS3 in 3D and it's not that bad. No dizzy feeling while playing but i only played 5min so i can't tell. But the game looks really good.

[Vic]

where is the Motorstorm Apocalypse demo? I've checked US, UK, HK and NZ stores.. nothing.

[lnrrgb]

The MA demo has been pulled temporarily, but I just noticed that the Motorstorm Pacific Rift demo claims to support 3D - something that either slipped by me, or they released something new. I do not ever remember seeing it in the section for new 3D releases.... but it is there now, and the description clearly states 3D support. Should tide me over until Apocalypse arrives(no pun about Japan intended)!

edit - of course, perhaps I'm just an idiot, and losing my memory -duh!

[Salenkova]

Motorstorm Apocalypse Demo was on the European PSN Store. But i has been removed unfortunatly...

And yes Inrrgb, in the 3D section there is Motorstorm Pacific Rift Demo which is actually Motorstorm Rift 3D demo.
1 Track 2 vehicules and 3D support.

[Chiefwinston]

Well I know alot of guys are going to be looking for Crysis 2 opinions today. I have , however, rented and bought a few 3D games they are as follows:

1) Top Spin 4 by 2K sports.
2) The Fight.
3) Ridge Racer 7.

Ridge Racer 7 was on sale at my local rental shop for $10. So I picked it up dirt cheap- it in excellent like new condition.

So as time permits I'll give a run down on my opinion regarding these titles. Heck I may run out and grab a copy of Crysis 2 and review that, also. I won't have time for one big write up so I'll serve up some bits and pieces as time allows.

cheers everyone

[Chiefwinston]

Top Spin 4 is first up. It has excellent move controller support. It took me a little while to get used to the move controller support- but in the end I feel it works quite well for a tennis racket game. You will need plenty of room for this title in order to play it properly. Which brings me to a new problem with current 3D games and where there heading. We are going to need straps to fasten the shutter glasses to your head. Yup- if one really gets into this title you will need some way to tighten these to your head. So with move support this game can be like an indoor in your living room tennis match. It is fun. So this brings me to the graphics and how the 3d looks. I am a bit dissapointed in the graphics overall. Its 2011 and I expect any game company trying to get $60 to use a descent graphics engine. This game does not. The graphics engine will need to be brought up to speed 2K sports. It looks a bit aged. Now its time for the 3D. I had to take my shutter glasses off to make sure the 3D was indeed turned on. Its my second title in a row that I'm not seeing a pronounced 3D effect. I put GT5 in the drive just to make sure and to compare. But yup the 3D is extremely week. So 2K Sports what is up with that. I have played and I am going to buy your wonderful sports title NBA2K11. So I know you guys understand proper 3D. This is one title that could have had that little extra 3D setting for added immersion. So in conclusion, I enjoyed the game play with the move controller. But the lack of 3D in this 3D title means that I'm already done playing this one. If it had better 3D I'd buy this one. I'm glad I rented this one. There's going to be another 3D tennis game coming out soon, also. I will compare the two. The bottom line for my opinion is that the 3D is much to weak. I will keep an eye out for fixes for this from 2K Sports. If the 3D is corrected I'll give it another go. It seams to me that this could possibly be corrected by an update- we'll see.

cheers everyone

[Fredz]

Aren't there any settings available to modify the depth effect in Topspin 4 ?

[Chiefwinston]

Aren't there any settings available to modify the depth effect in Topspin 4 ?

Yes, max depth still = were is the 3D?

cheers everyone

[cybereality]

You can pick up a glasses strap for like $5, similar to what I used to use on the VR920 headset:
http://www.amazon.com/Elastic-Sports-Ba ... 959&sr=8-6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Chiefwinston]

Well Plans change. I picked this up at the rental store. I've been playing it for about 3 hours. It is an improvement 3D wise over the demo. I'm really liking this one. Its gone from dog to a must play now. The 3D is good and very acceptable. I'm thinking the single player looks like one of the best games I've ever played. Much Much more on this one coming soon.......... Its looking really nice on the VT25.

cheers everyone

[Chiefwinston]

I'm not getting that horrible depth poping like I did with the demo. The 3D appears much more stable.

cheers everyone

[Chiefwinston]

I'm not returning this to the rental store. I called and paid the balance for an outright purchase. Sweeeett!!!!!!!!!!!

cheers everyone

[Fredz]

It's quite surprising that you find the depth effect to be good, do you think it's using brute-force S3D rendering instead of the reprojection technique ?

[Chiefwinston]

I've had to massage my settings for Crysis 2. Its not great 3D. But its no longer bad 3D. Its still 2D + depth. I'm still thinking its weak. But it will be good enough to own. I can see the 3D definition in objects now. Though alot of settings look flat. I've found one that looks pretty darn good. I'll list all of them later when I get a chance.

cheers everyone

[cybereality]

It's quite surprising that you find the depth effect to be good, do you think it's using brute-force S3D rendering instead of the reprojection technique ?

@Fredz: Did you see this video and the image I posted? Crytek is not even doing re-projection. They are just taking a 2D image and adding parallax. The only 3D is because the gun and HUD are on different layers. Totally bogus.

[Fredz]

Yes, that's basically how the reprojection technique works, they only render one 2D image and they create two images by using the Z-buffer to calculate the parallax. That's the technique you illustrated with your own pictures some time ago.

For non occluded zones that are seen by both eyes they should have an almost correct 3D image, but with wrong colors sometimes because lighting depends on the viewpoint, this affects mainly specular lighting (round metallic shapes, water, etc.). For occluded zones that are seen by only one eye they simply repeat the background, which gives an incorrect 3D result for these zones, and is the reason why the max separation is limited, in order to not exhibit too much artefacts.

The guys at eurogamer don't know what they're talking about (journalists, not surprising...) and the guy they interviewed neither (PR manager at Crytek, when you want to know something just ask a developer!). They say that the engine is using 3 stacked 2D layers which is wrong, if it was the case you would only have 3 different separations in a screenshot. But if you measure the distance between corresponding points in the 2 views, you can see that there are more than 3 different separation values.

green HUD in lower left : 1915 pixels
yellow part of the arm : 1893 pixels
farthest part of the gun : 1881 pixels
white thing on the ground at the left of the hand : 1867 pixels
black and yellow frame on the ground in the left : 1864 pixels
poster in the bathroom : 1863 pixels

The image I've used to measure distances :

Crysis2Demo35_50.jpg

[AntiCatalyst]

So it IS 3d?

Well then, disregard my last post
Maybe the stereo separation is simply a console value, easy to change in the PC version?


EDIT; seems i was right. I've posted all the relevant console commands over in the Crysis 2 PC 3D support thread

[Chiefwinston]

The 3D is quite touchy in regards to finding the maximum 3d wow point with the PS3. Its is not as good as most dual render solutions. I will still recommend a dual render solution for that really fantastic 3D. The console 3D is weak but combined with the great graphics, silky smooth frame rate, and what looks like really good game play with really good A.I. It has inched its way into my game collection- the 3D section. Those that are expecting superb mind blowing 3D will need to see if the Nvidia or PC solutions can get you to were you need to be. The game is looking very very good to me. The console 2D+depth 3D is the weakest link. It does look much better than the demo that I tried, recently. So there is plenty to bitch about 3D wise. But if you let it get in the way of your enjoyment- your going to miss what looks like a really nice game that does still benefit from the weak 2D+depth 3D. I'm thinking my Panasonic VT25 with all its adjustments may give this game the crutch it needs for acceptable 3D. I believe you will need one of the newer 3D display solutions to get good results or use PC dual render for hopefully fantastic results. I'm away from my equipment right now. I will relay all my settings comprehensively later (tommorrow).

cheers everyone

[Vic]

The image I've used to measure distances :

Crysis2Demo35_50.jpg

could you show us some more screenshots? that only only seems to show the gun and the HUD separate to the rest of the environment.

[Fredz]

You can find more here :
http://www.3dvisionfr.net/ipb/index.php ... entry10344" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And there :
http://www.3dvisionfr.net/index.php?pos ... est-sortie" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But since the gun and the HUD are always at the same place in the screen, I don't see what you expect to see in other screenshots. The gun and the HUD will always look like they are separate because they are much closer to the viewer than the rest of the scene.

I've created a topic to show how to calculate the perceived depth on a 24" display with the screenshot I posted, it may show more clearly that the environment is really in 3D, even if it lacks depth (30cm inside the screen max).

[cybereality]

Yes, that's basically how the reprojection technique works, they only render one 2D image and they create two images by using the Z-buffer to calculate the parallax. That's the technique you illustrated with your own pictures some time ago.

Maybe you misunderstood what I said, and didn't look at the image I posted. I am not talking about reprojection, they are not using the z-buffer in any way. What they are basically doing is taking a 2D screenshot of the whole scene (except for the gun and HUD), duplicating it, then adding an offset. I do not see any 3D whatsoever. Just look at these images below. There are 3 images posts, for fairness. In all cases what I have done is take a stereo screenshot (side-by-side) with the games max 3D setting. Then I brought it into Photoshop and overlaid the left image over the right image at 50% opacity. Then I adjusted the offset between the images so they matched up. Notice how the background shows NO blurring or double-image traditionally associated with a stereoscopic image. It looks totally flat. Its all fake. Wankers.

Crysis2Demo_Fail2.jpg

[AntiCatalyst]

Fredz' screenshot actually does show some parallax. It's just so damn tiny, just 4 pixels in parallax difference from the white thing in the front to the bathroom in the background.

Cyber, try using the "Difference" blending mode when overlaying the image. If there's no parallax, the entire image(well not the gun and HUD) will be black when properly lined up. Otherwise objects at the distance that you lined up will be black, and objects closer and further from that will have white borders.
Note that this will also show any losses from the JPEG algorithm, so make sure your screenshots are saved in a lossless file format.

[Fredz]

That's why I've used an objective measurement, it shows that the parallax is not constant for at least three points in the scene (excluding the gun and the HUD) with distances of 1867, 1864 and 1863 pixels (4 pixels difference as Likay said). If it was a 2D layer, the parallax would be the same for all the points. If you're not convinced, post a side-by-side screenshot of your scene and I'll measure the parallax for several points.

Also, I've already posted several papers in which Crytek explained how they did implement the reprojection technique :
- AAA Stereo-3D in CryENGINE 3 ;
- Optimization for Making Stereoscopic 3D Games on PlayStation® (PS3™) ;
- Future graphics in games.

Since it's a very simple and fast method, that would be completely stupid to use a 2D layer because it has absolutely no advantage over reprojection. Sony also said in their paper that the reprojection technique could produce possible cardboarding, which sounds logical because with the low separation needed by this technique, the depth budget is very much reduced (30 pixels for the whole scene, excluding the HUD).

[PalmerTech]

Wankers.

[cybereality]

So have taken the same shot and used a difference blending mode. So it seems there is actually some reprojection going on, but it is so little they might has well not even bothered. Hell, I think you will get a better 3D effect just playing any old 2D game with pulfrich glasses. Even those x-ray specs they used to sell back in the day would give more depth then this bogus garbage Crytek is calling 3D.

Crysis2Demo_Fail3.jpg

And this is what a REAL 3D image looks like using the same technique:

MirrorsEdge_NV_diff.jpg

[PalmerTech]

The real problem here is not even that Crytek has a subpar solution; It is that they are representing it as THE cutting edge solution. If people think this is the best 3D gaming has to offer, it will not go anywhere.

[Fredz]

Hell, I think you will get a better 3D effect just playing any old 2D game with pulfrich glasses. Even those x-ray specs they used to sell back in the day would give more depth then this bogus garbage Crytek is calling 3D.

I've posted a topic where I calculated the depth you can expect from this game on a 24" monitor. The farthest point I could measure in the scene was 30cm (~12") behind the screen, it may not be much but it still gives some sense of depth. On outdoor scenes it may be more pronounced too, as well as on 50" TVs or with DLP projectors.

But I agree with Palmer, the buzz Crytek created on this title was totally absurd considering the low quality result they have obtained. The bad press they seem to be obtaining will hopefully push them to rush an update to make the brute-force method available.

[cybereality]

The farthest point behind the screen may be 12", but thats only because they are adding an artificial offset between the (mostly flat) images. So all you get is a cardboard cutout of the entire background, just a little bit behind the screen. Still totally bogus.

[AntiCatalyst]

Yeah, the problem is that if the farthest point is 30cm into the screen or whatnot, the closest point is still like 28cm into it.

That difference shot is just sad.

[Chiefwinston]

Well I've been playing Crysis 2 single player for about 9 hours total. I had a big me game fest last night for about 6 hours. The 3D is the weakest link in what could be a very spectacular game. I am actually going to play the game before I render a final opinion. But it does need a bump up in seperation- quite a large bump. It reminds me of when the original Unreal Tournament came out. The brute force method with Nvidia drivers looked just like Crysis 2 for a while. It improved with time. I hope improvements in the 3D can happen with the Crysis 2 game.

Crysis 2= one bad @ss game.

We should work with the developer to see if there's a way to eek out more depth. The game is worth putting in an effort to see if a better outcome with the 3D is possible. In the grand scheme of the world, I have seen much worse 3D. Take anaglyph for example. Or all the movies that were/ are just horrible (there are so many I can’t list them all). In the Crysis 2 world- its just weak 3D.


I ,also, grabbed the SOCOM 4 Beta last night. So I have a mountain of 3D material to work my way through. – Life is good.

Cheers everyone

[Chiefwinston]

Okay, how is Crysis 2 looking on the PC front guys? Are you able to get it running in a dual render format? Are you able to adjust any of the stereo settings with console commands? Are any of the software driver guys making any headway(ddd, nvidia, izod)? The game will be ultra cool If one could get deeper 3D.

cheers everyone

[Chiefwinston]

And now a quick review of Ridge Racer 7. I picked this one up for a quick $10. I downloaded the 3D licence patch from Denmark. And ta da- no 3D. Upon further analysis it appears I need a European version. So my great find and buy has turned into a turd. Oh well it was only $10 for my mistake. I'm going to start my seach for a new European version seeing that my US version doesn't like 3D. **sigh**

cheers everyone