Meant to be Seen

Hey, I'm noticing a problem with some games where I can get awesome depth, but the HUD gets skewed all to hell. I have some shots I took from Blood Omen 2 to illustrate the concept. While it may be overkill for some people, the first shot is one that I think has good depth. The second shot is one with the best settings I can get to make the HUD readable. Are there any hacks for this sort of thing?

Shots:

http://www.radford.edu/~rscott31/stereo ... ddepth.jps

http://www.radford.edu/~rscott31/stereo ... eadhud.jps

I think that the HUD is so much out of the screen toward you that the left and right pictures of the HUD get out of the screen left and right. You need a way to get the HUD to display at screen depth.

In the NVIDIA stereo drivers, when you go in the control panel, there's a menu called "Stereo Game Configuration". If the game you play is in the list, you can click "Configure Hot Keys..." and see that one of the settings is called "Screen Depth". That enables you to place everything that's closer than the setting you choose at the screen depth. If the thing that's the most out of the screen is the HUD, you can use this to place the HUD at screen depth.

The problem is that this setting does not work with all games. I think that the game need to be in the list but I'm not sure because I know I got this working with Grand Prix Legends (it's not in the list) to get the cockpit in 2D at screen depth while the front wheels were in 3D.

Well I tried enabling all the compatibility settings (Hardware T&L off, etc.), but I still can't get either the screen depth keys or the backplane to do a damn thing. This game is on the list too and gets 1/1, but it looks like some options are locked down.

All of the settings are locked down as long as the profile is in the registry.

Right-click and 'Export' and then right-click and delete it. Then you are free
to set up a new game profile (F7 to save, I think). Or double-click on the
exported registry (.reg) file to reinstall it unchanged.

Once you have got the characters where you like your 3D (with F3/F4),
then you can adjust the HUD (with F5/F6) to where it's usable.

HTH

Well I tried doing what you said, but still no luck. I deleted the profile entirely, went in-game and neither the screen depth nor backplane settings work. Also for it's worth, the F3/F4 and F5/F6 settings worked even before I tinkered with the registry. I've been able to get those to work on every game I've tried so far.

I should have looked at your screenshots first. You seem
to have figured out S-3D configuration just fine. My bad.

For me, they're both hard to look at. I like the background
on the first one, nice separation there. But if you look at
the character, he's starting to separate too.

In the second one, everything is at different focal lengths.

Of course, the HUD has to be at depth zero (no separation
at all). But the character is in front, and then the scenery.

S-3D replicates passively an active process (stereo focus)
and I find it hard on my eyes when the character is in the
frame. Can you play this first-person (instead of what you
have now - third-person) ? I think most games do this, and
it's much easier on the eyes.

My $.02