3D gaming - Is it good, bad, not worth it? Y is it not out there completely?

[Anoop Parwani]

Hi,

Im looking to buy a new video card as my current one is faulty. My current video card doesnt support it hence was looking to do 3D gaming with a new one. Most probably a HD 6950.

So i know you need a 3D monitor and glasses to play games in 3d. But when i went on to newegg.com, i could only find one monitor which was 3d ready.

Is 3d gaming not completely out there yet? is it not good? is it not worth it? y is not mainstream yet? are the monitors and glasses to expensive? I tried googling, but only found 1 review which was made in 2009.

Also would any 3d glasses do? or wud i need some particular ones? like can i use those cheap $1-2 3d glasses like the ones u get in theaters? or do i need to buy those expensive battery charged ones?

Also would there be any difference in 3D gaming if i go with an AMD card rather than Nvida?

Would really appreciate your inputs.

Thanks

 

[NTAC]

As far as I know any game that used Direct 3D can be played in 3D.

We did some NVIdia 3d at work and busted out some old games like company of heroes, Madden 08 things like that. The 3D worked just fine... I'm srue games that are specifically designed with 3D in mind would be more impressive.

My ultimate opinoiin on 3d games thus far though is... overrated. Its neat and all, but not worth it yet.

 

[cmdrdredd]

there is a performance hit i believe. My biggest gripe is how 3D is not sharp. Look at a movie in 2D, something in 1080p and notice how crisp it might look. Watch the same movie in 3D and things look soft and blurry. It's totally distracting. Games are no different.

Not to mention the fact that I already wear glasses, how can I wear two sets of glasses for more than 2 hours at a time? I sometimes play a game for 5-6hours or more in a single sitting and I could not imagine wearing the bulky glasses over the top of my regular glasses.

 

[LoneNinja]

Many people, myself included, don't really care for 3d. Then add the fact it requires high end hardware, and silly glasses, and you begin to see why there aren't many people gaming in 3d.

 

[Arkadrel]

Stereo-Blind:
basically people that cant see 3D.

1) you cant see the 3D effects.
2) you can, be experiance extreme unacceptable side-effects like strong headache or nausia.

apperntly somewhere around 12% of all people have this.

here is a small test you can take:
http://www.mediacollege.com/3d/depth-perception/test.html

but before decideing you should go to a PC store, and try it out before buying it.


I usually have a headache after watching a 3D movie in a theatre, but still enjoy it enough to go to 3D movies.
However would I even consider playing a 3D game for 6hours aday? nope.

 

[videopho]

OP-This forum is a wrong place to pose this kind of question since most members here are anti-3d. You won't find your answers here.
Here is the link to NVIDIA 3d forum where you may find more helpful answers.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=209

 

[apoppin]

OP-This forum is a wrong place to pose this kind of question since most members here are anti-3d. You won't find your answers here.
Here is the link to NVIDIA 3d forum where you may find more helpful answers.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=209

Agreed. You will not get any good information here.

ALL of the arguments against it above are complete nonsense
:whiste:

Just checking in - and aloha
()

 

[SirPauly]

there is a performance hit i believe. My biggest gripe is how 3D is not sharp. Look at a movie in 2D, something in 1080p and notice how crisp it might look. Watch the same movie in 3D and things look soft and blurry. It's totally distracting. Games are no different.

Not to mention the fact that I already wear glasses, how can I wear two sets of glasses for more than 2 hours at a time? I sometimes play a game for 5-6hours or more in a single sitting and I could not imagine wearing the bulky glasses over the top of my regular glasses.

With shutters at 1080P -- each eye is seeing 1080P, while other methods may cut the vertical resolution in half. Games are very sharp.

 

[SirPauly]

Many people, myself included, don't really care for 3d. Then add the fact it requires high end hardware, and silly glasses, and you begin to see why there aren't many people gaming in 3d.

They would surprise you and more and more actually are. I don't understand the desire to actually play a 3d accelerated game on a 2d plane of existence when one can play them on a 3d plane.

 

[Dribble]

With shutters at 1080P -- each eye is seeing 1080P, while other methods may cut the vertical resolution in half. Games are very sharp.

+1. The way bluray does 3d it halves resolution. Games using shutter glasses don't, they keep the full resolution.

 

[Seero]

With Nvidia, there is a 2nd gen monitor, with a new feature called 3dlightboost. This tech allows better lighting, as the shutter glass significantly darkens the display.

Although I don't always put on 3D, the price of the setup justifies itself as the price of the 120hz monitor justifies itself. I can tell my wife which TV/monitor is 120hz in a TV shop and my wife still thinks I am crazy as she couldn't see the difference while to me, the difference is laggy vs smooth.

The reasons why I don't play everything under 3d are the problems with 3d in general. First of all, ghosting. The way shutter glasses work is by blocking lights from coming into each eye(read reviews for details), but the blocked side doesn't go completely black, and monitors may not produce distinct pictures. That is, part of the image that are suppose to be seen only by left eye will be pick up by the right eye, and vice versa, and the result is seeing objects with 2 ghostly images at its side. Playing with reflesh rates and light intensity will reduce the magnitude of ghosting, but the quality of the monitor plays the biggest role. Also, depending on the contrast on the scene, ghosting can be detected easily in some games, while not detectable in others.

Now here is the big deal in gaming, most games are not 3D ready. A 3D ready game is a game where everything is rendered through its 3d stage, which are usually rated as "3d ready". Things like UI are usually done at a 2d stage, games that doesn't render its UI properly are usually rated as "Excellent". Although most cut scene are rendered at 3d, artist do add shadows after the image is rendered. The shadow added afterwards wont display properly in 3D. In fact, there are lots of things that you can add into the scene after its render stage, and all these won't show up correctly in 3D. Take the latest game, Skyrim for example, the 3d experience is awesome, except the fact that the UI is in 2d. Without 3d, you won't detect the problem of the quest indicator, but in 3D, those quest indicator does not shows up properly. If you are picky, you will also realized that the clouds in the sky is also not rendered properly in 3d. This may sound bad, but once you played it in 3d, you really can't go back, unless FPS is bad, which is another problem of 3d.

Some say a human eye can see beyond 60FPS. Either I am not a human or they don't have a clue of what they are talking about. I said it above that I can see the difference between 120hz and 60hz Tv, so I can also see the difference from a game is running at 120FPS vesus 60FPS. Going from 120FPS to 60FPS is not the problem although I can detect it, from 40 to 20 is. There are times where I weight FPS over visual, and 3d really becomes an decision more than an option. Shall I go for smooth scene with no visual defects? or mild lag with a bit of visual defects?

Note that some of these problems can be resolved with money. Using Projectors greatly reduce ghosting, and high end (I mean GTX580 SLI) will ensure best FPS, thus making the decision easier to make.

Seriously, playing batman AA in 3D is not the same as in 2D. It is not the same! Jokers look far more realistic and you will actually pay attention to the smallest details of its makeup. Textures of toons are not the same! Trying to shoot something in 3D is very different from 2D, you ain't shooting something smaller, you are shooting something farther.

 

[tigersty1e]

when consoles get it, we'll get it.

 

[Anoop Parwani]

Can i play 3D games on my 3D Plasma TV if i connect it to my video card using the HDMI cable?

 

[apoppin]

+1. The way bluray does 3d it halves resolution. Games using shutter glasses don't, they keep the full resolution.

http://www.i4u.com/47148/lg-cinema-3d-tv-get-full-hd-certification-vde-technically-it-not-full-hd

LG announced today that the German VDE, one of the largest technical and scientific associations in Europe, has certified the LG Cinema 3D TVs to be full HD in 3D-mode. LG’s Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology, used on the CINEMA 3D TVs, creates the perception of 3D depth by delivering two 540 line images, one for each eye, that are then combined via the glasses to create a unified 1080p image. The ruling from the VDE lets LG carry the full HD badge. There is no explanation on how the VDE arrived at this ruling.

There is also new tech in the works - active polarized. i'll be getting Light Boost (3D Vision 2) on Tuesday - just in time for Batman
:whiste:

 

[cmdrdredd]

With shutters at 1080P -- each eye is seeing 1080P, while other methods may cut the vertical resolution in half. Games are very sharp.

I've tried it and no, it's not sharp. It is noticeably blurry. You cannot convince me otherwise because I have experienced it...you know, with my own eyes.

It's the glasses, always has been the glasses. Until there are no glasses it's a waste of time.

 

[apoppin]

Then it wasn't set up properly

 

[cmdrdredd]

Then it wasn't set up properly

It's the glasses. They blur the image by default. Or at least soften it.

I cannot stand it at all. DOn't talk to me about setup properly. If you cannot plug it in and it works then it's not ready for the market, period.

You can love it and tell me it's the best thing ever and all that. I still hate it, always will until they throw out the glasses. I expect I am not the only one.

 

[apoppin]

It's the glasses. They blur the image by default. Or at least soften it.

I cannot stand it at all. DOn't talk to me about setup properly. If you cannot plug it in and it works then it's not ready for the market, period.

You can love it and tell me it's the best thing ever and all that. I still hate it, always will until they throw out the glasses. I expect I am not the only one.

Which glasses? Polarized or active shutter?

i had twenty people audition 3D Vision with me and NONE of them had the issues you have. Do you even know how to *adjust* the convergence?

 

[NIGELG]

Gotta love 3d FANATICS.

 

[apoppin]

Gotta love 3d FANATICS.

That is why the people who know better here, send the S3D questions to other forums.

Most of the haters here have never experienced S3D properly or relate it to some 24fps BS they saw on their friend's 3D HDTV.

i spent 6 months evaluating 3D Vision properly with over 80 games and 20 of my friends and acquaintances got to experience it with me. NONE of them failed to be impressed by it. And some are actually buying it for themselves.

It's ironically ridiculous when i read a PC GAMER post, "if it doesn't work out of the box, it isn't ready for primetime". And yet that same PC gamer will spend hours tweaking his game and his setup to get the ideal experience while ridiculing a console gamer.

 

[taltamir]

I sometimes play a game for 5-6hours or more in a single sitting and I could not imagine wearing the bulky glasses over the top of my regular glasses.

ah, a casual gamer. I often play 15-16 hours in a single sitting... and there are those who put me to shame.
Yea, I totally agree on that point. I am not wearing glassed on top of my already bothersome eyeglasses...

Although, I guess you can use the active stutter glasses with contact lenses.

 

[SirPauly]

I've tried it and no, it's not sharp. It is noticeably blurry. You cannot convince me otherwise because I have experienced it...you know, with my own eyes.

It's the glasses, always has been the glasses. Until there are no glasses it's a waste of time.

What have you tried? How long did you try? When? Did you try to tweak it? What exactly is blurry? What can you tell me about convergence focus?

 

[SirPauly]

Gotta love 3d FANATICS.

I remember when your views were constructive.

 

[SirPauly]

It's the glasses. They blur the image by default. Or at least soften it.

I cannot stand it at all. DOn't talk to me about setup properly. If you cannot plug it in and it works then it's not ready for the market, period.

You can love it and tell me it's the best thing ever and all that. I still hate it, always will until they throw out the glasses. I expect I am not the only one.

If you tried shutters, maybe it was the dimming that bothered you, where there were some loss of color and lighting to some levels. This bothered some. With some tweaking one could improve upon this and to make games sharp, one can play around with an advanced setting -- convergence.

With the next generation of monitors, there is more flexibility and innovation with LightBoost that improves upon the dimming.

For me, all this takes back stage, dimming, glasses, etc., to the biggest distraction which was ghosting or crosstalk, and with each generation, well, it is improving and being curbed more and more.

They do play out-of-the-box but just like adding AA or turning off or on certain settings in a gaming title -- one can tweak stereo3d for one's subjective tastes and tolerances, too.

There is a modest learning curve.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

90% of the time I game I choose to game in 3d. 2d is kinda bland these days.