2010-11-26

3D WoW?

You can get computer video cards which support 3D. These allow the game to set up two frame buffers for each point of view (left eye and right eye) from the same scene, and alternate frames to the monitor. They also drive 3D shutter glasses.

This does however mean an expensive video card and expensive high frame rate monitor. The good high resolution monitors tend not to have the necessary frame rate.

However, games could do something different. With just a simple software change they could generate a split screen where left and right eye are side by side on the display. This would work with any video card. If they do that, then you can play on your 3D TV. The TV will split the two images and drive the glasses just the same as a feed from Sky or BD. Many games on consoles already do split screen for multi-player - showing a different viewpoints for different players.

WoW, in 3D, on a 55" HD 3D would be moderately cool!
Even if only possible when my wife is away...

So, Blizzard, please can we have a 3D TV mode for WoW? It's a very simple s/w change...

6 comments:

  1. I thought you could already do this?

    Well, not in WoW ittself but using the nvidia 3d driver. i thought it supported side by side as well as 2 coloured glasses and the active lcd shutter ones. I may be wrong I'll look tonight.

    Of course that would only work with an nvidia card anyway.

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  2. I have been told some playstation games do it too.

    The game needs to know, obviously, to render the left/right eye views.

    I have an nvidia card, not a 3D one, but if it has 3D options that could be fun. I am however running it under linux so finding them may be a challenge

    I think that's going to be a mission though - WoW on 55" HD 3D TV, in the dark, and with a new sound system.

    Sad thing is I never have any time to play, let alone watch TV. Way too much work to do.

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  3. The game doesn't need to to know.

    The driver is clever, and can intercept the direct3d rendering calls and manipulate the projection matrix before actually drawing the image to shift it slightly to the left, and then duplicate the rendering call with the rendering shifted slightly to the right...

    That's how the nvidia active glass work reasonably well even on games that never heard of 3d glasses. I have some and they work pretty well. it just gets tiring to look at the image after a while.

    I'm not 100% certain there is an option for side by side rendering though but I have captured movies from evequest 2 in this format using "fraps" so I think there is. It was a long time ago though so perhaps fraps converted it from some other format before saving it, or I somehow postprocessed it into side by side format. I don't remember doing that but I'll check tonight. Don't think there is any support for this on linux though but I might be wrong.

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  4. OMG, OK, did not realise the level the drivers worked it.

    However, I won't be getting a window box specially for this :-)

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  5. Ok, the nvidia driver doesn't seem to have a side by side mode that I can find. Hmm, how did I make that video I have then.... Doesn't alter the fact that the driver could easily do it though :P

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  6. I never understood why a new tv/monitor is needed if your existing one can do 120Hz+ synched with the graphics card.

    Couldn't we just devote a small area of the screen to a calibration mechanism (maybe even just a cross 3 pixels in diameter)... and have the cross show white/black in alternate frames... that'll give the glasses the frequency. It doesn't even need to be constantly on, it could just be every 100 frames or such.

    Then have glasses that detect the calibration and sync the shutters to it. There will be lag, but the user could turn a knob on the glasses until they find the moment the open shutter is identical to the appropriate left or right image being visible.

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