Official PC Thread

[Frogacuda]

Support for active 3D costs practically nothing if the display is capable of 120Hz input and refresh rate anyway.

It's like $220 for the 3D Vision kit, which is pretty retarded.

Even if it did, I'd much rather just have VR goggles with head tracking for 3D

This is very true. VR headsets were a good idea that was in vogue before the technology there. With the advances in motion tracking and lightweight displays since then, it could really be amazing. You could do a comfortable, lightweight headset with a great picture and responsive tracking. Sony showed a prototype vaguely along these lines at CES, but there's really not a commercial product like this on the market, at least not one that is what it should be.

[FirstBlood]

Even if it did, I'd much rather just have VR goggles with head tracking for 3D

Yes plz.

[sedition]

Wii 2 - Nintendo Revolution.. right?

unfortunately it's still not HD

[sedition]

I'll probably pick up the 3D kit when I can find a good 19x12 24 inch 3D monitor. I ran across this today and thought it was an interesting opinion regarding the 3D revolution.

I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn't work with our brains and it never will.

The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.

This letter is from Walter Murch, seen at left, the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema. As a editor, he must be intimately expert with how an image interacts with the audience's eyes. He won an Academy Award in 1979 for his work on "Apocalypse Now," whose sound was a crucial aspect of its effect.


Now read what Walter Murch says about 3D:

Hello Roger,

I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.

The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.

I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now "opened up" so that your lines of sight are almost -- almost -- parallel to each other.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html

[Opaque]

It helps explain why people like me, and other humans, don't get the same clarity with 3D as we do without; that being that you can't focus and look at two different things at the same time and any trick that tries to make that happen is going to look kind of like shit.

[Frogacuda]

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

This is a really good point. There's an uncomfortability because of it. And, in the case of movies, it's further complicated by the fact that the camera itself still has a fixed depth of field and your eye wants to bring whatever it's looking at into focus, but inherently can't, despite changing convergence. That part isn't an issue for most games though, which don't have a depth of field.

[kedawa]

Wouldn't a properly applied depth of field effect mitigate that to some degree?
I'm not really too concerned about it since my eyes don't converge anyway, but it seems to me that as long as the actual object in focus is at the screen distance, things should look okay. Of course that's very limiting in terms of how you set up the shots, but every technology has its limitations.

[epmode]

So has anyone tried Magicka yet? $10 on Steam, demo here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/42910/

Looks like an ARPG and even soft of plays like one, but the combat system is nuts. You have 8 different types of magic and you cast spells by combining them in various ways. You can cast any spell on yourself, a ranged target or an area of effect. The thing is, there are literally hundreds of combinations. You don't have a mana bar and the cooldown between spells is verrrrrry short.

Four player co-op! Friendly fire! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...id-in-magicka/

#5: Don’t Cross The Streams
What is technically possible: Mixing anything with arcane and then casting it as a projectile creates a tremendous beam of energy. If more than one of you cast these beams and then angle the beams into one another, the beams will become one and damage will be magnified immensely, allowing for the meticulous wholesale slaughter of monsters.

What you will do: Two people from your team will do exactly this. A third member of the team will see what they’re doing and fling a beam of his own into the mix. Amazing! Trembling with excitement, the fourth member of the team will forget the healing spell he was charging and start charging arcane so he can get involved too, neatly forgetting what happens when beams of opposing elements mix. The fourth player’s forgotten healing element infiltrates the choreographed death ray like a murderer creeping in through an unlocked window, causing an epic explosion that kills the entire team instantly.

Seems really clever so far.

[Frogacuda]

Wouldn't a properly applied depth of field effect mitigate that to some degree?

No. When looking at a real 3D image (i.e. real life) your eye refocuses the depth of field based on what part of the image you're looking at. With stereoscopic photography, you can look at different parts of the image and your eyes' convergence will change, but nothing your eye can do will bring a blurry part of the image into focus because the image itself is blurry.

You can reduce the effect of depth of field through various cinematographic techniques (see: Akira Kurosawa movies) but these techniques also tend to reduce the appearance of depth, so it's kind of counterproductive.

I'm not really too concerned about it since my eyes don't converge anyway

This would mean you have permanent double vision.

[Chux]

So has anyone tried Magicka yet? $10 on Steam, demo here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/42910/

Looks like an ARPG and even soft of plays like one, but the combat system is nuts. You have 8 different types of magic and you cast spells by combining them in various ways. You can cast any spell on yourself, a ranged target or an area of effect. The thing is, there are literally hundreds of combinations. You don't have a mana bar and the cooldown between spells is verrrrrry short.

Four player co-op! Friendly fire! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...id-in-magicka/



Seems really clever so far.

Seems neat, might pick it up tonight.