Will we see a trend of stereoscopic 3D games coming up in the near future?

Question

I've noticed that the trend of movies is diving into the world of movies with 3-dimensional camera.For me it provoked a thought as if it was the same feeling people got when they saw a colour movie for the first time, like in the transition from black and white to colour it is a whole new experience. For the first time we are experiencing the Z(depth) factor and I really mean when I said "experiencing".

So my question is or maybe if not a question, but Is there a possibility of a genre of 3d camera games upcoming?

Answer 1

Short term, yes but for two different reasons.

1) The Nintendo 3DS is coming out soon with its set of 3D games. That platform has glasses-free hardware built in, and I'm sure the majority of those games are going to take advantage of it in some fashion (it may even be a cert requirement for the platform, I don't know).

2) At least in the living room space, the console makers (Sony specifically) are asking their teams to include 3D features in their games so they have something they can use to push 3D TVs. The hardware isn't there yet to make the investment worth it from an independent developer point of view, but people like Sony can use it as an excuse to improve their sales across the entirety of their product lineup.

Answer 2

3D with shutter glasses first appeared on the PC almost a decade ago. 3D cinemas (using polarised glasses) have been around for even longer, although primiarly at theme parks.

It didn't take off then, and little has changed since then, really.

Nobody wants to wear 3D glasses for their daily living room TV viewing, and it's not a whole lot more appealing for regular gaming.

But even if you don't mind the glasses, there's another perhaps more serious problem. On current platforms, stereoscopic 3D often offers a significantly worse experience than 'flat 3D', as rendering the scene for each eye usually results in a halving of the framerate.

I recently looked at Gran Turismo 5 on a 3D TV, it was not impressive. The framerate was all over the place, ruining the 3D effect. Switch off 3D mode and you've got a much nicer game, running at a lovely smooth 60fps.

I'm sure there'll be a lot more games released with 3D support in the near future, simply becaust the hardware support is now there. But it's likely to be more as a 'tick the box' extra feature, rather than a fundamental part of the game, and at the price of a severe drop in framerate and/or image quality.

The 3DS, on the other hand, is likely to be a big success. (Although Nintendo's only big hardware release failure was their last attempt at 3D, the Virtual Boy...). But I wouldn't be surprised if most gamers turn off the 3D effect after the novelty factor quickly wears off.

Answer 3

I certainly hope so. The current crop of glasses-bound 3D displays is too awkward for filmed entertainment, especially if you wish to watch it in company. I will not re-iterate the arguments here, but suffice to say I saw an ad yesterday that said "now with free second pair of 3D glasses".

However, this is not necessarily a problem for games. Gaming is an immersive activity, meaning that when you game that's the main focus of your attention, more-so than watching a film. Having to wear special glasses is less of a burden. Since the scene is especially rendered for your situation, a bit of basic head-tracking could solve the single biggest problem with current-gen 3D, the horrible parallax you see when you move your head even a little bit.

To summarize, I surely hope we get some good 3D games in the near future, because the current crop of 3D displays are worthless for all other endeavours.

Answer 4

Considering how little work is generally required to add 3D support to a game and that most earlier solutions for PCs had simple driver shims that added this on-the-fly for many games without even rewriting them, yes certainly - now that 3D movies have (re)started mainstream interest in the concept...