3D Gaming

[WalrusDerp]

So, Escapist, I ask for your ears for just a moment.

Tonight, I tried something I haven't tried before.

I played a game in 3D.

Did I spend tons of money on glasses and a special monitor? No, I'm not going to make that big of an investment just yet. I did, however, use some super cheap red/blue 3D glasses, which worked quite well. Most of the colour was gone, but the effect was a lot more pronunced than I thought it would be.

Starting up Dead Space 2 (pretty good game, by the way), I could tell right away that it was different. The menu was popped out of the screen a bit, and the background seemed like, well, a background.

Loading up a save, the increased depth was MUCH more noticeable, and actually made for a nice effect. Sadly, the glasses cut out a good bit of important colour, like the yellow-ish glow of the weak point on one of the necromorphs. Dead Space 2 might not be the game to play.

Also of note, my framerate was halved, but still remained in the high 30s up to around 70, so it was still playable.

Escapists! Have you had any experience with 3D gaming, and if so, how was it? If not, why?

 

[Woodsey]

No, and I have no intention of either.

Pretty sure it still fucks up the image quality on a lot of games, which is just a total waste of time. Games on consoles are often annoyingly blurry, so I'm certainly not looking for a way to fuck up image quality on my PC.

Outside of that, too much stuff and cost for no real benefit.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I plan on getting a 3DS once the next one comes out (3DS-lite sounds idiotic but you know what I mean)

As for weather or not I've played a 3D game before now...I don't think I have. I may have at a theme park or something but nothing in home that I can think of. I've also done a couple of 3DS demos but I haven't been able to play with one long enough to see if the motion sickness thing would effect me personally.

 

[Zac Smith]

I went into Best Buy for the first time the other week (I'm from the UK so haven't exactly got them EVEYWHERE, so when one popped up near me I had a look) and while there they had a top of the line brand new PC running 3D gaming, with glasses and all, and both me and my brother noticed a small difference, but nothing that drastically changed the game itself. Unless it improves the game sevenfold, I won't fork out the expense for it

 

[captaincabbage]

Meh, I tried it on Killzone 3, didn't like it so I turned it off after 30 minutes.

Just like motion controls, it's a fad that games are going through which will disappear in time as developers and publishers will rediscover the fact that Yahtzee quite poignantly summed up: "Controllers have always been a perfectly acceptable way to connect man to maching via way of thumbs."
I might have forgotten some of the words, but that's pretty much it.

 

[Antagonist86]

I've tried, I played a 3DS for about 2 hours and had a headache for almost a day.
I didn't notice the 3D effect to be honest but I did like the AR minigames you get with the cards.

I been to a dealers-expo via work and played Batman Arkham Asylum, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Dead Space 2 in 3D, and I didn't see it, I did however had a headache for a week.

I recently tried gaming on the new LG Optimus and I can't say I could see it on that either. (extremely nice phone btw)

So it seems my brain just doesn't work on "3D" mode.

 

[Pengowen]

Huge money dump!

 

[Twilight_guy]

I have never played a game projected in the z-plane to create a surface (Which is the modern day 3D trick). Although I have played games that use 3 dimensional graphics. Yeah I know that's not what you meant but the leap from 2D to 3D in games was big and the idea of 3D in games can be confusing if you don't separate between the two. No, I haven't palyed a game that uses a stereoscopic projection though. (Also, the reason your frame rate cuts in half probably has something to do with the fact that your computer now has to render two slightly different images, one for each eye, instead of just one in order to create a frame so the work load doubles and thus the frame rate halfs.)

 

[leady129]

I'm an avid supporter of 3D. Yeah, I know it's a cheap gimmick, but nyeh... I suppose it helps that I have the apparent unnatural ability to use 3D as long as I want without feeling nautious or coming down with headaches.

Red/ Blue however can get annoying, now that the tech is out there for much better results. Shutter glasses are the way to go until they bring out glasses-less.

 

[Wuggy]

It would be interesting to try out but... unless it adds anything gameplay wise AND they'll be able to make it non-glasses, I'm spending no money to 3D.

 

[Gregg Lonsdale]

About a year ago I came across $700 in a tax return, and decided to invest it in a 3d monitor. The idea intrigues me, and so i thought "why not"? in the end i was disappointed. The 3d works fine and it is indeed fun to play 3d audiosurf when severely inebriated, but apart from that the added lag to most games forces me to turn the 3d off. If i had the money now to buy a better graphics card that would probably solve this problem, but i don't so i can't.

In terms of actual addition to the gameplay experience the only real advantage is that it makes the heads up display look a lot more "heads up" than most games, but apart from that there isn't much to say. Only some of the new release games that are actually optimised for 3d (like portal 2 and crysis 2) have good enough 3d to make me want to turn it on, and most games have little faults that make it ugly overall, like bits of gravel mixed into in a bowl of ice-cream.

So overall, not worth the investment. Like I said, it was free government money, but it would've been better spent on a new motherboard or a pet llama or something.