Nvidia 3D Vision support for COH/V Discusion
By
AussieBadGuy,
Posted on: 2010-10-03 08:40 in Player Questions
Soon™
pohsyb: so of all people you must be most excited about the veats
Arachnos Commander: actually, I am
pohsyb: I mean you kinda were one already anyways ^_^
Arachnos Commander:
Umm... Sorry, but NO!
I would not agree because of the following:
- I do not have the $400-600 to upgrade my rig and monitor to support the system. (i.e. Vid card to support, new PSU most likely, New Monitor, and the 3D equipment itself...)
- I wear glasses as is. I do not feel the added need to put on a glasses-like device on top of my glasses for a minimal ohh-ahh factor.
- I have actually tried the NVidia system. I don't find the 3D effects all that jaw dropping.
As it is, I'm looking to upgrade my vid card so I can enjoy Ultra Mode , but I'm not looking to get something extravagant. Hopefully it'll be a nice Christmas present to myself.
I do not see it worth the Developers time and effort to shoehorn in 3D effects at this time. While they have been able to do quite a lot with the current engine, I feel that would be too much for very, very little gain.
Thank you for the time...
@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test) 
...
okay. You seriously need to read some my posts on the subject of Multi-Monitor / 3D Vision Surround Support:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...t=stereoscopic
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post3010830
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post2723058
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post2721555
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post2688126
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post2520954
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ic#post2453139
As you can see, the subject comes up on a regular basis. You are not the first poster to think that Stereoscopic 3D is something that has to be enabled by the developer.
Stereoscopic 3D is handled by the graphics driver, not by the game. In a nut-shell, Stereoscopic 3D is simply taking the camera position given by the game, then separating that camera position into two different frames of reference, then feeding back the off-center angles to the monitors.
As mentioned many of the times this subject has come up before, various 3rd parties have been doing this angle separation outside of original developers support for years, such as IZ3D and Nvidia. In most (95%+) of the games Nvidia offers Stereoscopic support for there has been absolutely zero input or work done on the game to support Stereoscopic viewing on the part of the game developer. All of the work to support the stereoscopic rendering is done in the Nvidia driver.
So if you want Stereoscopic 3D support, you need to go talk to Nvidia. Not Paragon Studios.
Let me repeat that.
You need to talk to Nvidia. Not Paragon Studios.
* * *
Now, since I am sure some jerk is going to bring up multi-monitor support, aka Matrox Triple Vision, AMD Eyefinity, and the deliberately confusingly named Nvidia 3D Surround Vision, these types of technologies are not entirely handled by the graphics driver.
In the case of City Of Heroes, the game essentially includes it's own internal window manger, allowing the positioning and in many cases, resizing of the internal dialog windows. The window manager seems to be one of the technical reasons City of Heroes breaks when trying to run in triple-monitor configurations. It's not the only one, but it is one example where the game developers do need to do some internal work to account for how the game will perform on a 3rd party feature.
Multi-GPU support is another such situations. CoH famously doesn't support Multi-GPU modes, mostly because neither AMD nor Nvidia have fully matured OpenGL 3.x / 4.x drivers and CoH Ultra Mode was the first commercial OpenGL 3.x fast-pass oriented rendering system they had to work with. In many cases Multi-GPU support can be forced at a driver level, but there are some code-optimizations the developers can perform on graphics engine to leverage the presence of multiple GPU's.
Now, since I am sure some jerk is going to bring up multi-monitor support, aka Matrox Triple Vision, AMD Eyefinity, and the deliberately confusingly named Nvidia 3D Surround Vision, these types of technologies are not entirely handled by the graphics driver.
In the case of City Of Heroes, the game essentially includes it's own internal window manger, allowing the positioning and in many cases, resizing of the internal dialog windows. The window manager seems to be one of the technical reasons City of Heroes breaks when trying to run in triple-monitor configurations. It's not the only one, but it is one example where the game developers do need to do some internal work to account for how the game will perform on a 3rd party feature.
Multi-GPU support is another such situations. CoH famously doesn't support Multi-GPU modes, mostly because neither AMD nor Nvidia have fully matured OpenGL 3.x / 4.x drivers and CoH Ultra Mode was the first commercial OpenGL 3.x fast-pass oriented rendering system they had to work with. In many cases Multi-GPU support can be forced at a driver level, but there are some code-optimizations the developers can perform on graphics engine to leverage the presence of multiple GPU's.
Quote:
This covers about 95% of the work needed for stereoscopic display, but there are a few bits that only the developer can do:|
Originally Posted by je_saist
So if you want Stereoscopic 3D support, you need to go talk to Nvidia. Not Paragon Studios.
Let me repeat that. You need to talk to Nvidia. Not Paragon Studios. |
1) The GUI/HUD. On a stereoscopic display, 2D elements such as these will, if unmodified, display at infinity -- in other words, they'll appear to be behind the rest of the content. This causes strain because stereopsis is telling your brain that they're behind everything, but occlusion is telling it that they're in front of everything. The developer needs to give these elements a well-defined position in the world -- Nvidia can try to detect these and move them into the world, but it doesn't always work right.
2) Screen-level special effects. Some effects, such as glows and blurs, are drawn at the screen level (2D) rather than in the world (3D), giving the same issue as the GUI. The developer needs to either move these effects into the world or disable them -- Nvidia can't do anything about this.
3) Billboarded effects. A cheap way of creating volumetric effects such as glows/lens flares around bright lights is to create a 2D object slightly in front of the light and have it always face the camera. This doesn't work on a stereo display -- they're clearly flat objects, and there's nothing Nvidia can do about it.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tymers_Realm
Umm... Sorry, but NO!
I would not agree because of the following:
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Umm... guess what... I WASN'T ASKING YOU! (This may actually come as a shock to you, i know).... If you and your wonderful glasses could READ i was asking people WHO ALREADY HAD AND HAVE EXPERIENCED 3D Vision!... And when i upgraded my system over 9-12 months ago for 3D Vision, it was more like $800 i spend to upgrade and you don't see me QQ'ing... SO realize before you answer that maybe SOME of us do work jobs, and earn money... and spend our money on things we like...... and hopefully we don't have to sit here and listen to the uninformed opinion of people who are answering a question that wasn't asked to them, and commenting on a subject they haven't experienced first hand or have any intentions of experiencing.... I mean WHY BOTHER REPLYING if you don't want anything to do with 3D vision...please... go away.
*Shoos you out the door with a broom."
Quote:
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Originally Posted by je_saist
...
okay. You seriously need to read some my posts on the subject of Multi-Monitor / 3D Vision Surround Support: As you can see, the subject comes up on a regular basis. You are not the first poster to think that Stereoscopic 3D is something that has to be enabled by the developer. |
As for this... well then maybe SOMEONE NEEDS TO FIX THE "FORUM; SEARCH" engine... becuase i typed in multiple different options for searching for a answer to this on the forums here and nothing come up that related to what i wanted to know.So yes, i did do a forum search and came up with diddly quat, zero, zip, nada of any useful information.
...And the reason i talk about "support" for 3D Vision by the Dev's is becuase im talking about "Support"... NOT JUST the ability to do it....ie, WoW and a few other games have a Stereoscopic video options tab with slider bars for both perspective and distance. Now im pretty darn sure that this level of adjustment of the 3D Vision was developed by the Blizzard Dev's and not Nvidia.
So what im asking the Dev's for CoH/V is that do they have any future plans for working hand in hand with Developing some support and 3D vision video adjustment options for CoH/V and getting onto the appropriate people to implement the Stereoscopic ability into the game.
Seriously... less "
Hate Mail" and "
Nerd Rage" replies please... and more serious discussion about what would be good or bad points about the game's grafix options that may be considered when using 3D Vision.One thing that i know from experience was a problem with Fallout 3 was the water reflections. I hope i wouldn't have to turn off the awesome new look of the CoH/V water with the Ultra settings if/when we get to use 3D Vision. Lighting i cant see being too much of a problem, but definitely reflective surfaces. But then, maybe some of the Auras may bring some problems for rendering.
Glad we got things back on track.
A) the only person exhibiting emotion here is you. You're the only one nerd raging.
B) you posted in Player Questions. Don't get on people's cases for thinking you were asking something. And don't get pissy when people misunderstood you because you posted in some kind of silly RP-speak.
C) Petitioning and lobbying isn't allowed by the forum rules. Post your clearly stated suggestion in Suggestions and Ideas and have a civil discussion about it with anyone who replies, even (and especially) if they disagree.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
Quote:
Damn i hope so!...i know Champions online was OMG TERRIBLE in 3D vision!|
Originally Posted by Commander
Soon™
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Everything was at wrong depth and the lighting and smoke just made things worse. For the brief few days i played the CO trial, i was only able to try it in 3D vision for about 10-20 mins before i gave up and played it normally.... then realized it was still a garbage game and stopped playing ti all together after a few hours.
The only game ive seen better than WoW with 3D vision (for realism) was Aion online. THAT was extremely impressive with the crispness and clarity of the 3D rendered characters, but it did have 1 draw back. To get it looking that good, it made far away distance all out of focus then. So for a better "average" all round look, WoW is still pretty good for the simple reason of the Two Adjustment Slider Bars, for Distance and Perspective.
If the CoH/V Dev do look into working with Nvidia with 3D vision support, i would urge them to please consider having these visual adjustments into the Video options tab please.
Quote:
*cough*...|
Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
A) the only person exhibiting emotion here is you. You're the only one nerd raging.
B) you posted in Player Questions. Don't get on people's cases for thinking you were asking something. And don't get pissy when people misunderstood you because you posted in some kind of silly RP-speak. C) Petitioning and lobbying isn't allowed by the forum rules. Post your clearly stated suggestion in Suggestions and Ideas and have a civil discussion about it with anyone who replies, even (and especially) if they disagree. |
A) You confuse "Caps lock" for exhibiting emotions. The words in capitals are there to highlight key points im trying to make, umm... not "yelling". *sigh*
B) Yes i posted in player questions, but also as you fail to read and see that i was asking specific players, NOT just anyone, but specifically people WITH Nvidia 3D Vision, as my question clearly states. So please borrow the other guys glasses please so you can re-...
wait, scratch that idea, becuase even with his glasses he couldn't read the words properly. *sigh*C)
Sure, if at 3 in the morning when i made this post i could find the "Suggestions and Ideas" folder... IF i could find it... Even looking now i can't seem to find a "Suggestions and Ideas" folder or even sub-folder.SOOOOO..... what i thought i'd do is post it here since what im asking is a player question and i felt it was the most appropriate place to post this thread.
I have no problems if people "Agree" or "Disagree" with my question... umm... OK let me put it like this... I have no problems with people giving a Positive or Negative response in reply to my question. BUT I DO ASK that those who are replying are actually people who own and use (have used) 3D vision, and not just someone who doesn't have the money, having a bit of a QQ about the price... I mean, honestly, is that TOO MUCH to ask?
.... Seriously, the persons whole basis for his "NO!" was that he cant afford it, and the Vision eyewear is not comfortable with their glasses on. SO becuase of that, they feel the rest of us WITH 3D Vision should miss out... Am i not the only one who sees this as extremely selfish? Like a spoiled brat saying the rest of us need to miss out becuase THEY cant afford the $400? Because my question was about "..wanting to see CoH/V with stereoscopic capabilities..", and their answer was "NO!"
PS. Ahh, and also "Smiley Faces" arn't emotions either, they are just... ummm... smiley faces.
Are we safe to getting back on track now?
A) I wasn't even referring to your overuse of your caps lock. I referring to the tone of the word usements you structured into sentencelike things.
B) Still the wrong section, don't really care how you try to justify it. Need I even mention that your style leaves a lot to be desired in the clarity department? Between mashed idioms, poor spelling, and typos you're lucky we don't think you translated through babelfish.
C) This is an open forum. Anyone can play in the sandbox. You don't get to say who can/can't reply, especially in such a crappy way as you have. You can't limit the subset of people answering to just people who already have 3D and play this game. That number is quite likely less than 100 or so people. You're talking about support for a new technology. If the dev team has to do stuff for that (based on the above replies I'm not convinced they do), that means development time, which comes out of everyone's fees. There's got to be good reasons for adding new tech to the game, and hearing the vocal cries of a small minority isn't going to give that to the dev team.
Besides, the last time they jumped on a new graphics tech AGEIA PhysX they did it very early in the product cycle when very few people had the cards or drivers to support it. Because of slow updates from them, and the fact that they were bought out and the tech eventually became part of a lot of graphics cards anyway, it's generally been considered that a hash was made of the whole project.
3D systems for games are in about the same state. It's going to be far better if the team doesn't repeat past mistakes and try to jump on a bandwagon early.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
Quote:
Reflections are always a problem in 3D. Try looking at a reflective surface in the real world sometime: you can either focus on the surface of the object, or focus on the object reflected in that surface.|
Originally Posted by AussieBadGuy
One thing that i know from experience was a problem with Fallout 3 was the water reflections. I hope i wouldn't have to turn off the awesome new look of the CoH/V water with the Ultra settings if/when we get to use 3D Vision. Lighting i cant see being too much of a problem, but definitely reflective surfaces. But then, maybe some of the Auras may bring some problems for rendering.
|
Proper computation of reflections involves reflecting the camera through the plane of the reflective surface and rendering the scene from there; equivalently, you can reflect the entire scene through the surface of reflection and render it using the normal camera. This is what the floor in City Hall in Atlas Park does, and it should work just fine in stereoscopic 3D.
Shader-based reflections (such as what Ultra Mode does) often take shortcuts that look "good enough", and these shortcuts tend to break badly in a stereoscopic environment.
There's a third way of doing "reflection" that shows up from time to time in City of Heroes (eg. on Praetorian doors and solar panels): environment mapping. Take a picture of distant elements of the world, overlay it on the "reflective" object, and slide the image around as the object and camera move. This gives the impression of a reflective surface at a very low computational cost, but it looks wrong if you're paying attention, and breaks horribly with stereoscopic 3D.
Quote:
Yeah that is true in a lot of cases. Hey if i have to do what i did with Fallout 3 and turn off water reflections, then so be it. Im sure its something that can be worked out later too. |
Originally Posted by Katie V
Reflections are always a problem in 3D. Try looking at a reflective surface in the real world sometime: you can either focus on the surface of the object, or focus on the object reflected in that surface.
Proper computation of reflections involves reflecting the camera through the plane of the reflective surface and rendering the scene from there; equivalently, you can reflect the entire scene through the surface of reflection and render it using the normal camera. This is what the floor in City Hall in Atlas Park does, and it should work just fine in stereoscopic 3D. Shader-based reflections (such as what Ultra Mode does) often take shortcuts that look "good enough", and these shortcuts tend to break badly in a stereoscopic environment. There's a third way of doing "reflection" that shows up from time to time in City of Heroes (eg. on Praetorian doors and solar panels): environment mapping. Take a picture of distant elements of the world, overlay it on the "reflective" object, and slide the image around as the object and camera move. This gives the impression of a reflective surface at a very low computational cost, but it looks wrong if you're paying attention, and breaks horribly with stereoscopic 3D. |
The thing with the objects in the distance too, i don't know if this will also cause problems, becuase of how fuzzy things look (intentionally) from so far away. This might also be another setting i have to turn off.
Another problem might be bloom lighting and some of the complex spell animations and grafix. Basically from my experience already, anything that looks like a "nebula" is probably the hardest thing for the 3D to workout. Gaseous and light filled.... totally confuses the poor 3D.
Look, I've hung a man or two in my time but that don't make me Judge, but you'd have to be as high as a tick on stump-wood liquor not to want to play this awesome game in full stereoscopic 3D.
So I'm putting it forward that if the Devs aint already scootin' their boots to the tune of 3D,they'd best be gettin' a mosey on then.
Questing to the people and players out there in Computer-land.
"How many of you people with 3D Vision capabilities want to see COH/V with Stereoscopic support?"
Question to the Developers out there in...development-land?...
"Have you thought about adding 3D Vision support in any up and coming patches? If so how far off would it be from implementing into the game? And if not, is there any major obstacles or issues that is stopping you from giving us the ability to play CoH/V with 3D Vision?"
You have don't such a great job with the ULTRA grafix, so yeah can we just take it to the next level and make it "ZOMG mind blowing" 3d Please?
I hope im not the only player wishing to see this. Please voice your support here if you are a player wanting the Devs to look into 3D Vision support. If enough of us poke them with soft cushins, they just might do it for us. Because when my toon is running around with his underpants on the outside of his pants, i want to see that crotch bulge bursting out of my screen! Who's with me. eh?