Correct me if I am wrong but I think that 3D requires a monitor with a 120Hz refresh rate.

It is not the same thing. You don't need the processes of making a good 3D stereoscopic movie in a game. By definition, games are already 3D. 3D depth data is present in games, known as depthbuffer or z buffer. Besides in games, full position data is available too. So that's how your video card knows how to make it 3D and shade it correctly. The pop-outs, now they are different. Normally they shouldn't pop-out of screen like in Avatar example where screen is like a window. But it is possible to make things pop-out of screen too. That may need some additional work for developers(adjusting depth values of custom elements to make them pop out of screen), but it won't look awful without it, it will look like Avatar.

In AiW, they create fake depth layers to give 3D, I think. Their digital parts, which occupies %60 of screen have correct depth values because of being digital. It is only the actors ruining it. Also most of the actors are just faces, bodies digital. So I think Alice might have worked better than let's say Clash of Titans. Unfortunately I didn't see both, so mine is just an assumption. I will guess only creature effects looked 3D in Clash of Titans.

You need only hardware and driver support. Game developers must just make sure the hud, sky boxes, particle layers don't ruin the vision(which should come by default). So it is a choice and 3D will only do good in game be it a 3D puzzle to be solved or high pace action with particles flying all around after an explosion or an arrow coming to you in TES game. It is about immersion. It can work. Again it is user's choice to switch it on. It has no cost to a player who wants to play 2D. But:

@miltos33,
yes. You have to double everything. Hopefully it will become more accessible in the future.

3D isn't something I'm into in general, but in the case of Oblivion, I would like to see it in person.

I saw a website the other month where people posted stereoscopic (cross your eyes) 3D images from games including TES4 and FO3, and it actually looked pretty friggin cool. I'll see if I can dig up the link when I get up this afternoon. (yay nightshift).

Whoop, looks like I had it bookmarked.

Oblivion in s-3d
http://www.mtbs3d.com/cgi-bin/game_reviews.cgi?news_id=49

Fallout 3 in s-3d
http://www.mtbs3d.com/cgi-bin/game_reviews.cgi?news_id=62

My recommended viewing technique:
- download the fullsize stereo images
- resize them to the max width of your monitor
- get good at crossing your eyes (I can do this well, but for some people it is very challenging to cross-eye an image this big

- your browser might also have an auto-resize function that works well, or not.

But seriously, check out the image of the wraith, with its hand reaching forward, and its translucent robe letting you see the depth of the ruined colloumn behind it. And any picture of something exploding in the Fallout 3 gallery.

Looking at these, I wonder if 3D gaming might actually have some merit. I don't know. Like I said, I'm a nay-sayer on 3d in general, but these pics are enough to make me question.

I recently bought a 120Hz monitor and the nVidia 3dvision setup. Of course my first thoughts were to try the system with Oblivion and Morrowind. Unfortunately I had so many graphical mods already installed that the rendered depths of the objects and sprites were all wrong. 3Dvision has worked well with most other games I've tried so far, adding immersion and even making aiming easier in first person shooters. This tech seems to be working on some level or other on most 3d engines from the last 7 years or so.

I shall try a clean install of ES 3 and 4 later on to try them again, the extra immersion will be a great thing.

As for the glasses, the ones nVidia supply are quite comfortable with their interchangeable nose pieces. The even fit over my regular glasses with no problem, so they are certainly better than the cheap cinema ones.

3D just sounds like another money-making gimmick to me, so the answer's no. Also, I don't particularly care for it.

Unless it could support it, but I don't think I would use it.

Yeah, why even bother with polygons? Or even any graphics at all to do with that, they're just graphical gimmicks getting in the way of the story after all. Perhaps we should go back to making nothing but text adventures.
Every luxury item is a money making gimmick, even the computer you are posting on this forum with. There is no shame in trying to add some progress to the market. Yes, 3D was tried before in the early 90s or so, but the technology wasn't quite there yet.

Don't knock this new look into 3D until you've tried it.



Good news, the current tech being used is backwards compatible with most engines. ES5 will have 3D support with nVidia if it has the silly "Way it's meant to be played" certification or not.

Oh God I hope it is.

The old text based games were awsome.

You were given a description of the area you were in and you type in actions, like "climb tree", "eat plant", or "press button".

: Press Button
:>You Press Button
:>Machine begins to stir making a grinding sound as it whurs into action.
: Press Button again
:>The Machine makes a screching sound and it comes to a holt, you see oil trickling down from a hole in the side.
: Press Button again
:>The Machine is silent
: Press Buton again
:> The Machine is silent
: Look at hole
:>You look at the hole. Oil is dripping from the hole.
: Put finger in hole
:>you cant do that
: Put finger in hole
:>You cant do that
: Put rag in hole
:> You pull the rag out of your pocket and stuff it into the hole. The rag now has oil on it.
: Get out lighter
:> You are holding the lighter in your right hand
: Set fire to rag
:> The rag slowly burns away and the flames disapear into the machine
: Look at hole
:> There is an oily rag stuffed into the hole.
:>> The fire has ignited the fuel reserves inside the machine and the machine has exploded. Taking you along with it.

Game Over.

My favourite of them was

> Eat self.
Auto-cannibalism is not the answer!

or the Lord of the Rings one where if you tried to hit yourself your companions would go berserk and kill eat other.

> Hit self
Pippin hits Sam.
The blow glances off Sam
Sam punches Pippin
Sam cleaves Pippin's skull
Sam waits
Sam waits

"Oblivion has earned the highest respect in the 2D gaming world"

This so annoys me. Oblivion has more than 2 dimensions. Do people actually know what 2D/3D means nowadays? Since when was something 2D when it doesn't use silly glasses? :facepalm:

I'm sure they know. When you have stereoscopic 3D, other games will look 2D. Most games and movies are 3D but they are being downgraded to 2D to be viewable on our monitors.

Let's hope they figure a way to get rid of the glasses, the dimming is unacceptable.

Most games have brightness and gamma settings to change...
Anyway, the 3D tech that's been under R&D for a good long while now is soon to be released via the Nintendo 3DS if I read the specs right. Real time holography is quite possible with two high enough resolution LCD or LED screens on top of each other. The lower will display colours at varying brightness whilst the upper shows a diffraction grating in the particular pattern needed to create the hologram for the frame being rendered.

We'd likely need to move away from square pixels for the grating though, too imprecise. Maybe triangular or overlapping spherical ones? Either way, there will be a great problem of an incredibly narrow viewing angle on these types of monitors, with shape and colour distortions becoming quite prominent with even the slightest deviation from the optimum angle. Perhaps this is why this tech is coming out on a handheld first.

Well, it's progress. One step at a time.

3d games arn't that hard to do, in fact I have added 3d to one of the games I am currently working on, but it does require a very high frame rate, so I doubt that any elder scrolls will have 3d and if they do it will probably be toggleable

This.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-crysis-2/101367?type=flv

Can you see and name one thing about 3D making the game bad in any way? Exactly! The game will be good or bad in its own measurements, 3D has nothing do to with it.

It is as natural as playing it stereo sound or 5.1, 2D or 3D.

3D doesn't look very realistic to me, because all I end up seeing are layered 2D objects jutting out at me (is this normal?). To make matters worse, I can never see properly through 3D glasses. I only see either red or blue, and it is rare that the two colors blend properly so I can see in normal colors. I saw the 3D centerfold in Playboy a month ago, and it gave me a headache .

And no, there is nothing wrong with my eyes. I don't need to wear glasses or contacts, but for some reason, 3D glasses just don't work for me.

There is nothing wrong with your eyes, those you viewed were bad examples of 3D. Red-Cyan are last gen. Now they have polarized glasses which shows true colors.

I didn't see good examples except some short IMAX films. I can say Avatar was A+, Final Destination was B, Journey to the center of World was a C, in terms of 3D. I didn't see conversions like Alice or Clash of the Titans. For games there is no need for conversions, so you will always get the full deal.

3d is the new HD.

KK a bit about 3D. First of all Beth doesn't have to do extra work for 3D. Unlike movies where they need two cameras side by side to do 3D, in games the video card simply renders the view from two perspectives separated by the distance of human eyes. In fact Morrowind is already 3D playable. I read a review of nvidia's 3d system and they said games were incredible and Oblivion was simply unreal with a few minor problems which I will discuss in a second. So lets take a moment and review 3D types.

First as most know we get 3D image from the two slightly different perspectives each eyes gives us so to mimic 3D each eye must perceive a different picture.

1. Early 3D used color and those fun color lensed cardboard glasses. I saw Snow White in this type of 3D 25 years ago as a young kid. Not sure exactly how these worked but it the picture used color in which one of the lenses would filter it out while the other eye could see it.

2. What you see in almost all theaters today uses polarization. Two projectors, or a single projector with two lenses, display two images in the same place, left eye right eye. The lenses have polarized filters 90 degrees off set from the other lenses. The glasses are simply polarized lenses like you can get at the store that match the filters on the projector lenses. So each eye cannot see what the other eye is being shown. The down side is the filters are never perfectly matched, screen surface is uneven reflecting an image no longer highly filtered so the 3D image is degraded. The up side is polarized glasses are cheap so if people take them you lose very little and the glasses can be fairly light weight.

3. Alternate frame rendering and shutter glasses. Single projector/LCD displays one eye image then the other. When the left eye image is on the screen the right eye is completely darkened on the glasses. Next the right eye image is shown and the left glass's lens is blackened. The frame changes 120 times/second or 120hz which is much higher than the 24hz movies are filmed at and double the upper limit a human eye and brain can detect. This gives a much better 3D image, but the glasses are a more expensive and are heavier.

4. Finally, LCD screens can angle light inside and have two sets of LCDs, no glasses needed. This is how the new Nentendo 3DSi supposedly works and I heard there can be viewing zones, view angles were the image is better. Don't know much more than this sorry.

For gaming method 2 can be achieved using two projectors and two polar filters then you set a setting in your video cards with two outputs, where each output is connected to one of the projectos. Method 3 works with both LCD monitors and projectors which both needed fast refresh rates, the standard seems to be emerging of 120hz. Your video cards alternates rendering the left and right eye images. A device is connected two the video card this can be done over standard VGA anolog signal and now also with the DVI digital connection. The image info passes through the device with signals the glasses which eye side should be darkened. In either case the video card has to render twice the frames.

I will try to find the Oblivion, and other games, review they were using the 3rd method and said the world was incredible. There were some problems, things like the cross-hairs and health and etc bars are rendered in 2D so they were from the same perspective in both both left and right eye frames creating a blurred 2D pieces in the 3D screen. This can be changed and be set at different depths, as Blizzard did with WOW, according to the user's tastes but that needs to be coded. So yes I guess the Devs would have to code a bit more for "perfect" 3D image but it is very easy.

Sorry its been long but for those that want 3D and those that want 2D guess what? You will buy the exact same game and disc, or digital download. The work is done by your graphics card and its already available with a little additional hardware. According to the few reviews I've read, games in 3D look much better than movies in 3D and I for one look forward to playing TES V in 3D on a big screen projector.

Found a review and wanted to make new comment so as link won't get lost in the long text above. Not the one I was thinking of but it will do.
http://www.mtbs3d.com/cgi-bin/game_reviews.cgi?news_id=49

Yes he may say things about Oblivion that anyone in this forum knows but just read it for 3D aspect. Keep in mind this was written 2 years ago before 3D and Avatar became buzzwords and he states, "Oblivion has earned the highest respect in the 2D gaming world, and it’s a shame that most are unaware that the game’s true visual beauty can only be seen in stereoscopic 3D (S-3D)." Much more money is going into 3D in both hardware and media. Saw this article while checking up on news at tomshardware.com

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Eyefinity-3D-3D-Gaming,10742.html

I have a feeling that when TES V comes out if you want you will be able to enter a truly 3D experience. I can't wait, but I guess I'll have too.

I can just about handle watching a 3D movie for 3 hours. There's NO WAY I'm going to sit in front of my TV and play a 3D game for 250+ hours. Imagine the head-ache!!!!!!!! Looking at Nintendo's upcoming 3DS, I'll wait until they can figure out 3D on TV's without the use of glasses!!

It'll be a VERY long time before that happens, if ever. The problem with the "no glasses" 3D technology that the 3DS uses is that there are "sweet spots" on the screen that give you the 3D affect, if you're not looking at the screen at the right angle then it simply doesn't work. This is fine with a handheld that is only really being used by one person who's going to be holding it in front of themselves, not so much with a home TV that will likely be viewed by multiple people from different angles.

With that said, I would be VERY interested in seeing some kind of Elder Scrolls game on the 3DS. Maybe one of those Adventures games I've seen people talking about.

THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING! Eye of Argonia, the unmade sequel to redguard, on the 3DS. A TES Chapter wouldn't work on a handheld, but an Adventures game could. Inventory and map and Journal on the bottom screen, top screen is the action screen, and since the 3DS can toggle 3D, then you could use it or not as you would. I personally think it would help in the platforming aspects.

Is there actually some video card, or some piece of hardware that can make something 3d? Nvdia can do it, but I don't think it says how anywhere