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

There's NO WAY I'm going to sit in front of my TV and play a 3D game for 250+ hours.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-requirements.html

You will need a specific driver update and you will see options in your control panel, I think.

PS. I'm pretty sure that page is awfully outdated or not, I'm not sure. You need a 120 HZ display and a modern video card and it should work. ATI can do it too. There are some Acer 3D gaming laptops with prices lower than $1000. If I waited 2 extra months before buying this very laptop I'm posting right now(5739G), I would have bought that acer 3D gaming laptop.

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

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.

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.

does anyone know the refresh rate for a Hans G hd281d? every time I search it it comes up with Chinese stuff

(anolog / Digital mode)
MODE RESOLUTION REMARK
1 640x480@60 Hz VGA
2 640x480@67 Hz MAC
3 640x480@72 Hz VGA
4 640x480@75 Hz VGA
5 720x400@70 Hz VGA
6 800x600@72 Hz SVGA
7 800x600@75 Hz SVGA
8 832x624@74.5 Hz MAC
9 1024x768@60 Hz XGA
10 1024x768@70 Hz XGA
11 1024x768@75 Hz XGA
12 1280x720@60 Hz SXGA
13 1280x1024@60 Hz SXGA
14 1280x1024@75 Hz SXGA
15 1440x900@60 Hz WXGA+
16 1600x1200@60 Hz UXGA
17 1680x1050@60 Hz WSXGA+
18 1920x1200@60 Hz WUXGA

(YPbPr mode)
MODE RESOLUTION
1 720x480i@60 Hz
2 720x480p@60Hz
3 720x576i@50Hz
4 720x576p@50Hz
5 1280x720p@50Hz
6 1280x720p@60Hz
7 1920x1080i@60Hz
8 1920x1080p@60Hz
9 1920x1080i@50Hz
10 1920x1080p@50Hz

:facepalm:

I cannot tell if that was spite or not; your graphics remark is needlessly sharp. Regardless, there are two important factors to be kept in mind when dealing with technology and marketing: one, there is a natural evolution in technology, actual progress and development that leads to the creation of a standard, and two, then there is a shiny factor. Not everyone here would consider 3D to be major progress in the natural evolution of graphical technology, although, you appear to think so. In fact, many would see a 3D innovation such as this as a distraction, no more than a participation in a humongous marketing fad (just like all the other 3D things going on right now), which surmounts to nothing more than a soulless attempt to become more mainstream, all for the sake of making money at the expense of the game's soul. If the game can be 3D capable, then fine. If the focus or draw of the game would be 3D, which is the case for many new market items, then the game would not be worth the purchase.

Now, just to reiterate, if the game were 3D capable, that would be completely acceptable, but, as I've just illustrated, if it were a focus, then the answer should most definitely be no.

By the way...there are people here who DO consider the graphical quality of a game to be a cramp on gameplay, so be careful about what you say...Those guys can be pretty scary sometimes.

And I've seen enough 3D to last me a long time thank you very much...a long, long time... :ahhh:

Spite wasn't the aim, it was more a silly and synical remark on the symbiotic progress of the software and hardware wings of this gaming industry. The one-up-manship of the technology developers in order to grab a greater share of the market leads to more resources for software developers who want to attract more customers with shininess, so the hardware folks push for better hardware to run the shinies better, and on and on and on. Like Crysis; that badly optimised leviathan has now become a industry benchmarking standard for the newer and faster components.
Nonetheless, I apologise if any feelings were hurt. I just can't stop that sarcastic inner Yorkshireman

I do miss text adventures, but the advancement of tech has always been an interest. It's surprised me that after all this time the industry has settled on one of the simplest methods of creating the 3D effect as its standard. I do indeed believe that adding literal depth is a key factor in jumping the graphics industry ahead. Games have been asymptotically achieving (or striving to achieve) 'photo-realism' for over a decade now (bar a few 'everything is made out of plastic' parallax hiccups), but no matter how large the texture size or polygon counts are, all we will end up with are very pretty photographs. Getting lighting and shadows working better would be the optimum way of progressing along this line, but adding an actual visible effect of depth adds something more rather than tweaking what we've seen before.

Back to on topic. I don't think folks have to be too worried. 3D will not become a selling point for games other than on the holography based 3DS. The implementation is more from the graphics card developers and its use is entirely optional in this coming generation.
As for graphics vs gameplay, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. It'd be nice if Bethesda balanced their distribution of programmers for both sides to have the manpower to make both aspects excellent. This would be a whole other topic for a whole other thread though.

Peace out, folks.

does anyone know the refresh rate for a Hans G hd281d? every time I search it it comes up with Chinese stuff

3D is not something that is on my list of of 'must haves' for TES. I'd have no problem with it as long as it is optional and doesn't take more than ten minutes of development time away from aspects of the game that I consider more important (which would be everything else).

I totally agree. IMO, 3D is just an excuse for people who are bad at making games/movies, albeit a good excuse. Besides, if they choose to go 3D, it will take them a long time to add it in not to mention i may have to completely upgrade my computer in order to play it if they don't make it optional. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Pretty much the reason stories in video games svck is because we, as gamers, demand to have pretty graphics. If you take a video game's story, get rid of all the shooting and swordplay, what do you have?

Anywhere from 12-60 minutes of character development and plot advancement.

Yeah, we did this to ourselves, folks. And I don't see anything changing unless there's a collective cultural change toward how and why we play video games.


The same can be said for a few films, such as Avatar, which was real slick looking but had a very shallow story. But film doesn't, for the most part, rely on cheap gimmicks.

Not really. Writers write the story and game designers design the game. Poor story is a direct result of bad writing, which has pretty much nothing with designers working on the aesthetics of the game. Not that I don't agree with content over graphics. But if something is poorly written, it's the writers doing.

In my opinion, no.

i dont really like 3D, its nauseating and it doesnt reallly look that cool, now if it was depth 3D, were things dont pop out but things have depth of field, that would be pretty cool.

If you ask me, 3D would be the equivalent of a bullet to the head for TESV. I have always, and will always see 3D as a gimmick. It would cheapen TES.