Four Months Later...

This isn't going to be one of those posts promising to update this blog more regularly, as those almost always herald the end of any blog. Instead this is going to be a condensed update about the world of PC 3D gaming, so that anyone who stumbles on this blog won't be put off by the horribly out of date information previously posted. So lets get going shall we?

First things first, development on iz3D has basically ceased. They're trying to get fans to raise a large amount of money to buy the source code and take it open source, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Everything I wrote about iz3D previously then, remains true. What isn't true anymore is how it compares to TriDef Ignition.


There were many things I found lacking about Ignition back in January, and I'm happy to say that the improvements in the last four months have been substantial. The biggest new feature for me is the greatly improved reprojection mode, now renamed Power 3D. Compared to the old Virtual 3D, Power 3D is faster and produces better results. If a game isn't really working well using regular quad buffer methods on any 3D solution 9 times out of 10 you'll find that it's Power 3D to the rescue.

Sure, you can't push the depth as far, and sure, you get reprojection errors, but in many cases I find those preferable to missing lighting effects. Alpha transparency textures which used to be a big weakpoint of the mode now render really well. In a lot of games it's become my go to option now, whereas before the tradeoff was rarely worth it.

That's partly combined with another new option, one that I praised in iz3D. Namely, you can now have the default 2D view of the game render for your dominant eye, and have the offset view render for your other. In games where hacked laser sights are misaligned this is really useful. If like me you have one eye substantially weaker than the other, it means that you can take all those reprojection artifacts or misaligned glow effects and shove them all over to your weaker eye where they aren't nearly as noticeable.

TriDef also plays much nicer with Steam now too, successfully finding steam games and adding them properly, even though it will still need to restart Steam to launch each game, that happens automatically now, though you will still need to manually restart Steam after you are finished if you plan on playing other games to get TriDef to stop trying to run everything in 3D.



Moments like this make the Alan Wake games great fun in 3d!

Since January, I've had the pleasure of playing Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare in 3D, and while your mileage may vary, I've found TriDef Power3D to be the best way to go. Inside the reprojection effects can be quite obvious, but outside, espescially at night they're very hard to spot. Aiming works perfectly with the flashlight, and since you spend most of your time outside at night both those games, 3D comes highly recommended.

It's one of those games where enemies only really use melee attacks and so are constantly diving, swinging and lunging at you. When you successfully dodge, or kill the last enemy in a group, the game slows down for a moment giving you plenty of time to enjoy the moment in 3D. Just be sure to kill the blur. American Nightmare gives you this option in the menus. For Alan Wake you'll want to use -noblur as a launch option.

The other game I've really been enjoying in 3D lately was a bit a of surprise for me. Rayman Origins! All the layering works just the way you'd expect, and it rips along at 720p60 on even relatively low end parts like a GTX260. It's a great game and the 3D looks great with only minor issues on menu elements with TriDef and over in Nvidia 3DTV Play land it's only really lacking in terms of max seperation not being quite as high as I'd like to push it.

Expect write ups on Nvidia 3DTV play soon as I just jumped into that world last night, along with a look at Max Payne 3 after that has released next week. Don't be surprised if I post more than that, and don't be surprised if I go missing again for a few months.