IZ3D and TriDef 3D Ignition

While some PC games like Dirt 3, Sonic Generations and others feature native support for 3D most games currently don't. There are currently three options that allow you to try and play any Direct X game in 3D. The two we'll be taking a quick look at are IZ3D (pronounced I Zee 3D) and TriDef 3D Ignition. The third is only available to Nvidia owners and isn't something I can currently look into, but I'm hoping to give it a spin in the near future.

Both of the ones we're going to look at today let owners of modern AMD graphics cards (HD5xxx series and newer) output in proper framepacked 3D. In other words, if you have a display that can show a 3D image from a Playstation 3, you can use these pieces of software to play PC games in 3D on that display.

Both cost about the same, and both have their own strengths and drawbacks. Personally I think it's affordable to get both, especially since AMD owners can run a validation tool to get 50% off the standard asking price, so lets take a closer look at why it's worth having both.

The most obvious reason to get both, is because how well they work on any given game varies quite a bit. Since some games often work a bit better on one than the other, having both means you can always get the better experience, that's why as we start looking at games that don't feature native support that I'll be letting you know how both options work out.

TriDef 3D has been getting updated a bit more often lately, but that isn't to say that newer games will always work better on it than IZ3D. There are a few key reasons why I feel IZ3D is still relevant. If you can only afford one, and you're looking for the easier experience TriDef is easier to get up and running and still offers a lot of customisation. IZ3D gives you way more options but it definitely isn't as user friendly.

So, how do they work? Basically most PC games use the same graphics API: Direct X. Direct X is sort of like a programming language for drawing things on screen. IZ3D and TriDef Ignition both understand that language, and that allows them to get involved in the rendering process. By default what they aim to do is move the camera a little bit to make an image for one eye, and then a little bit the other way for the other eye. Since the games don't know this is going on, some of the ways they might do things don't work so well with this technique, which is where things start to go wrong.

One of the other ways things can go wrong is because the game developer didn't design the game for 3D and that can cause some gameplay problems with some things which are incredibly common tasks in gaming, such as aiming.

In most games where you have to aim, your crosshair is a little 2D image slapped onto the final scene right in the middle of the screen. This works just great for 2D but doing this for each of our views leads to a problem. What that crosshair aims at in one eye, isn't what it aims at in the other eye, and where you actually shoot is directly inbetween the two different things each eye thinks is being targeted. The further away what you aim at is, the further off that crosshair becomes, so you can't reliably aim 'a bit to the side' because how much you need to adjust your aim by varies depending on your target.

So can we do anything about that with IZ3D and TriDef? Fortunately yes. Both have so called 'laser sight' options. These aren't a true laser sight that projects a beam into the world showing the bullet's path, but they work on a similar principle. Basically, they draw in their own crosshair and line it up with what you're actually going to shoot. That makes the crosshair look projected into the world, like the dot of a laser sight. It works rather well, but it isn't perfect.

That little eyeball looking thing is the laser sight

While the laser sight is on, it displays on top of everything... menus, loading screens, cutscenes, you name it. You can manually toggle it on and off but it breaks immersion somewhat. Also, if the game doesn't let you turn off the regular crosshair, you'll have that to look at as well. It's a bit distracting really, and while it's good to have it, and I'm sure a lot of people use them, unless I absolutely can't do without the laser sight, I don't use that feature. That's ignoring the times it doesn't even work properly.

IZ3D has another feature that helps with aiming, and it's my prefered solution. Like most things in IZ3D, the feature isn't clearly named, but what it lets you do is ensure that the in game crosshair is correctly aligned for one of your eyes. If you've ever aimed something in the real world, you'll know that you have one dominant eye, so configuring a game to have the crosshair aligned properly for that eye allows you to aim without bother and without distracting side effects.

You have to go into 'Ingame Settings' for the game you're playing in IZ3D's software and find the option called 'Seperation Mode'. If you are right eye dominant you need to select 'Left Shift' and vice versa. Told you it was confusingly labelled!

Two visual elements which regularly break are shadows and lights. In some games these get misaligned. That leads to them looking wrong in both eyes. Whenever both eyes give you contradicting information it can be a bit confusing! You can minimise this in IZ3D by using a setting called 'project shadows at screen depth' but it doesn't make the issue go away completely. Generally when an effect does this you'll have to disable it to get something that doesn't make your brain hurt. Unfortunately that isn't always an option.

Even more unfortunately, an awful lot of Unreal engine games suffer from this problem, and that makes up a sizable proportion of PC games these days.

Noticed the misaligned highlights on items

Another regular problem is elements displaying at 'screen depth' that shouldn't be. On a regular 3DTV that means you see things such as particle effects, light coronas or various other items drawn onto the final frame in the same place on both eyes. This makes them look like they are on the surface of the TV. If using an HMD like Sony's HMZ-T1s, 'screen depth' isn't obvious, since each eye has it's own display, but you definitely get the sense that things are out of place.

Again, you may be able to disable the effect causing the problem, and in some cases it's only a minor detail in the scene. For example in Dead Space 1 and 2, only one element does this, namely the 'flare' around lights. Unlike turning off shadows it's a minor thing to lose, but again such effects are not always toggleable.

One other common problem is that prerendered videos sometimes only show up in one eye, or have some other strange effect. In most cases, they were only created in 2D, so a perfect 2D image is all you can hope for with videos. If you are unlucky they will only display in one eye, a highly distracting glitch no matter the display.

Other things which commonly appear only in one eye include the mouse cursor and things like the steam overlay. To be fair to IZ3D and TriDef 3D, these sort of glitches with videos and pop up messages aren't exactly uncommon in games with native support either, on PC and consoles.

Notice the blurring on the thumb
and the wierd look of the foliage

One final important trick that TriDef has up its sleeve is virtual 3D. This uses a technique called 'reprojection'. Instead of fully rendering each eye, what it does instead is take the final 2D image that the game outputs, and then it wraps that around the 3D geometry in the game. The big benefit of this, is that it solves the issues with things being rendered at screen depth that shouldn't be, and it fixes those lighting and shadow problems a lot of games have. It's generally less strenous on your PC to boot.

The downside is that because it's basing what both eyes see off of one single image, that it has to fudge around anything displayed in a 'blind spot'. That little corner your right eye can see around that your left eye can't, for example. It also doesn't really know what to do with so called alpha textures, where part of the texture is transparent. For games that really look awful or run badly using standard methods, it's a handy option to have, but it's never preferrable otherwise.

Both take stereo screenshots when you press print screen. IZ3D by default outputs in the common .JPS format, whereas TriDef outputs in Above Below, Anaglyph and their own format.

Few games work perfectly with either, but a lot of games work well with both, and with them both its possible to play a very large selection of games in 3D. While neither can do anything for OpenGL games like Amnesoa and Rage, dozens and dozens of games are suddenly playable in 3D thanks to these two pieces of software. Since each has it's own unique features, and since each has games it works better with, I'm glad I have both at my access.

As a final note, Nvidia owners do use this software too. While both pieces of software don't allow Nvidia owners to output in framepacked formats, they do allow them to output in a wide range of common formats. Nvidias own solution works using similar techniques for the most part and so run into a lot of the same issues,  although Nvidia do have the advantage of occasionally working directly with the game developer to ensure that their approach works perfectly with that developers game. Even so, TriDef and IZ3D outperform it in one way or another on certain titles.

Personally I hope to see a lot more games natively supporting 3D on both Nvidia and AMD cards in the future, but for all the titles that will never see native support, IZ3D and TriDef are both powerful tools even if the results aren't always perfect. That they're occasionally close to perfect on games that weren't developed with 3D in mind at all is impressive in and of itself. Expect to hear more about both as we take a look at some of the many titles without native support.