NVIDIA 3D Vision Testing – Games
NVIDIA’s 3D Vision driver has a list of supported games and each game has a profile created by NVIDIA engineers. The result is that each supported game has a unique profile that tweaks the rendering so that it delivers the optimal experience to the user. Each game profile can fall under 6 categories:
- 3D Vision Ready (designed specifically with 3D Vision in mind)
- Excellent
- Good
- Fair
- Poor
- Not Recommended
There’s actually a 7th category, and that is “Unrated” for games which have not been tested by NVIDIA at all. There are a lot of games now officially supported, so check out the complete list of supported games at NVIDIA’s website.
The way 3D Vision works on the Asus G51J-3D is that the left and right eye are rendered separately at 60 Hz, thus giving us a stereo image that appears seamless and flicker-free. To complete the illusion, the shutter glasses are synchronized with the rendering of the left and right fields giving you the 3D effect.
While this sounds simple in theory, the results vary drastically from game to game because no two games render scenes in the same way. So getting a left and right eye perspective can be a bit tricky. Not to mention the complexity added by special effects like particles, dynamic lights, reflections, and shadows – this is why some games appear poorly in 3D Vision, and other much better.
To evaluate 3D Vision on the G51J-3D, we tested a wide range of games to get a good idea of how the technology performs:
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Defense Grid: The Awakening
- Demigod
- DiRT2
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Fallout 3
- Freelancer
- Left4Dead 2
- Mass Effect 2
- Max Payne 2
- Torchlight
Note:
We are evaluating the quality of the gaming experience here. For hard performance numbers, please see Game Performance later in this review.
The 3D effect is beautiful when working properly. With games like Fallout 3 and Dragon Age where there are a lot of rendered objects around the scene, you really do get a sense of depth and an illusion of objects occupying space. Left 4 Dead 2 is another great example where performance and 3D effect blend exceptionally well. Blood splatters onto the screen like it was sprayed at your face, smoke trails from your gun looks so realistic, and hordes of infected seem more life-like, er, undead-like.
First and third person games look the best on NVIDIA’s 3D Vision and feel the most immersive mostly due to the way the perspective is rendered. Since the perspectives in these games are close to the action, when the game tosses stuff your way the 3D effect is that much stronger.
Isometric games, unlike first or third person games, are not as interesting when used with NVIDIA 3D Vision. Games like Demigod, Torchlight, and Defense Grid were a bit tricky to play in 3D mode – the free-floating mouse interaction on a stereo 3D scene doesn’t always translate well, and where you click isn’t necessarily where the action is going to take place.
In Torchlight I would click where I perceive the enemy, but my character walks up to the space adjacent to the enemy instead – this creates a frustrating little dance where I would click randomly at the target and watch my character walk around in circles until landing a successful hit.
Because the isometric perspective is typically a top-down view of a game world, stereo 3D of isometric games tend to look not much different than if stereoscopic rendering was turned off. Rarely are game objects flying up at the user’s God-like perspective. It’s like the difference between watching a Formula 1 race from the Goodyear blimp compared to getting into the driver’s seat – being up high doesn’t grant you a strong perspective of 3D action on the ground (unless you zoom in).
If targeting in isometric games is tricky, will upcoming titles like Star Craft II and Diablo 3 suffer the same fate?
Here are my notes on playing the various games with 3D Vision enabled:
Dragon Age:
- Excellent 3D effect and played pretty smoothly.
- Good effect when running through forest with branches whiping past feels very realistic.
- Panning around character had a good illusion of the character occupying the space.
- Hud floats on tyhe surface like an overlay on a visor, but character portraits on the HUD have a neat 3D effect to them.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Had some good 3D effect, but performed very slow and choppy.
- Needed to decrease settings a lot in order to achieve a better frame rate.
Dirt2
- Actually ranked as a “Not Recommended” game, but has some really great 3D effects with 3D Vision: dust kicked up by tires and water sprayed in very realistic manner.
- Ghosting seen on cars and requires a pretty short 3D Vision depth, otherwise images look blurry.
Defense Grid
- Some moderate 3D effect, but not really strong.
Demigod
- Similar effect like in Defense Grid – moderate 3D illusion, but not really that interesting.
- 3D Vision introduces some artifacts and some blurring of foreground objects.
Fallout 3
- Excellent 3D effect, especially when walking around some of the more complex scenes like Megaton and Downtown D.C.
- You can manage to turn the 3D Vision depth setting very far and still get a very good effect.
Freelancer
- Really amazing 3D effect when ships fly at you or when you approach larger capital ships.
- It’s an old game so it plays very smoothly on this current hardware.
L4D2
- Very good effect. Blood splatters, mobs, and smoke trails look like they occupy space.
- Even little things like the tables of ammo and guns in a Safe House look like you’ll hurt yourself if you bump into it.
Mass Effect 2 did not perform very well with 3D Vision.
The recommended settings disables special effects that
The recommended settings disables special effects that
make this game great.
Mass Effect 2
- Had to reduce 3D Vision depth to a very short distance in order for the left and right images to merge together without noticeable blurring.
- Thus the 3D effect was very shallow and not very good.
- The driver recommends turning off light blooms and dynamic shadows – helps improve performance and 3D effect, but lose some good Mass Effect 2 beauty.
Max Payne 2
- Good 3D effect for a very old game. Some foreground objects didn’t render properly, can appear blurry.
Torchlight
- Decent 3D effect like torchlights on stands, and large / boss monsters.
- Found it hard to target monsters and objects if depth was deep. Need to shorten distance to help target.
3D rendering is the 3D
3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of manually converting 3D wire frame models into 2D images with 3D photorealistic special effects on a computer.
You have given a good chart for showing
3D Renderings.