Third Magazine » Gaming

PS3 3D Firmware Update Released Today

The James — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:47:53 +0000

Over at the official Playstation Blog, they mentioned that the official firmware update was released today that allows stereoscopic 3D gaming. Of course, you still need a 3D TV to take advantage of it, but hopefully this will inspire those in the market for a new TV to go out and get one. As of now, the update is only for gaming, a 3D blu-ray update is coming later this year. This isn’t much of an issue since there isn’t a lot of available content out there yet anyway. But check out the list of 3D game full games and demos available now:

Wipeout H (full game): Experience the adrenalin rush of navigating the twists and turns of futuristic racetracks at breathtaking speeds like never before.
Super Stardust HD (full game): Experience asteroids fly past you as you navigate the deadly battleground — only a battle on a cosmic level will save the indigenous life below from destruction.
PAIN: The stereoscopic 3D content will include the Downtown area and tutorial along with three modes, including two new modes created specifically with stereoscopic 3D in mind, Alien Toss and Ice Breaker.
MotorStorm Pacific Rift (demo): MotorStorm Pacific Rift in stereoscopic 3D puts you in the driver’s seat of a buggy for a one track, single player race around the deadly Kanaloa Bay for a dangerously real battle against ruthless opponents.

3D Gaming Summit – April 21-22

The James — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:59:53 +0000

(Los Angeles, CA and Milford, CT; April 16, 2010) – Co-producers The Bob Dowling Group and Unicomm, LLC announced today an all-star lineup of gaming and entertainment executives who will participate in the first ever 3D Gaming Summit™ to be held April 21-22, 2010 at the Hilton Los Angeles, Universal City, CA. For complete information, visit www.3Dgamingsummit.com.
Featured keynote interviews are Jon Landau, Producer of the Academy Award®-winning feature films Avatar and Titanic, and Director/Producer Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Alien vs. Predator, and the recently announced 3D Buck Rogers). Keynote addresses will be delivered by Phil Eisler, General Manager of 3D Vision, NVIDIA, and Josh Greer, President and Co-Founder, RealD.
In addition to Bob Dowling, 3D Gaming Summit Co-Producer and former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Hollywood Reporter, and John Gaudiosi, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of videogame syndication service GamerLive.TV and Senior Content Advisor to the Summit, featured speakers include producer Ari Arad (Lost Planet); Loren Lanning, Oddworld Inhabitants; Dave Perry, President, Gaikai; Alan Price, Studio Chief, Chief Technology Officer, Electronic Arts, Canada; writer Jesse Stern, (NCIS, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), and Joshua Glazer, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Naked Sky Entertainment (Star Trek: DAC).

The 3D Gaming Summit™ is a high strategy networking event exploring how video games aided by new technologies, such as stereoscopic 3D, are bridging the gap between interactive and linear entertainment.
“The 3D Gaming Summit™ will bring together some of the finest minds in interactive and traditional media,” says veteran gaming journalist Gaudiosi. “Videogames are a key driver, along with Blu-ray 3D, in convincing first early adopters and then mainstream consumers to upgrade their HD home entertainment centers into 3D HD experiences. Our conference speakers will address how the entertainment and gaming sectors can capitalize on these new trends.”

3D Gaming Summit™ is the newest addition to the 3D Entertainment Series of events produced by Unicomm, LLC in association with Variety. Bringing together the most prestigious group of professionals, the 3D Gaming Summit’s™ unique environment will enable attendees to engage, debate and define the latest developments in the gaming and entertainment marketplace. With an unprecedented group of opinion leaders, the summit will define the opportunities and strategic options presented by 3D stereoscopic gaming.

Catalyst 10.3 will bring ATI’s drivers in to the 3D game

"Mitch" — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:35:42 +0000

I noticed over at the 3D Vision Blog that ATI’s long overdue support for 3D is starting to surface, based on a slide presentation that laid out the framework for Stereoscopic 3D support within the Catalyst 10.3 drivers that are due out in March. It looks like iZ3D is supposed to be a middleware partner. But it appears they are reaching out to many others, also. ATI is going with a more open solution when it comes to interfacing with third party vendors, which could keep them from catching up on the 3D industry a whole. Nvidia has taken 3D seriously and released the 3D Vision Kit at a reasonable price had seems to still be way ahead of the game when it comes to their software support third party hardware.

Source: 3D Vision Blog

METRO 2033 gets serious about s3D and DX11

"Mitch" — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:34:12 +0000

I was reading over at Marketsaw, that THQ and NVIDIA have announced that Metro 2033 will be supported by the graphics card maker’s 3D Vision technology. It also makes use of some very impressive DirectX 11 techniques.

“Our engineers have been working closely with 4A Games to ensure that Metro 2033 takes full advantage of some of the spectacular effects made possible with the next generation of DX11 hardware,” said Tony Tamasi, SVP, Content & Technology at NVIDIA. “The 4A Engine is one of the most advanced game engines we’ve ever worked with, and with DX11 enabled, Metro 2033 is undoubtedly one of the best looking PC games of 2010. Combine this with NVIDIA 3D Vision and PhysX and you will experience mind-blowing visuals.”

Look for METRO 2033 in PC and Xbox 360 formats on March 16 in North America and Germany, March 18 in Australia and March 19 for the UK and Europe.

Head over to Marketsaw for more photos and information on the game.

NVidia GF100 – In production

The James — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:31:02 +0000

According to Newsfactor.com, Nvidia’s new GF100 video card is already in production and should be available later this quarter. Here are some interesting facts about the GF100:

-Geared toward 3D to create what Nvidia calls “3D Vision Surround”, an immersive environment for running games across three panels.

-Though the GF100 only supports two displays per chip, Nvidia expects to implement 3D Vision Surround through the company’s Nvidia SLI platform, which intelligently scales graphics performance by combining multiple graphics chips on an SLI-certified motherboard.

-First Nvidia GPU to be based on ‘Fermi’, a third-generation architecture featuring streaming multiprocessor technology.

-The GF100 will be able to implement all DirectX 11 hardware features, including DirectCompute and tessellation, which enables the creation of intimately detailed characters in films by refining large triangles into collections of smaller triangles.

-GF100 will enable the execution of a wide range of effects — including motion blur, soft shadows, transparency and depth of field — at speeds up to 20 times faster than previous-generation GPUs.

nVidia 3D gaming – What are you waiting for?

The James — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:37:56 +0000

For those of you still gaming in a 2D world, you are definitely missing out. The nVidia website has a list over 100 games that work well in 3D. Over half of the list are considered “Excellent” in 3D from nVidia’s experts. Jumping into the 3D gaming market doesn’t require a huge investment either. The nVidia GeForce 3D Vision Kit is very reasonably priced. You also need a a monitor with a high enough refresh rate, but you may already have something compatible. To make things even easier, nVidia also has a quick little diagnostic test here to let you know if your system can handle 3D gaming.

Here are a few of the highlights from the list of games ranked as “Excellent” in 3D:

Fallout 3: Game of The Year Edition (haven’t tried this in 3D yet, but it is on our list!)

FIFA 08 Soccer

Avatar (obviously)

Mass Effect

Mirror’s Edge

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08

World of Warcraft

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Make sure to check out nVidia’s full list.

Acer G245 monitor and NVIDIA’s 3D Blu-ray playback

"Mitch" — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:41:13 +0000

Engadget has a story up on a preview of NVIDIA’s 3D Blu-ray “ecosystem”. And from their brief report, everything seems to be falling into place. They go on to demo 3D playback on the upcoming Acer G245 120hz LCD display that can be synced with nVidia’s shutter based glasses.

3D Blu-ray is encoded in a new MVC-AVC format, which passes through a regular 1080p video for incompatible hardware, but provides a 3D image for the software and decode hardware capable of sussing it out. Right now NVIDIA’s 3D Blu-ray capable on existing GeForce GT 220 and GT 240 GPUs, along with its upcoming Fermi cards due next year.

UPDATE: Amazon.com appears for have an Acer G245 monitor listed for sale, but it doesn’t mention the refresh rate, so we don’t think it is the actual 3D monitor discussed above.

Optoma HD66 Projector – Affordable 3D

The James — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:35:24 +0000

DV posted a short article about the Optomo HD66 projector. It is an HD projector that is 3D ready and boasts 720p at a cost of only $699. Sounds like a great deal. Here are the specs:

Powered by Texas Instruments’ 0.65 DMD DLP chipset with BrilliantColor technology, the HD66 builds on Optoma’s strong performer, the HD65, and delivers a brightness rating of 2500 ANSI lumens and a robust 4000:1 contrast ratio, enabling users to project a clear, bright image in most ambient light conditions. The projector offers a broad selection of I/O connections, including HDMI, VGA-In, S-Video, Composite Video, Stereo Audio-In, and RS-232. It is PC and Mac compatible, supports computer resolutions up to 1920×1080 pixels (HD), and can also accept common global video inputs and video formats up to 1080p (HDTV, EDTV, SDTV, NTSC, PAL, SECAM).

As with all 3D displays, a 3D source, 3D content and 3D glasses are required for 3D viewing, and in addition to delivering 3D in 720p HD (1280 x 720), the HD66 can also project 3D content in XGA (1024 x 768) and SVGA (800 x 600) resolution.

3D Laptop Comparison

The James — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:18:58 +0000

A good comparison of the ASUS G51J 3D and Acer Aspire 5738DG 3D notebooks is posted over at latopmag (found via MTBS3D). The two systems differ greatly and price, and the results of the comparison seem to reflect the difference. The Acer uses a passive polarized 3D system while the ASUS uses shutter glasses. As expected, the shutter style system gives better images and a better viewing angle (It’s important to note the Acer seemed to require a very precise vertical viewing angle to accurately see the 3D effects). Overall the ASUS faired better performance-wise on all fronts. But the framerate hit going from non-3D to 3D games on the system was noticeable. Overall, a great comparison of cutting edge technology and definitely more proof that shutter technology produces a better experience.

LG’s 3D monitor weighs in at 23 inches of full HD

"Mitch" — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:30:03 +0000

Seoul, Korea (December 3, 2009) – LG Display Co., Ltd. [NYSE:LPL, KRX:034220], a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, announced the world’s first commercial launch of 3D LCD panel boasting full HD resolution.

The new product is a 23-inch 3D 120hz monitor LCD panel for use with shutter glasses that delivers full HD resolution. It offers picture quality that is almost twice as crisp as HD 3D displays currently available in the market.

The panel adopts the company’s proprietary technologies such as “high performance 3D exclusive controller” capable of processing more than twice as much image data as other HD 3D LCDs and “copper bus line” to improve on the resolution and picture quality. In addition, the panel is able to reproduce both 2D and 3D images, meaning that users can switch back and forth from 2D and 3D modes.

Although full HD 3D images have been developed for contents such as video games, movies and animations, 3D display products with full HD resolution were unavailable in the market. The commercial launch of LG Display’s full HD 3D LCD panel is expected to help to boost development of high resolution 3D contents while allowing users to view true-to-life 3D images.

Mr. Davis Lee, LG Display’s Vice President and head of IT marketing department, noted “LG Display has made a major breakthrough in the display industry race to deliver the depth and dynamic nature of 3D images. LG Display will continue with efforts to keep pace with the fast growing 3D market with leading 3D technology and products in order to create new value for customers.”

The 3D display market is expected to grow at rapid pace as the industry players are shifting their focus from two- dimensional to three-dimensional technologies. The Korea Communications Commission recently announced plans to start a trial service for the world’s first full HD 3D terrestrial broadcasting from the second half of 2010. A launch of trial services for 3D satellite broadcasts had been also announced earlier in Japan and the UK.