Obduction & Nvidia 3D Vision (spoilerish)

[draceena]

I have a Nvidia card (the 2047MB GTX560 to be exact) and decided to have a bit of fun and try Obduction with the 3D Vision driver and use the old-fashioned blue/red cardboard glasses (AKA: Anaglyph 3D). Overall the game looks pretty cool in that type of 3D and is mostly playable (though the red shades in the game are muted by the red filter and the overall color is a bit wonky).

There was one interesting thing I did observe that could be consideded spoilerish for future Oculus Rift users:

When viewing a swap in a regular 2D game, it looks like a ton of colored lights swirling around. Viewing the same in 3D though, and I can still see an impression of the swapper machine through the whole swapping process. It's hard to explain but reminds me of thoes Magic Eye pictures where an image pops out of a jumbled background.

If you have the chance to do this yourself, check it out.

[Erik]

Hi draceena, I did exactly the same last weekend and I had the same experiences!

I was really amazed by it, in a good way. Especially in Kaptar, riding the chains, or walking along the cliffs, really gives you a sense of depth. I don't have an Oculus Rift but I can see how that can be even better!

I also noticed that indeed you keep seeing the seed machine during swapping.

While it's a nice experience, I wouldn't recommend playing with 3D Vision on the first run. As you mention, the colours are not that good anymore because of the red and blue filters, everything looks kind of the same. Under the tree I couldn't even tell which portal was going to which world because the colours were so similar.

[fjhLeger]

3D vision is very good if you use a 3D screen. Anaglyph in Color isn't ultimate. All cyan games since Uru are playable in 3D.

[BeigeAlert]

OHHH!!!! I didn't even think to try 3d vision! I'd completely forgotten I've got the equipment for that.

Curse you! Now I have to play through Obduction again, in 3d!!!

[Mowog]

I've also been playing Oduction with my red/blue glasses. Fact is, I used to do the same in Uru, Myst V, Dear Esther, etc. I find that it enhances the experience, but with the mentioned loss of color accuracy I don't use the glasses all the time, only when the mood strikes. Still, parts of Obduction are downright amazing when you add depth! I can only imagine what it must be like in real VR.

The odd thing is, I've noticed that anaglyphic stereo isn't available in Uru any more... Nor in other games such as Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, where you'd think it would just work. Why would this feature be selective? Does it work in some games but not others? BTW, in the Nvidia 3D setup it lists Uru as a compatible game, and states that the effect is excellent. But when I launch Uru, the feature just isn't there.

So, any of you who are more familiar with Nvidia 3D, please weigh in!

Mowog

[fjhLeger]

Just tried uru live in :3D with success but, of course, I have a 3D display, so this is not the same settings...

Any one else has inputs?

[BeigeAlert]

I just tried out playing Obduction with nvidia 3d vision. Total crap, unplayable. In regular 3d vision mode, it is a headache inducing mess, and in 3d vision compatibility mode, there's a ton of visual distortions because it appears that compatibility mode is simply creating two images by using the depth buffer, rather than actually rendering the scene once for each eye.

Extremely disappointed in this... would have thought that having Oculus support would have somewhat cleared a path for this feature... (NOT going to spend $600 just to have a slightly different 3d experience... spent too much on gaming fads as it is...)

[fjhLeger]

I don't really understand the situation you are facing. I have a not so high setup (I5 2500K, GTX970) and i am able to correctly play obduction in 3d without issues.
The 3D part is fully handled by the NVidia card, as it has been the case from quite some time ago, and obduction is not different from any other game for this point.
There is no real difference between 3D and VR, excepted for new parameters such as the angle of view or the refresh rate optimisation between head movement and displacement...

Can you try to describe precisely the issues you are facing?
Have you tried any other games in 3d?
Typically, have you tried MOULagain: this is free and also works fine in 3d. If this does not work, something may be wrong in the setup.

[BeigeAlert]

Here is Obduction in 3d with the regular 3d vision setup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f807sb8p6ymz8 ... 0.jps?dl=1

See, it's a headache inducing mess.

However, nvidia 3d vision has a special "compatibility mode" option, which is a huge improvement, but I still have issues with it. It seems okay until you start scrutinizing the image a bit more, or get closer to objects -- and getting close to objects is kind of a big part of this game.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkwhtqzrsjm5h ... 0.jps?dl=1

Notice the slight distortion effect around the edges of objects. This is due to the game rendering the image once, like normal, then attempting to distort that based on the depth to create two images from it. This distortion is a result of it trying to fill in the "holes" left behind by areas where it has no data (eg the area behind a pole that camera cannot see behind, but offsetting the view left or right would allow it to). It's extremely apparent on the mine car.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/60v8cp1s5fhwi ... 0.jps?dl=1

I can't imagine that's anything like how the VR setup works. The VR setup (surely!) renders two separate views so there is no distortion or other visual artifacts in the final image.

Also, I should point out that, while the concepts of VR and 3D Vision differ only in the head's freedom of movement, I imagine the APIs used to implement them are completely separate from each other.

Other games work just fine (eg Arkham Asylum).

[fjhLeger]

I will take a look this week end... What is your graphic card model?

[BeigeAlert]

I will take a look this week end... What is your graphic card model?

Nvidia GTX 1080.

[Tahgtahv]

Those images are definitely weird. (Also what is jps anyway? Renaming it to jpg seemed to work for me) In the second image at least, assuming those are intended for the left and right eyes, they seem backwards. As in, the left image has more detail to the right, while the right image has more detail available to the left. I can't imagine that'd work very well if I tried to view it in 3D.

As for the Rift, I can't really say how it's rendered, only that the output is your typical 2 curved images on the monitor, and that it seemed fine for me on the headset.

[fjhLeger]

I just took a look to the first one yesterday, and tried to find back the same picture with my system. It seems you are using a field of view of 120 degrees, which is creating heavenly distorted image on a single screen. 90 degrees vision angle is already a lot in that case, but obduction does not allow to set the angle at 60 deg. 120 degrees are only acceptable starting with two ( not a good choice ) or three screens.

[BeigeAlert]

Jps is a name nvidia gives to jpg images that are stereo and side-by-side. I believe they are intended to be viewed cross-eyed if not with glasses (so they'd be swapped).

And yes, I have the FOV set to 120 because I sit close to the monitor. That's the deciding factor: distance to the monitor, not the number of monitors (???), or the curvature of them.

Doesn't matter for this problem though, as the field of view has NOTHING to do with how the stereo effect is accomplished.

Why don't you try posting some of your own screenshots from Obduction in 3d?

[fjhLeger]

Hi all,

Sorry, but my WE was overloaded, and i didn't had enough time to explore all what i wanted to do (including reconnecting an old 3D NVIDIA monitor with the infrared emitter, so i could go play with the depth control).

My current setup use a 23" 3D TV/Monitor from Samsung which is recognized automatically by Windows 10 and the NVIDIA driver. This setup does not permit me to play with the depth control, nor does it allow me to obtain JPS screenshots, only PNG one which are 2D.

I took a photo with a 3D camera with the 3d glasses ( ) corresponding to your 1st Dropbox image, and, it shows a more consistent lighting of the picture between both eyes. I understand this will not be enough to overcome your frustration.

However, let try to address the issues one by one.

Even without 3D, there is already some kind of strange processing of the images rendered on the screen, i do not believe we can call this distortion. These are the result of a 'very old' projection system call Gnomonic, which basically project the spherical image on a plane. The net effect is that the further of the center of the image, the larger the object appears.

Until now, i have not encountered such projection system in a game. I really believe this is needed to use VR headset, because each 'eye screen' is very close of the eye, and, to trick the eye/brain to ensure a kind on natural image, the screen which is flat needs to render something similar to a spherical projection.

I also believe this is the reason of the FOV parameter in the game, depending of the VR gear, the eye screen will render only a part of the real eye angular vision, and most probably from 90 to 120°.

Using those image on a normal monitor is not perfect. As i write, the monitor in front of me occupies something like 60° of my field of view. If i look at the objects represented with the Obduction game on the monitor at this distance, i will notice the 'distortion' in the object geometry as soon as i pan the image, because the rendering i ask is not correct (i cannot set it lower than 90°).

I understand that setting the FOV to 120 act as a king of de-magnification glass (you see more of what is around you), but also, due to the projection system used, increase significantly the size variation of the objects between the center of the screen and the edge.

To avoid seeing this effect, you need to set the FOV value the closest to the real field of view of the Obduction image in front of view, and try to only look at the center of the screen, moving the image with the mouse, but not moving the head.
You can increase the FOV, but then you need to increase the screen size.
Typically, for a TV screen to represent a Horizontal FOV of 120°, you to position your eyes at a quarter of the screen width, which is very close.

The inability to change this projection system is, for me, the major flaw in the Obduction setup. While i can assume this is mandatory for the VR headsets, they should have added an on/off switch to enable the use of a more standard projection system for the user of the game without VR headset.

I will come back to this discussion later with the 3d issues, when i have set back my system so i can use the NVidia 3D control settings.

(sorry for the spelling and grammatical issues of this text, English is not my mother language.)