No, not Hollywood this time. YOU.
There's a reason why so many people look at 3D as being a "gimmick" or nothing more than a sales ploy to sell more (or simply more expensive) movie tickets. It's because a lot of Hollywood does things for effect.. making the 3D "pop" and having things come flying out of the screen at you and so forth. Stupid shit.
What we need to do, as users capable of creating our own 3D content (particularly games), is to show them that it shouldn't be done this way. The problem is, we're not helping. If anything, we're making it worse.
I just got recently purchased a 3D monitor for my computer, and I've been taking the opportunity to see a bunch of 3D content on the internet, such as YouTube and the like (as well as, naturally, trying out every PC game I have). I see a lot of game footage online; gameplay, demos, etc. And on practically every video I see, it's small wonder people say that 3D is too much.. you people have no idea what you're doing with it.
On practically every gameplay video I've seen on YouTube, the person recording it has the 3D depth effect cranked up far beyond the "gimmick" stage into the "I have to cross my eyes to see anything" stage. And they call it "immersive". There's a slider in the NVidia control panel that defaults to 15%. I can tell most of the people out there have it set to somewhere around.. oh.. 100% or so.
Let me give a quick rundown of how 3D works for those that are unfamiliar. The computer renders everything in the scene twice, at different levels of separation. One copy goes to our left eye, one to our right. The further apart they are. Because of the way our eyes focus on things, the further apart the objects are, the further away they appear to be (or are closer to us, popping out of the screen, depending on how the effect is rendered).
The problem when you turn the effect up too high is that objects are too far apart to be able to focus on them. Let's say you have a character on screen, and a tree in the distance. The player character is fairly close to the screen, so the separation isn't that high. On a 23" computer monitor, we're looking at a separation between left and right eye of maybe a quarter of an inch. At a normal distance of around 40" or so, that's not hard for our eyes to focus on. If you look at the screen without your 3D glasses on, the character looks blurry and "doubled".
The tree in the distance, on the other hand, may be three or four inches apart.. without glasses, you can actually see two separate, distinct trees. Because of how far apart they are, your eyes have to pull away from each other in order to see it properly. For most people, our eyes don't actually work that way, and it becomes an effort, and in some cases painful, to actually focus on objects like that. Crossing our eyes toward each other is easier to do, but that only happens on objects that are "closer" to us rather than further away.
The 3D effect is meant to draw you into the experience. Having to contort your eyeballs to see something does exactly the opposite of that, it pulls you out of the experience and reminds you that you're playing a game. And a poorly-calibrated one at that.
The other thing it does, that most people don't stop and think about, is that it will destroy the effect of scale. By having to move your eyes as much as you do to focus on things, it makes it look like the game world is just a small diorama, and you're looking at it through a tiny little camera.
It took me only a matter of minutes of fiddling with 3D to figure out that the effect worked best when it was subtle. Keep the depth to a fairly low setting, so that even the objects far in the distance still have a fairly low separation value, maybe half an inch. What you end up with is a much more immersive feeling, because you're eyes aren't having to fight against themselves in order to focus on anything. Just like in real life! How 'bout that. Your eyes don't hurt focusing on things when you walk your dog, why should they do it when you're raiding the Firelands or killing aliens?
After a few minutes of playing like this, you'll quickly forget that you're playing in 3D. And this is a good thing. You're focusing on the game again, and not the gimmick. But that gameplay will feel deeper to you.. you'll feel a lot more like you're really there. True immersion happens by accident, and not because you're forced into it. The 3D effect should never "wow" you, it should only serve to pull you deeper into the experience.
Some of Hollywood understands this. If you want to see a gimmick-free, proper use of 3D, go see Prometheus. I'll have a full review up later, but I can tell you that this is some of the best use of 3D that I've ever seen, right up there with Avatar for pulling you into the world. And most of the time, you don't even notice it.
So gamers.. turn your 3D down, for Pete's sake. Then those videos you upload to YouTube won't make people eyes try to rip themselves out of their head. Show the rest of them how it's done. Resist the temptation to turn your game into a gimmick, and go subtle. You'll be glad for it in the end.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
E3 is Upon Us! Yaaaaywwwwn!
As some of you probably already know, next week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in L.A. The single biggest video game technology show in the world. The place where megaton announcements are made, earth-shattering technology is shown, and mind-blowing presentations and previews are proudly displayed to the masses.
But, by all accounts, absolutely nothing special is going to happen this year. That's it. Let's all go home.
The first problem was brought up by a user on NeoGAF, who asked the simple question "Will there actually be any surprises this year?" He wasn't asking just a general question, though, he was reacting to all of the "pre-E3 announcements" that were made. Pretty much every game company has stated exactly what they'll be displaying at E3 this year, and in many cases, have already shown some of that content in the form of various teasers and images and the like.
So we know Ubisoft is going to show off Assassin's Creed III. EA is going to show off Crysis 3 and SimCity. Sony is going to show off The Last of Us. Microsoft is going to show off Halo 4 and a bunch of Kinect crap that no one wants to see.
So... what's the point of the conference again? There really are no surprises.. we know what we're going to see, and in many cases we've already seen it.
It might be something moderately special for the press that's going to be there, but what about the millions of users who won't be there? All we're going to see are videos and trailers and screenshots from the show, most of which won't be posted until after the show is over. And how is that any different from what we see already? I can go to IGN or GameTrailers, or even just YouTube, and see plenty of videos for every last thing that anyone's planning on showing off. They should save a lot of money and just not have E3 at all, just release a bunch of trailers and screenshots online. That's all those of us at home are going to get out of this conference anyway, so what's the point?
With any luck, we'll all be surprised by last-minute announcements of the next generation of console hardware from Microsoft and Sony, but that's looking less and less likely as we gear up for the show. We would have heard something by now.
So E3 this year looks entirely pointless. I'll probably watch the Microsoft and Sony conferences just to see what's what, but otherwise I really couldn't care less.
But, by all accounts, absolutely nothing special is going to happen this year. That's it. Let's all go home.
The first problem was brought up by a user on NeoGAF, who asked the simple question "Will there actually be any surprises this year?" He wasn't asking just a general question, though, he was reacting to all of the "pre-E3 announcements" that were made. Pretty much every game company has stated exactly what they'll be displaying at E3 this year, and in many cases, have already shown some of that content in the form of various teasers and images and the like.
So we know Ubisoft is going to show off Assassin's Creed III. EA is going to show off Crysis 3 and SimCity. Sony is going to show off The Last of Us. Microsoft is going to show off Halo 4 and a bunch of Kinect crap that no one wants to see.
So... what's the point of the conference again? There really are no surprises.. we know what we're going to see, and in many cases we've already seen it.
It might be something moderately special for the press that's going to be there, but what about the millions of users who won't be there? All we're going to see are videos and trailers and screenshots from the show, most of which won't be posted until after the show is over. And how is that any different from what we see already? I can go to IGN or GameTrailers, or even just YouTube, and see plenty of videos for every last thing that anyone's planning on showing off. They should save a lot of money and just not have E3 at all, just release a bunch of trailers and screenshots online. That's all those of us at home are going to get out of this conference anyway, so what's the point?
With any luck, we'll all be surprised by last-minute announcements of the next generation of console hardware from Microsoft and Sony, but that's looking less and less likely as we gear up for the show. We would have heard something by now.
So E3 this year looks entirely pointless. I'll probably watch the Microsoft and Sony conferences just to see what's what, but otherwise I really couldn't care less.
Technology Reviewers are Idiots
Long story short, I'm shopping for a 3D computer monitor. None of the local retailers sell them, so I can't just go in and examine them personally to decide which one best suits what I'm looking for. I've narrowed it down pretty far, to LCD IPS displays using passive interleaved 3D. But I'm still not just going to order one sight-unseen without arming myself with some knowledge. This is how I shop for tech.
So, I turn to the experts.. the internet. The internet knows all, right?
It takes all of about four seconds at Google to find a review. The headline is not promising: "3D Fail". So I read the review, and it all looks good, up until the 3D part, where they describe poor depth rendering, and very bad ghosting (where your eyes are seeing parts of the image intended for the other eye).
Let's break these two gripes down, starting with the depth. I'm a visual effects artist, and I've created 3D renders before. The "depth" of an image, meaning the perceived distance between objects in the scene, is controlled by separation. The further apart the left and right images are from each other, the "further" the image will appear to be from the plane of the screen. This goes both ways, depending on how it's set up. It could be closer, or further away. But the result is the same: The depth is directly controlled by how the image is being rendered in the graphics card, and how far apart it's placing those parts of the image.
In other words, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the monitor itself.
The monitor is merely displaying what it's being told to display by the computer that it's connected to. That's why software such as NVidia's 3D Vision includes real time adjustments for things like convergence and depth. You push a button on your keyboard, and the scene depth changes. That doesn't have squat to do with the display.
So why did the reviewer bring it up at all? It's simple, really. He didn't know any better. He hooked it up, and he saw what he saw, but he didn't understand what was happening behind the scenes in software to make that 3D image possible, or how to correctly change it, instead just flailing away on various buttons and controls and saying that it didn't work.
Secondly, he complains about ghosting. Since I've read up on passive 3D displays, I know very well what the leading cause of this is: Poor configuration. Ghosting on passive displays is caused by slight color bleeding, where a color will bleed over into the surrounding pixels. It's more commonly used (intentionally) as antialiasing, to reduce the "jaggies" present on the raw output. 3D software can work around this, if it's configured correctly, and prevent those specific colors from bleeding vertically, which is what causes parts of the image to appear in the other eye's field of view.
Aside from not adjusting any configuration settings in either the monitor or the software, the reviewer also made one other grievous error, which I was only recently pointed to by another user who read the same review: The reviewer connected the monitor to the PC using DVI. The instructions included with the monitor clearly state that 3D only functions properly over the HDMI connection.
So the leading cause of his complaint was actually caused by his own dumbassedness: He hooked it up wrong.
So, the leading "expert" on monitor technology can't even plug the thing in correctly, and then complains loudly about how poor the performance is.
Then comes the worst part of this whole mess: No one else in the English speaking world actually reviews the thing for themselves. Do a Google search for "Asus 3D IPS monitor review" (I won't even bother listing the model number, you'll find it). The first thing you'll find is the CNET review that I'm talking about above. The next two hundred responses will be from other tech websites, all of them doing nothing but retweeting the CNET review.
Seriously.. of all the tech-related websites in the world, only one of them actually laid eyes on the hardware in question, and everyone else just took their word for it. Not a one of them stopped for two seconds to think "Hey, this doesn't sound right..." Again, the reason is simple: They don't know any better, either. They don't understand the technology any more than CNET did, and they have no way of knowing that the reviewer might have made a mistake or two. Or five.
I'm honestly surprised that Asus hasn't filed a lawsuit against CNET over this. That one review has probably single-handedly killed this product for them, because there are no other reviews that state anything other than what CNET did. Every review that anyone reads will be negative in the extreme, and no one will buy the thing.
Another user did point me to a review of the monitor from Romania, who actually hooked it up correctly, and had no real complaints to speak of. But how many of their customers are going to see this review? Not many, I'd wager. Newegg's review section is barren because no one wants to buy the thing.
These are the so-called "experts" that we turn to for help in making purchase decisions. Seemingly unknown to the reviewers themselves, this is actually a pretty big responsibility. I can't see it for myself, so I need someone else to tell me as much as they can about it. But I believe I'm entitled to listen to someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing. I might as well listen to Jim-Bob Jones down the street if this is the kind of crap I'm going to be reading on these websites.
If you can't even plug the thing in correctly, you have no business being an "expert", or posting any kind of review online, especially one that's going to be proliferated across the entire internet. Your ignorance of the very technology you claim to be an "expert" on is not doing any favors for the companies that make these products. I'm half-tempted to buy this monitor just to spite the reviewer.
So, I turn to the experts.. the internet. The internet knows all, right?
It takes all of about four seconds at Google to find a review. The headline is not promising: "3D Fail". So I read the review, and it all looks good, up until the 3D part, where they describe poor depth rendering, and very bad ghosting (where your eyes are seeing parts of the image intended for the other eye).
Let's break these two gripes down, starting with the depth. I'm a visual effects artist, and I've created 3D renders before. The "depth" of an image, meaning the perceived distance between objects in the scene, is controlled by separation. The further apart the left and right images are from each other, the "further" the image will appear to be from the plane of the screen. This goes both ways, depending on how it's set up. It could be closer, or further away. But the result is the same: The depth is directly controlled by how the image is being rendered in the graphics card, and how far apart it's placing those parts of the image.
In other words, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the monitor itself.
The monitor is merely displaying what it's being told to display by the computer that it's connected to. That's why software such as NVidia's 3D Vision includes real time adjustments for things like convergence and depth. You push a button on your keyboard, and the scene depth changes. That doesn't have squat to do with the display.
So why did the reviewer bring it up at all? It's simple, really. He didn't know any better. He hooked it up, and he saw what he saw, but he didn't understand what was happening behind the scenes in software to make that 3D image possible, or how to correctly change it, instead just flailing away on various buttons and controls and saying that it didn't work.
Secondly, he complains about ghosting. Since I've read up on passive 3D displays, I know very well what the leading cause of this is: Poor configuration. Ghosting on passive displays is caused by slight color bleeding, where a color will bleed over into the surrounding pixels. It's more commonly used (intentionally) as antialiasing, to reduce the "jaggies" present on the raw output. 3D software can work around this, if it's configured correctly, and prevent those specific colors from bleeding vertically, which is what causes parts of the image to appear in the other eye's field of view.
Aside from not adjusting any configuration settings in either the monitor or the software, the reviewer also made one other grievous error, which I was only recently pointed to by another user who read the same review: The reviewer connected the monitor to the PC using DVI. The instructions included with the monitor clearly state that 3D only functions properly over the HDMI connection.
So the leading cause of his complaint was actually caused by his own dumbassedness: He hooked it up wrong.
So, the leading "expert" on monitor technology can't even plug the thing in correctly, and then complains loudly about how poor the performance is.
Then comes the worst part of this whole mess: No one else in the English speaking world actually reviews the thing for themselves. Do a Google search for "Asus 3D IPS monitor review" (I won't even bother listing the model number, you'll find it). The first thing you'll find is the CNET review that I'm talking about above. The next two hundred responses will be from other tech websites, all of them doing nothing but retweeting the CNET review.
Seriously.. of all the tech-related websites in the world, only one of them actually laid eyes on the hardware in question, and everyone else just took their word for it. Not a one of them stopped for two seconds to think "Hey, this doesn't sound right..." Again, the reason is simple: They don't know any better, either. They don't understand the technology any more than CNET did, and they have no way of knowing that the reviewer might have made a mistake or two. Or five.
I'm honestly surprised that Asus hasn't filed a lawsuit against CNET over this. That one review has probably single-handedly killed this product for them, because there are no other reviews that state anything other than what CNET did. Every review that anyone reads will be negative in the extreme, and no one will buy the thing.
Another user did point me to a review of the monitor from Romania, who actually hooked it up correctly, and had no real complaints to speak of. But how many of their customers are going to see this review? Not many, I'd wager. Newegg's review section is barren because no one wants to buy the thing.
These are the so-called "experts" that we turn to for help in making purchase decisions. Seemingly unknown to the reviewers themselves, this is actually a pretty big responsibility. I can't see it for myself, so I need someone else to tell me as much as they can about it. But I believe I'm entitled to listen to someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing. I might as well listen to Jim-Bob Jones down the street if this is the kind of crap I'm going to be reading on these websites.
If you can't even plug the thing in correctly, you have no business being an "expert", or posting any kind of review online, especially one that's going to be proliferated across the entire internet. Your ignorance of the very technology you claim to be an "expert" on is not doing any favors for the companies that make these products. I'm half-tempted to buy this monitor just to spite the reviewer.
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