News Crysis 2 to include stereoscopic 3D

Star*Dagger, once again, you make my point for me.

What PC gaming needs is not gimmicky 3D. It's decent games, at a decent price and a lower barrier to entry. I have a family to support - I'm not going to spend £700 a year on a gaming rig + the cost of games. That's more than a my entire yearly tech budget, and I can find more useful things to do with it.

So here's the bottom line. I will buy a £600 PC this year and I will keep it for at least 3 years. Between now and then, any game that will not run on it might as well not exist to me.

I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but £700+ is more than gaming is worth to me. Especially when I have yet to finish Age of Empires

 

Just to reiterate my previous point, this isn't the Nvidia exclusive 3D.

And for those who don't want to spend too much, just put a good graphics card in your current PC. You don't budget for your high-def telly for your console, do you? (This point not aimed at eddtox).

Styar*Dagger, with console-drag affecting games development, a PC that can handle today's games will probably last several years. (My 4890 is still unbested by any game that isn't Crysis or Metro 2033).

 

3d is great, pc gaming at $$$$$ is great, eyefinity is great.... however life has many other great things.... just choose yourself where to spend the cash.

me - I have 3d vision and bought a 2nd hand pc... for me thats a better (and cheaper) option than a new 930 pc.

 

I don't buy into this "I need a £700+ pc to play all the latest games". Bit-tec's very own May 2010 affordable all rounder will play most games with decent fps @£450. If you up the budget by 'just' £110 or so and put in a 5850 it maybe only Crysis you can't play at max settings ....but then so what... join the gang! What's more, upgrading doesn't mean replacing everything every year. Only if you want to have bleeding edge tech do you need to spend anywhere near £700pa. to keep up with the Joneses.

As for 3D? It has a wow factor but like most new tech it's too expensive for most to adopt early and who's to say that current implementations don't turn out to be the Betamax of the 20teens? Quite frankly with needing special glasses, special screens and a special gpu... I'll pass.

 

So you think a console can do everything a PC can?

hmmmmm

Clearly you do, seeing your like-for-like comparison based on price, and therefore clearly you should have a console instead, as a PC might be wasted on you if you can't see the world of difference between them and consoles.

Also, your adamant stance to insist on using on-board gfx for gaming is just... ignorant; you know perfectly well you won't get a single game running on it, apart from Sims, or 3D titles from nearly 7 years ago!

Anyone who looks at Crysis and can't appreciate the depth and sophistication of the game engine, and the game itself shouldn't be playing it.

Stick to shiny, but shallow titles you cry-babies!

I agree that Crysis is over the top in terms of hardware requirements, and Crytek shouldn't go on about losing money to piracy and all that nonsense, as they effectively tried to force the entire PC Gaming scene to go and ditch their current PC's and spend over a grand on new kit.

I also understand that Crysis is incomparable to any other titles, and may be so for some time, in terms of game-engine sophistication. The AI, and Physics, both of which are the real new areas for gaming innovation, are in a different league to anything else around. Sure the plot's appeal varies from person to person, but a large part of this is purely subjective.

Maybe now the general hardware specs required for the game are more common, and can expect most people with a GAMING GRAPHICS CARD to be able to play reasonably.

As far as my personal limit to minimal gfx reqs, you have to say at least £100 for a card to expect any real gaming performance without major compromises.

To stamp your feet and insist on onboard gfx to be modern-gaming capable is just naive, and pointless.

 

Just budget for £600 for the PC, year 1, include at least a £100 gfx card in that, and put aside another £100 every 12-18 months, and yes you will most likely be able to play any titles you want, at above medium settings, for around 3-4 years.

Now, enough bitching, and more gaming!

 

Oh yeah, as for 3D??

BRING IT ON!!

Makes perfect sense; logical progression.

3D = more realistic, and immersive, therefore better gaming.

Now, 3D wearable, wrap-around glasses, for that proper full vision view, including head movement tracking to replace mouse-look... THAT would truly be awesome.

I know you can already get this, at least without the 3D, with those Vuzix glasses and a Track-IR unit, I hear it's pretty shabby, and only works in some titles.

This 3D movement might spell the end of these proprietary options and offer these features as standard!

I mean, it would make sense that if you had to wear glasses/headset for 3D, then why not just extend that a little, add a couple of screens to the glasses instead, stereo-scope them, bolt on head-movement tracking, somehow implemented with universal standards, and happy days!

3D gaming has just become home-based VR!!!

 

3D might be the next big thing, but I don't want to pay for a setup which might soon be superseeded by something better. I'll wait a few years until a single standard is set and safe to use. It would suck to buy a new Sony tv for a few thousand pounds only for it to becom obsolete if they find a better way to do 3d half a year later.

 

It would suck to buy a new Sony tv for a few thousand pounds only for it to becom obsolete if they find a better way to do 3d half a year later

Which almost certainly, THEY will.

 

Not just that, but it seems that 3D on plasma TVs is more immersive and is implemented better than on LCD TVs. As I mentioned previously, I'd rather play the waiting game than waste money on technology that could be obsolete sooner than I'd expect.

 

@bbshamo

A console cannot do all the things a PC can, therefore I don't own, and don't intend to buy one anytime soon.

A like-for-like comparison would be expecting to run the latest games on a £200 PC. I'm spending nearly three times as much.

I am using on-board graphics because it is cheaper, cooler, more energy efficient and it is sufficient for most tasks. It means that the £100+ spent for a graphics card can go on a better case, PSU, Mobo and CPU, all of which is more beneficial to general computing and less likely to be antiquated in 6 months. I expect the case+psu to last 5+ years and mobo+ram 3+ years.

I do know that I'm unlikely to run recent games decently on on-board graphics and that is why I raise the issue. PC gaming would benefit a lot more from lowering the entry barrier in terms of cost, than it ever will by adding gimmicky stereoscopic 3d.

I appreciate that Crysis is technically advanced but the cost of getting the best out of it is still ~£1000. Compare that with a plethora of older games which are less technologically advanced but arguably more fun which will run on a 5-year-old pc worth about £100 now.

Anyway the heart of the matter, for me at least, is that PC gaming is too expensive atm. Even by your reckoning I would be looking at spending ~£1000 over three years just on hardware (not including peripherals). plus £30-50 a pop for games. Without gaming I'm looking at spending £600 over 3 years, maybe longer.

 

@eddtox

for your requirements - all ways on, air restricted, silent, 400 quid, not bothered about the high end gaming - then you're quite right 3d is probably not for you..

My umpc cant play cryis, my laptops have to have the detail turned down with the latest games and my workstations don't have nvidia 3d.

I am however pleased that my gaming system manages to fix all the gaming issues of my non gaming systems.

regarding the cost of 3d, if you want a new/2nd monitor then the cost of 3d is around 200 quid over the cost of a std monitor.... which isn't all that much.

 

I think the main thing to remember regarding the price difference between a gaming PC and a console is that the former's price isn't heavily subsidised by the manufacturer while the latter's is.

 

No. Their game engines are terrible.

 

Wrong. The amount of times I hear "the human eye sees smooth motion at 25fps" and have to gouge my own ears out because of it.

Obviously the human eye doesn't work on frames, so how do we determin when humans perceieve smooth motion? If we say that a screen is flicking between pure black and white frames, the point we're looking for is when we stop seeing the flicker and start seeing it as a pure gray tone. This, co-incidently, is around 30fps (60hz), how ever! This can also be dependant on the media in use.

When you film on a camera you get a default kind of motion smoothing applied, it's subtle but it's enough to allow the perception of smooth motion at lower frame rates. Due to a computer games "pure frame" nature and the fact motion occurs much faster than in TV/Film means that some games may need higher frame rates to produce "smooth motion".

E.G. When I played Crysis, it ran at 40fps but it felt "smooth" with motion blur on.
When I play Quake 3, I *have* to run the game at atleast 60fps and even then there is a noticable difference in how the game feels between 60fps and 125fps.

There's no one factor to determin what makes smooth motion. In TV it's pretty easy because the Camera/Film help *a lot* in achieving the effect, In games it's not quite the same and creation of that smooth motion applied by cameras/film in games offers quite a substantial performance hit.

 

3d will be pretty cool, but I think most will be wowed by the regular gfx, let alone when 3d is enabled.

 

The 120Hz as stipulated from Nvidia relates only to the requirement of the display device to be able to generate 120 distinct progressive frames per second - allowing 60 alternating frames to be delivered to each eye.
This doesn't mean your system (ie GPU, CPU etc) has to be able to actually render the game at 120 fps.

Your system might only manage to perform at say 40fps, but this will still be DISPLAYED at 120 frames per second to the glasses.
This is similar to how displays work in 2D. Most LCD panels are locked at 60hz (therefore 60 progressive frames per second) but your graphics card might render less than 60 or more than 60 frames per second:in other words in this situation as with 3D and 120hz, the number of distinct frames your GPU can generate per second is independent of the number of progressive frames your display can output per second.
Whether your system renders a game at 6 or 160 fps, your 60hz LCD monitor will always translate the output from your GPU into 60 distinct frames each second.

 

How many here that bash 3D has any experience with 3D. Either on the CRT era or now with todays 120 hz monitors?

I for one miss 3D more then the image quality I lost when abandoning CRT for a larger LCD TV. I am not crazy about 3D for movies but for games where you are supposed to be immersed in the game world it has a much bigger impact for me.

I am curious what this all mean. If the game is being tested and made sure it works great in 3D mode or the fact you don´t need particular software to run it. Just some shutter glasses?

Having an ATI card would I be able to run true page flipping stereoscopic 3D. Anaglyph modes is nothing I want to deal with. Mess up the colours to much and I doubt there is a perfect workaround for that.

 

Remember what it is like after a few hours 3D gaming on the old CRTs and then take off the glasses and switch the 3D off and back to 2D? God! How flat and dull is the image? lol

I'm waiting for GFX cards that will deliver Crysis 1 & 2 @ 120 FPS on a 120hz 3D 30" monitor!

 

You think like me. The vuzix glasses are **** though as are all current consumer 3d head displays. I guess the best we can setup at home right now is:

3d shutter glasses/3d monitor/tv.

Fresnel lens for pulling you into the game world.

Body vibration.

I used to use 3d shutter glasses when I had my CRT. Played Doom 3 in 3d using glasses and fresnel. Always use body vibration to add that extra realism (games are lifeless without it).