How 3D works
The third dimension is taking over your local cinema. It’s assimilating your HDTV. It might even be popping out of your next smartphone.
And yes, it’s creeping into PC gaming, too. It’s the next big thing and it’s 3D.
Of course, if we’re talking PC gaming, then the term 3D is a little confusing. On PC Format, we’ve been soaking up the 3D gaming groove for nearly two decades, but that’s 3D graphics painted onto a 2D screen.
When manufacturers hit the hype button regarding 3D today, what they are really referring to is stereoscopic 3D imaging. What this means is pictures popping out of the screen and poking you in the peepers, not the relentless quest for ever more photorealistic computer graphics courtesy of a games console or highend gaming rigs.
However, whatever you think about 3D (from now on, let’s assume 3D means stereopscopic 3D), one thing it definitely isn’t is new. 3D images have been knocking around for nearly 200 years and the technology involved in 3D movies dates back over 100 years. That’s right – like so many things – the Victorians got there first.
It all started – probably – with a device known as the stereoscope, invented in 1838. It was the first gadget that keyed into the mechanics of human stereoscopic vision.
Humans, of course, have two eyes. The consequence is that each eye views the world from a slightly different angle and receives a slightly different image. The brain takes these offset images and composites them into a single mental picture with depth and perspective. You, therefore, see the world in glorious 3D.
So, that’s exactly what the stereoscope does – show each eye a still image from a slightly different angle and allow the brain to work its magic. Cue endless fairground fun and a roaring trade in early 3D pornography.
Like many technologies, good old porn helped with the early cash flow. Of course, the stereoscope had some very serious applications, too. It was used by the military to view aerial photographs, for instance.
Ongoing 3D
Fast forward to the 1890s and British inventor, William Friese-Greene patented a system for capturing and displaying motion stereoscopic pictures and 3D movies were born. Friese-Greene’s technology turned out to be too unwieldy for commercial use, but the seeds were sown.
Several variations on the stereoscopic 3D movie riff were tried with the first known paying audience recorded in 1922. Further dabbling followed in the next few decades. Even the Nazis made a few propaganda flicks in 3D, but the golden age of 3D cinema was probably the 1950s.
A number of revivals have since rebooted the 3D revolution only to fade into obscurity. All of which brings us to the present day.
Indeed, after that potted history you might be tempted to disregard the latest 3D resurgence as another blip on the graph before an inevitable return to the historical flatline. This time, however, things are different.
This time, 3D is about much more than cheap cinema thrills. It’s spreading into a wide range of platforms courtesy of many different technologies. That includes the promise of less unwieldy, more comfortable 3D viewing. Combine that with the interactivity of games and the result might just be the most immersive leisure experience yet. This time, 3D might be for real.
So, what are the different 3D technologies available today, how do they compare and where’s it all heading?
In one sense, they’re all the same. Generally, it’s all about exposing each eye to a different image. Exactly how that is achieved, however, is where things get interesting.
The heyday of 3D cinema was based on so-called red-green analglyph technology. This involves a single picture containing a pair of merged, colour-shifted and spatially offset images. The viewer is required to wear colour-filtered lenses which effectively allow each eye to view a different offset image. This works pretty well in terms of creating the illusion of depth perception. It’s a little more problematic when it comes to colours, however.
Inevitably, each eye is viewing the scene with radically different colours. While the brain is capable of compositing the image to generate the correct colours, it’s a lot of work and perhaps contributes to the eye strain many viewers of 3D movies experience.
If coloured filters tend to be less than ideal, the most obvious alternative is polarised light. Again, the viewer is presented with a single picture frame within which two images are interleaved. The most common method is to use a pair of projectors, each with an orthogonally opposed light polarising filter. The viewer then wears glasses with similarly opposed polarising filters and Bob’s your spear-poking, eye-popping uncle.
3D gaming
Smoke and spectacles
Originally, polarised 3D technology relied on linear polarisation and thus required level-headed viewing. More recently, circular polarisation has been used, allowing a degree of head-tilt without losing the 3D illusion.
However, if it’s perfect colours and freedom to thrash your head about like a lunatic you desire, one solution is active shutter technology. Active-shutter 3D involves a pair of glasses, the lenses of which contain liquid crystals that can be alternated between transparent and black. At the same time, the display flips between the offset images for each eye. With a sufficiently high frame rate, the result is motion 3D.
Like polarised 3D, active-shutter 3D results in a dimmer image and along with the need for a shuttered glasses, it means active shutter requires specialised display technology supporting a higher frame rate (typically at least 100 frames per second).
However, a monitor with a higher refresh rate is cheaper and simpler than running a pair of polarised projectors. So, it’s active-shutter technology that is currently the weapon of choice for PC gaming, with Nvidia’s 3D Vision platform perhaps the most successful to date.
That said, what Nvidia 3D Vision long with all analgyph, polarised and active-shutter 3D tech share is the need to wear glasses. This, along with a feeling of eye strain, is probably what has so far prevented 3D from becoming a properly big deal. What we really want is 3D viewing without glasses. What we want is autostereoscopic 3D.
The trick here is to create a single display surface that can somehow send a different image to each eye. There are several different types, but they ultimately split into two groups – those that use head tracking technology to make sure each eye is seeing the correct image and those that simply kick out a different image based on the viewing angle.
Glasses-free 3D
As if chucking out silly glasses wasn’t enough, autostereoscopic 3D also makes possible movement parallax. For the uninitiated, that means getting a different view of a scene or object depending on your vantage point. In other words, move your head around and you’ll get a different look at things, just like in real life.
However, there is one final problem that even autostereoscopic technology can’t avoid. In the real world, objects at different distances have different focal points. But a simulated 3D image is generated from a uniform distance. And that confuses the hell out of your eye muscles, eye lenses and ultimately your poor brain.
It’s more problematical on a big desktop display than, say, a handheld device with a puny screen. But it’s something that’s not going to be going away short of using true holographic 3D technology.
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Touch in Windows 8
Ubiquitous access to touch-enabled devices is going to mean every Windows game developer on planet earth will be looking to integrate touch features into their latest release.
So we can take a look at how touch-enabled systems will run Windows 8, enhance your gaming experience and generally make the world a better place.
There’s simply no arguing that Microsoft – publisher of the single most important OS on the planet – has been utterly routed by the more nimble Apple and Google.
It may have released touch-enabled systems years ago with Windows Mobile and Windows Tablet Edition, but in its usual blinkered this-is- to-sell-more-Windows way managed to kill the market dead for these and many other innovative products. Anyone remember Microsoft Smart Display? Or project Courier?
This time around touch will be different. Microsoft doesn’t have to innovate, phew, as Apple and Android has done all of that for it. We can just sit back, relax and wait for the touch-enabled, app-store-integrated, widget-brandishing, button-sliding progeny of Windows to make its appearance.
The odd thing is, it’s really rather exciting. For the first time we’re going to have the chance at a genuine ecosystem of Windows devices to choose from: moving from Windows phones, to Windows tablets up to netbooks and laptops and then desktop systems. All touch-enabled, all interconnected via Windows Live and all offering the same touch games and applications.
Next generation hardware is already appearing so let’s take a look at how touch-devices work with Windows 8, existing and future games.
The gloss-black MSI all-in-one flares into life. The remnants of an ancient BIOS briefly shows itself – still infecting even this most modern of machines – before a Metro-style pale-blue OS boot menu presents itself. Its uber-modern fine sans-serif type couldn’t be more removed from the chunky fixed-type on BIOS screens of old.
Tap the extra options and you see a selection of recovery and boot features, before going back and tapping the frame-less Windows 8 button to start it. Within seconds a widescreen HD mountain vista is displayed, the date and time boldly displayed in that stylish new Segoe typeface.
A swipe up reveals the Windows user accounts, ideally tied to Windows Live accounts they will take your preferences, avatar images, email, documents and apps with you to any device you use. Tapping one brings up the visual lock-screen – a personalised picture that requires you to motion over areas you’ve previously selected to gain full user access.
Security passed, the new Windows 8 Start Menu springs forth; this living breathing menu emanates life, as individual app cards update and refresh themselves. Feeds show real-time posts and games show online players stats.
The expansive, horizon-style Start Menu can be effortlessly scrolled through, with a tap here you can check your tweets, a tap there you can scroll through your latest news streams.
Media Center makes it a simple job to flick through menus of media and choose the music, photos and films you want to view. Tap the latest Windows Store, grab a game and enjoy gaming in a new way.
Hands on with Windows 8
The release of Windows 8 will simply solidify this touch journey but for now models, such as the MSI Wind Top AE2210 or the Dell Inspiron 2320 – both all-in-one models – elegantly show the touch-enabled future that awaits as they can have the Windows 8 Developer Preview installed on them.
We know the Developer Preview was really a beta version but even so, the semantics of a number of gestures were a little unnecessarily obscured. Using it you get a better idea that the demo at last year’s Microsoft Build conference while live had been well practised and orchestrated.
We regularly ran into issues trying to switch between apps and the dock system seemed limited and frustrating to use. But it’s hard to complain about something that hasn’t even been released in an official form. Even guessing, there’s no chance of a Windows 8 release until summer 2012. Microsoft has a lot to sort out before then beyond just getting a swanky touch-interface working correctly.
The Windows Store is probably the easiest, cross-device migration of settings and is another easy thing to sort via Windows Live accounts.
But it’s the often overlooked elements of life where pleasure can really be taken, like reading on the toilet or removing an annoying bogey from your nose. Our old-friend Windows Media Centre is an excellent touch-enabled bit of software.
Whether that’s through luck or flaw we can’t say, but flicking through films, music and photos is a lovely experience. One we’re sure could be made even better if a little style and thought was put into it.
The Media Center photo screensaver is still one of the worst experiences we’ve had besides hiding under our bed covers as children listening to our parents fight.
Windows playtime
Where our real interest lies is with gaming. Touch on mobile devices has ushered in a new way to game. While we’re not expecting the same paradigm shift on the desktop, access to casual mobile games will always be a good thing, but we do expect touch elements to start drip feeding into triple-A titles.
The splendid thing is we can already try some of these features out on existing titles, that have been either knowingly or unwittingly enabled for touch gaming. The richest area of gaming for touch-aware titles is the hated casual game, you can stop making hissing noises. Some people – we imagine a few of those that have racked up over half a billion downloads of Angry Birds – actually do like what we deridingly call ‘casual’ games.
With many Flash-based browser games designed for easy mouse input, or more likely for touch-aware input, these are all able to work flawlessly with a touch PC. We’ve already mentioned the most obvious casual game: Angry Birds. This has a free PC version online at chrome.angrybirds.com that works on any HTML5-aware browser and plays beautifully on touch-screen equipped PCs and on a much larger scale than any tablet or phone could hope to manage on its own.
We did run into a few odd instances with Internet Explorer, it has its own touch-controls built in and a wrongly-placed finger can have you browsing off to other locations. Equally well-equipped are the flash-based games to be found over at www.popcap.com the likes of Bejeweled and Plants Vs Zombies, these Flash games again work perfectly on a touch-enabled PC.
It’s also worth pointing out the browser add-in Swiffout.com that enables you to run embedded Flash games full screen. It’s a bit hit and miss, as in it’ll sometimes seem like the game isn’t doing anything.
If you think there’s a big selection of casual games available online now, just you wait until Windows 8 hits the streets. We’d expect most Windows Phones games to be quickly ported, that’s if they’re not natively supported from day one, while dedicated Windows 8 Tablet games are going to quickly appear.
If casual gaming is your thing, if nothing else children gobble them up like space-dusted cake, then expect a flood to come in from Android and iOS devices.
Touch in mainstream games
Fortunately, touch is coming to mainstream gaming too. Well, it’s actually already here but it’s either surreptitious or else it’s accidental, but we’re still claiming it’s real.
The formats that are going to gain the most outside of the casual arena are adventures and strategy games. You may have spotted that both of these have the advantage that they’re not necessarily the fastest paced of games.
The big issue, particularly for RTS games but can even affect adventures too, is that a quick-tap is equivalent to a left-click and a long-tap performs a right-click. This effectively eliminates the ability to do quick right-click actions.
Most dedicated touch devices have developed alternatives, such as the two-finger tap or hold one finger down and tap second. Unless a game is developed with touch in mind, you’re stuck with what Windows 7 has to offer, and that’s limited.
Even with these limitations many adventure games and less hectic strategy games play wonderfully on a touchscreen. If anything we love the switch you can make between active moments using the mouse and more contemplative sections using the touchscreen interface.
The same type of system goes for some RPGs as well, though many tend to lean heavily on mouse and keyboard. Non-combat areas such as inventory management, spell casting or crafting can all take advantage of touchscreen input.
One genre of gaming that we’re not expecting touch to have an impact on is first person shooters. This a PC genre that is very much going to stay a realm of the mouse and keyboard. That’s not to say touch systems aren’t able to run them, and in a similar way to RPGs we can see room within FPS titles to add extra interactivity into the game world by using touch within environment.
Take Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which has a world littered with supposedly interactive elements from touch newspapers to hackable door locks. To make these mouse accessible the game almost has to cut away from the world so you can click on the right parts with the mouse, with a touchscreen they’d be no need and you could directly interact with the game world.
The same goes for any games with in-world elements, while touch could be used for physical game-world interaction. So picking up and manipulating items via touch to complete physics puzzles or just completing a weapon loadout.
None of this in itself is going to change the world, but it’s certainly going to change how you play in your gaming worlds.
Touchy me, touchy you
Like us, many of you will be thinking ‘I’m never going to lean forward and touch my screen’. You’re probably right, it’s a lot of effort and not entirely natural thing to do, especially when sitting down.
We’re sure touchscreens will appear but direct touch could well be limited to tablets and all-in-one systems. However, Kinect and the Acer Aspire Z5xxx range, with their front-facing cameras, show a way of interacting that cuts out that bacteria filled touching business with seemingly reasonable precision.
We used the Windows 8 Developer Preview and those two up-to-date all-in-one touch panel PCs mentioned previously: the MSI Wind Top AE2210 is a lovely Intel Core i3 2100 Sandy Bridge graphics, 20-inch unit, which sells for a little over £650.
The Dell Inspiron 2310 is more up-market with an improved Intel Core i5 and Nvidia GT 525M graphics chipset. This has a little more muscle but is also a little more pricey, selling at around £799.
Interestingly both use what we suspect is the same two-point touch sensor. We suspect this is an IR-based system as they both detect finger movement before contact is made and there was vague issues with accuracy at the extreme edges of the screen.
That aside both worked flawlessly with the Windows 8 Developer Preview OS indeed they were both as fast as when used under Windows 7. Tablets and phones are going to continue to be the main focus for touch, but we’re waiting to see what trickles down to the PC.
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