Character/ Environmental Detail

Having passed its 3 year anniversary, Dungeons and Dragons Online is one of the older MMO’s out there. As far as I know it uses a rendering engine of Turbines own design and basically has the same core rendering engine as LoTRO. I have to say that I did’t find the graphics so spectacular in regular 3D but in s3D they are very nice. Being a bit spoiled by more modern games I always found that DDO had to view options to customize the looks of your character at the start but now and then I see higher level characters spotting pretty nifty armor.

Characters and environment don’t have the highest polygon count there is but once you turn on s3D mode the visuals are very crisp and for me its like looking at my painted tin miniatures I had as a child when I played pen&paper D&D some odd 25 years ago. The environment looks pretty well, especially the insides of the many dungeons. A small negative point I have with the game is that the dungeons often look the same and the whole game lacks a bit in graphical variety for my personal taste. Well maybe thats just me being a n00b  (only lvl 6 atm) and I would see more exiting places later on.

Depth/ Ghosting

I may have said that about other games as well but the feeling of depth in DDO is one of the best I have seen for a 3rd person game. There are some light sources in the game here and there that can give you some ghosting but since most of the gameplay takes places in moody lit dungeons the overall ghosting is next to not noticeable. As I said the depth effect for the characters is very good and also, mostly due to the dungeon type of gameplay where you don’t have very high distances, the whole scenery looks very “solid”. In some rare occasion tough the camera would rotate an object (i.e. part of a tree or wall) to close to the eye and it breaks the overall good effect but that rarely ever happens, so in all the camera works pretty good in s3D.

The Interface/ Combat

For my personal taste the front of my screen, which I like to call windshield, is pretty cluttered with the many parts of the user interface. Especially if you are a caster, or otherwise have many skills a good part of the screen will consist of hotbars, compass, chat, options menue, adventure tracker and so on wich partly can be minimized but still take to much space for my liking. on the other hand the onscreen text is very much readable and clear.  The targeting cursor isn’t really 3d but its usable. NPC’s names are pretty much where they should be, on top of the model. Spells and other effects are true 3d so they work very nicely in s3d mode. If you like to, you can turn most of that off in the game options.

The gameplay itself demands a bit of manual aiming and movement in fights but this works very well in stereo 3D.

Final Toughs

Overall DDO is another game where my preferred method of playing is the s3D mode.
If I were developer for a day for DDO (and could work really really fast) i would probably iron out these minor flaws:

• Redesign the interface to give more space to the 3D environment.
• Do voiceovers (yeah yeah i hate to read quest text)
• Bring in more variety in the environment and character customization.
• Bring in some visual, 3D information about my health and mana so I dont have to constantly shift my focus from 3D scene to interface when playing.

Anyways I’m pretty happy to continue playing DDO in s3D, as a matter of fact I think I’ll do that right now…

Next to come: maybe finally my re-evaluation of Lord of the Rings online, stay tuned

Character/ Environmental Detail

When I first saw screenshots of Spellborne I totally fell in love with the artistic style. This is of course my personal view. If WOW/War uses a typical American art-style and Lineage 2/ Aion is typical Asian then I would say that Spellborne adapts a typical European Style as you would see in French/ Belgian Comics. The game itself uses the Unreal Engine Version 2.5 and the 3D Vision glasses do a very good job transferring that screwy, disproportional art-style into a fantastic “true” 3D scenery.

Characters and environment seem to have a nice polygon count resulting in a world with a lot of detail. The art-style is to “cartoony” to attempt realism but the viewing experience is something you’d expect from from high quality 3D-Animated Movies like “Monsters vs Aliens 3D” and “Iceage”. In comparison to WOW I would say the game’s 3D models are more complex and the world looks more detailed.

Depth/ Ghosting 

With the current drivers the feeling of depth in The Chronicles of Spellborne is pretty good in stereo mode. In the options menu you can adjust brightness, contrast and gamma and I found no significant loss of color quality adjusting those to counter the loss of brightness due to the glasses. I also turned of Gloom there because I felt that it added to ghosting. After playing with convergence and depth a bit I came to a setting where I noticed only some minor ghosting in the far distance that satisfied my wish for a very 3-dimensional look and feel of my character and the scenery close to it. The characters, NPCs and the world look very solid as if you bought brand new toys and placed them in a fantastic diorama. Fires and other bright effects worked for me pretty good and without ghosting although at some places i felt that point-lights from lanterns and light crystals were just a bit to bright but maybe that’sa result of my tempering with the settings to much. Playing the game I didnt noticed any clipping or unusual effects where the models geometry would mess with my immersion into the 3D setting.

The Interface/ Combat

After the introduction of the 1.08 drivers the game seems to utilize 3 “planes”. At the front of your screen, which I like to call windshield, the graphical user interface consisting of chat window, mini-map and some buttons is very much readable and clear. Behind that, into the screen unfolds the 3D-World. The interesting thing I noticed about Spellborne is that there is a 3rd plane similar to the “windshield” but set a bit deeper into the 3D scene. The targeting cursor as well as the NPC’s names and health bars and the speech bubbles from dialog are placed on this 3rd (or middle) plane which works OK for the targeting cursor but doesn’t feel right for both names and health bars. All in all I have mixed feelings about this middle plane. On the positive side, the names of the NPCs for example as well as the speech bubbles are much clearer and more readable then for example in Aion where this information is placed correctly above the head of the NPC resulting in hard to read text for NPCs in a distance. On the negative side I had to turn off health bars completely (which is easily done in the interface options) because I felt they messed up my 3D Vision. The rotating skill deck on the other hand, one of the key features of TCOS, is a 3D-Object itself and looked pretty cool and natural in the 3D setting beside the minor flaw that the bar where you build up combo points is stuck on the windshield.

Being a game where you have to dodge and aim manually I had my doubts at first how this would work in ”true” 3D but after a few minutes the combat and aiming felt pretty natural. Both ranged and melee attacks work fine due to the middle plane even without a real 3D-cursor. Selecting a Target or interacting with it was also no problem. A selected target also spots a white circle around its models base. As far as Effects go, I didn’t notice any misplaced skill-effects and the visuals of these skills are pretty amazing to see in stereo vision.

Final Toughs

Overall the game is perfectly enjoyable and looks stunning through the 3D Vision Glasses.
If I were developer for a day (and could work really really fast) i would probably iron out these minor flaws:

• The information about the opponents health could be placed at its model base. For example a full red circle means full health and then like a clock if the monster looses health replace the red with white so that a monster with half his hp would have the right side of its base-circle white, the other half red.
• With that the “selecting” of a target could be discussed. Maybe the target that I aim at should be selected automatically instead of some target I clicked or “tabbed” to before.
• The names of the NPCs as well as their speech bubble should be places at the right coordinates in the 3D-scene even if that means trading of readability.
• There should be options to turn off individual GUI items on the windshield plane. I for one would be perfectly happy turning off all, keeping only my rotating skill-deck when it comes to combat.
• Some point-lights could loose a bit of brightness and some more ambient light could be used there instead

Anyway these minor flaws won’t keep me in enjoying the world of Spellborne in “true” 3D from now on and I’m hoping to spend many many more hours in that beautifully screwy world.

Next to come: my re-evaluation of Lord of the Rings online, stay tuned

Character/ Environmental Detail

Being a 3rd generation MMMO (if you count Ultima/EQ and Lineage1 as the 1st and WOW/ Lineage 2 as the 2nd) Aion looks a lot more detailed in both characters as well as environment then its predecessor. The Cryengine 1 seemes to be a good choice both for “normal” and stereo 3D rendering.
Both Characters and environment seem to have a high polygon count given them a very realistic feel. So far i didn’t notice any displaced effects. The PC and NPC names hover above their heads at the right spot and can be read OK even in stereo 3D mode.

Depth/ Ghosting 

In Aion the feeling of depth is pretty good in stereo mode. In the front of your screen, i like to call windshield you have your interface, in the depth of the screen the scenery unfolds. I noticed some minor ghosting and displacement of light sources but the characters themselves as well as the scenery look very solid.

The Interface/ Combat

The interface works pretty well in 3D Space. The Skills, the Minimap and Healthbar as well as the Chatbox are “on the Windshield” in front of the screen while scenery unfolds in 3D behind them. I don’t think that the games has a 3D cursor to select enemies but the selected enemy has a glowing red circle at the base of the model in the 3D Scene. As mentioned above names of the monsters you fight are also placed at the correct 3D Coordinates so that they do not disturb the depth feeling.I noticed tough that there are some small bullets framing the name of the selected target that are rendered on the windshield same as the damage numbers if you hit your target. This seems to be a minor flaw which, besides the missing 3D cursor that sets the game back a bit from being viewed perfectly in 3D. The spell and skill effects on the other hand  are shown where they are supposed to happen and look pretty cool.

Final Toughs

Overall the game looks pretty set up for the use with the 3D Vision Glasses. There are minor flaws that the devs could iron out easily if they wanted to to get into the excellency category for NVIDIA. As soon as the game goes live in Europe I’ll probably spending much more time with it to test if you could play it entirely in 3D-Depth mode

Next to come: Chronicles of Spellborne, stay tuned

Since I’m a MMO-Addict i tried out numerous MMO Games and Demos including World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Chronicles of Spellborne, D&D Online and Warhammer Online

Introduction

For those who are unfamiliar with Stereoscopic Glasses, they use a technique that provides a different image for each of your eyes in 3D-Games giving these Games a true 3rd dimension often described as looking throe a window into the world behind your screen. since almost all MMO’s i tested use 3rd person view it often feels like looking into a toy box full of living, breathing toys. My personal impression : “If you get the game to working 3D-stereo mode, its an absolutely awesome experience”. A lot of games switch from “i view some kind of movie there” to “OMG there are little toy people running around inside my room (monitor)”. I noticed that in some games where i didn’t liked the standard 3D art that much,in 3D stereo mode i was totally amazed on how fantastic the world looks. Especially when i retried DDO in stereo mode i was like “wow that stuff looks as if im playing with living tin-miniatures”

The glasses basically work with every 3D game out of the box even tough for some (like wow) NVIDIA provides special profiles with settings (like depth) customized for the game.
You also have to keep in mind that the depth-effect comes from “how much the developers stay true to a 3-Dimensional” setting, so if they program in some clever tricks like lighting, effects, bloom or other stuff that doesn’t happen at the coordinates in the 3D world where they suppose to happen its better to turn these effects of so not to ruin the scene.

NVIDIA rated some of their driver supported games already on their web-page but since I’m a fan of classic western ill put my reviews into categories of “The good, the bad and the ugly”.

EDIT: Since the list of games and their rating will change constantly depending on the game developers and NVIDIAs effored to make the MMOs work in “true” 3D I decided to keep an up to date list on this page.

General Toughs

Common Problems that all of these game share:
IMHO the biggest strain for the eyes is the extensive use of the graphical user interface (GUI). All these elements like skillbar, chatbox, minimap, lifebar, character portrait are usually rendered in 2D at the front of the scene. The effect is like driving a car with a thousand stickers on your windshield. You can look at whats beyond the windshield and view the world in perfect 3D but if you have to focus on those stickers that are attached to your windshield from the inside you have trouble watching the road.
The same goes for PC/NPC Name, Lifebars and other text  or information that is pasted into the 3D environment. Even if it is placed perfectly (like in wow or war) above the head of the 3D model

My hope would be that in the far far future MMOs could be a lot less text heavy.
NPC’s could have voiceover dialog and enough diversity in their appearance to make stuff like “Go to Captain N00bslayer, he’s the big Ork in the main building” work on audio and appearance alone.
NPCs and Players alike could have “near death animations” where they limp, cough and bleed instead of half full healthbar sticking somewhere on the screen or besides their model.

In the “first Look” i gave these games above i spend around 1h with each game, often in the free trial version of the MMO. In the coming months I’ll post individual game reviews with (stereo) screenshots here at my blog so keep your eyes crossed and your glasses clean…