[Philip Lelyveld comment: this article contains interesting graphs and stats on ‘3D PC Ecosystem’ and ‘PC versus Consoles’ market.]
[VG 24 7]
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Future vision
Those willing to upgrade their GPUs on a regular basis will always be ahead of the rest of the market and whilst many more people are now willing to carry out the physical process of opening up a PC to replace components, the cost of the latest and greatest GPUs still proves prohibitive.
By comparison, 3D gaming looks to offer a more affordable way of obtaining dramatic results. Nvidia’s recently released 3D Vision 2 features a number of enhancements over the original technology, with some easy to understand improvements such as more comfortable 3D glasses with bigger lenses, sitting alongside the surprisingly complex Lightboost technology supported by LED screens.
A demo of Batman: Arkham City reveals the undeniably impressive results that can be achieved if 3D is incorporated into the development process early on. Here, Rocksteady’s non-intrusive, subtle and sparingly used out-of-screen trickery mixed with comprehensive depth-of-field effects make it wholly evident why games, not films, are the real champions of 3D technology.
“We’re getting to the point where developers are learning how to best use 3D effects,” says Berraondo. “I think 3D is best described as an addition to your toolset but I compare its early use to that of HDR. When HDR first came out every developer put massive amounts of lens flare in, every game had sunset scenes but it lost its effect because of that.
“That’s been the case with 3D both in film and games, there have been some developers that have added 3D really late on in the process and you can tell it’s just tacked on. This kind of practice doesn’t do anyone any favours and people start to view 3D as a gimmick because of that, whereas if you actually have 3D thought about from the beginning it becomes much more effective.” …
See the full article here: http://www.vg247.com/2011/11/07/tomorrow’s-world-the-rise-and-rise-of-pc-gaming/comment-page-1/