3D is headed this way, but how big of a splash will it really make? The industry seems torn; while Sony briskly moves to support its line of Bravia 3D televisions by setting 'almost all' its studios to work on 3D games -- and despite the high price of that kind of 3D television, Ubisoft says it expects them in every home within the next three years.
Much discussion surrounds the question of just what kind of consumer will embrace 3D and how large that install base will be; some companies are eager, others are hesitant. Add id Software to the 'hesitant' column, as Todd Hollenshead, boss of the storied developer most recently behind Doom 4 and Rage, tells UK consumer site Eurogamer that the tech needs more time.
One of Hollenshead's reservations is purely cultural. The push for 3D ever since the 1980s has a sort of breathless sci-fi bent he thinks may have drummed up the perception that wearing goggles and gawking at pop-out graphics seems "so nerdy that nobody wants to do it," and he's unsure whether the companies pioneering new stereoscopic tech have found a way to circumvent that rap and make 3D comfortable, stylish and appealing.
Hollenshead was frustrated when his nose hurt from the uncomfortable glasses he wore for two hours during a showing of James Cameron's Avatar in 3D. "I know the stuff in your living room is different. You can get higher quality glasses that fit," he says. "But you still gotta sit in your living room wearing these glasses. And then if you're playing games and move your head then it can get out of phase, which is a major issue."
Like many -- though perhaps not in such a specific turn of phrase -- Hollenshead notes that 3D televisions are "f***ing expensive" (in the range of $3,000-$5,000 and up), wondering, "Is there enough content to justify?"
"At the very uber end of the videophiles, those guys are going to adopt that," he says. "But that's not going to be wide enough adoption to create substantial change within the gaming market. It has to be more pervasive and more widely adopted before it makes sense for videogame development companies to invest."
"You may have one or two that are like, oh, we're going to fly the banner of this and we're going to make our name on this one thing," Hollenshead continues. But to have really meaningful differences is going to require some more time. The price is going to have to come down and you're going to have to have more widespread adoption."
As long as movies are going to be released in 3D and sports broadcast in 3D that will drive more 3D TV sales than games and having 3D games will be just a bonus. 3D TV isn't exclusive to the games industry, that is why it will succeed at the very least a small niche. Glassless 3D is probably a few years away.
Or it will never happen, right now, there isn't a technology in sight, that allows glassless 3D that doesn't need you to watch from a certain angle to the screen. Maybe such a technology is in the end impossible.
I don't see 3D with glasses become mainstream, the worldwide HD penetration is currently 30% according to a study by Nielsen (http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/north-america-leads-hdtv-penet ration-1 3844/) and it is on the market for quite a while now.
Of course it's possible. I can think of two possible methods off the top of my head. But making it all work takes technologies that step well beyond the LCD and LED platforms that companies have invested so massively in. It can be done, today even, but shifting the resources to get it done with the right quality, cost, dependability and scale will take some years.
Great... so in 3 years time we're all supposed to shell out a few grand to replace the perfectly fine HDTV's we all just shelled out a few grand for. And then we're going to shell out another few grand right after that to replace everything with Glasses-less systems?
Not going to happen.
And in 3 years time the content providers are going to have given up on the idea just like they always have. In order for it to survive they all have to embrace it and they all have to assume it'll be another few hardware generations away before it's mainstream.
Unless somebody comes up with a really compelling reason to require 3D, I have to agree with Hollenshead that it will remain a niche market.
Even if all TVs came with 3D support built in, most people wouldn't bother to put on the included 3D glasses (or move their furniture to the 'sweet spot' for glassless TVs).
That said, its easy enough to support 3D in today's PC titles (at least all the games I've played on Steam just appear to work with nVidia Vision). And I imagine that the next generation of consoles from Sony & Microsoft will have "3D Support" as a bullet-point (even if few people use it).
The PC market is much more established for technology of this nature to pickup. The monitors are smaller and more cost effective, and to use an eye peripheral would be analogous to the mouse, keyboard, or gamepad. Where as television is more of a disconnected experience. Users are used to having a remote control, but it's not required to use the device. You can get up and sit down, leave the room at any time. I think breaking the barrier of connection and requiring a user to enter a different physical state in order to use the device is a challenge as well as getting the market.
High definition is still not as broad as it could be, and yet it's nearly impossible to not get a television that is as least 720p. New hardware is definitely not something that people are going to be jumping to acquire. The television has never been a device that you upgrade often. It has been in the class of an appliance, like a microwave. You buy it if it's necessary to buy a new one.
The Nvidia and Disney 3D systems are quite well done and with smarter and web enabled televisions hitting the market, streaming content and media servers/consoles the ability to get content to the TVs is the least of the problems that the 3D market has in my opinion.
If 3D displays discard the sense of size of the screen due to altered perspectives, and the Retina display is pushing well towards HD territory, then in just a year or two, why couldn't portable displays completely displace TVs and solve this 'glasses' 3d problem?
They're cheaper, more personal, more convenient, solve some of the brightness issues, largely solve problems of auto stereoscopy and sweet spots and are already something we were going to buy anyway in our iphone 7.
You could kit out your whole family with hypothetical 3HDS's for slightly more than Sony are charging for active shutter glasses, let alone the whole TV, new bluray player and IR transmitter.
The entry barrier to 3D is simply too large at present. It needs to come down to the $1,500-1,000 range before it will ever penetrate the market effictively. It will take some time before that happens. It sounds as though Sony is putting too many resources into something that may not pan out for quite awhile.
On a personal note, having recently purchased an 42" LCD gaming HDTV I have no plans on running out to buy a new one anytime soon 3D or not.
Since when was Ubisoft the crystal ball wielding psychic of what we will all have in the future? And in Three years?!? Sounds like someone with their head up their ass, so, big guess here...marketing?
Here's my prediction- whoever the butt-pirate was who said this is, Iin 3 years he won't have a job at Ubisoft. As for 3D...will just be another flash in the pan...
Someone in the videogame industry talks...sense...what the who the... how did this happen! Maybe getting burned from this HD-generation is wising people up. Huzzah! I say Huzzah!
It will take another decade or two and at least one entire generation-shift (around 25-33 years) before HD is any kind of mass accepted standard, that generation shift is happening now though but don't get your horses up yet. 3D is another generation-shift removed from it.
I think it would be more feasible to make television glasses personally. I am waiting for smell-a-vision though that is going to be the next big thing...except with dirty jobs.
I think the 3ds works because it is so small that it doesnt have to show much 3d just enough to get the player more interested in the game. I think it would be 5-10 years before they can even create a concept to port that technology to a TV
The funny thing is gaming is the one thing where multi-parallax 3d(no glasses, no sweet spot, multiple angles) would shine. Being able to shift your viewpoint and have the game world appear to change the angle your viewing from would be amazing. Filming movies or tv to provide 3d in that way would require quite a bit of equipment and would probably be prohibitively expensinve. Games just have to extend the viewing angle in the software.
But I'm sure we are more than 3 years away from any form of 3d being ubiquitous.
Gaming & Viewing such in multi-parallax -- and be able to shift your viewpoint and have the gameworld appear to change the angle you're viewing from- ... so basically you want a motion/perspective detecting virtual world camera with real time feedback and Hi-end 3D post FX? Dude- that would cost more to develop than the Freakin' game!
Oh ...for the love of the god of '10 years of investment in Overdone GFX, featureless technology and useless mechanics instead of actual gameplay, loss of funding and massive layoffs', get this guy his Magic Freaking Billions Dollar Camera already! I am done...
I don't think its that complex. You can accomplish the same effect with a Wiimote and some software and based on what I understand of Toshiba's technology the game would just have to send more visual information based on the angle its coming out of the parallax lenses.
Or it will never happen, right now, there isn't a technology in sight, that allows glassless 3D that doesn't need you to watch from a certain angle to the screen. Maybe such a technology is in the end impossible.
I don't see 3D with glasses become mainstream, the worldwide HD penetration is currently 30% according to a study by Nielsen (http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/north-america-leads-hdtv-penet ration-1
3844/) and it is on the market for quite a while now.
http://m.gizmodo.com/5620310/three-glasses+less-3dtvs-expected-by-tos hiba-before
-years-end
If they can make that work right that's a pretty good leap ahead for 3d.
Not going to happen.
And in 3 years time the content providers are going to have given up on the idea just like they always have. In order for it to survive they all have to embrace it and they all have to assume it'll be another few hardware generations away before it's mainstream.
Even if all TVs came with 3D support built in, most people wouldn't bother to put on the included 3D glasses (or move their furniture to the 'sweet spot' for glassless TVs).
That said, its easy enough to support 3D in today's PC titles (at least all the games I've played on Steam just appear to work with nVidia Vision). And I imagine that the next generation of consoles from Sony & Microsoft will have "3D Support" as a bullet-point (even if few people use it).
High definition is still not as broad as it could be, and yet it's nearly impossible to not get a television that is as least 720p. New hardware is definitely not something that people are going to be jumping to acquire. The television has never been a device that you upgrade often. It has been in the class of an appliance, like a microwave. You buy it if it's necessary to buy a new one.
The Nvidia and Disney 3D systems are quite well done and with smarter and web enabled televisions hitting the market, streaming content and media servers/consoles the ability to get content to the TVs is the least of the problems that the 3D market has in my opinion.
If 3D displays discard the sense of size of the screen due to altered perspectives, and the Retina display is pushing well towards HD territory, then in just a year or two, why couldn't portable displays completely displace TVs and solve this 'glasses' 3d problem?
They're cheaper, more personal, more convenient, solve some of the brightness issues, largely solve problems of auto stereoscopy and sweet spots and are already something we were going to buy anyway in our iphone 7.
You could kit out your whole family with hypothetical 3HDS's for slightly more than Sony are charging for active shutter glasses, let alone the whole TV, new bluray player and IR transmitter.
On a personal note, having recently purchased an 42" LCD gaming HDTV I have no plans on running out to buy a new one anytime soon 3D or not.
Since when was Ubisoft the crystal ball wielding psychic of what we will all have in the future? And in Three years?!? Sounds like someone with their head up their ass, so, big guess here...marketing?
Here's my prediction- whoever the butt-pirate was who said this is, Iin 3 years he won't have a job at Ubisoft. As for 3D...will just be another flash in the pan...
It will take another decade or two and at least one entire generation-shift (around 25-33 years) before HD is any kind of mass accepted standard, that generation shift is happening now though but don't get your horses up yet. 3D is another generation-shift removed from it.
I think the 3ds works because it is so small that it doesnt have to show much 3d just enough to get the player more interested in the game. I think it would be 5-10 years before they can even create a concept to port that technology to a TV
But I'm sure we are more than 3 years away from any form of 3d being ubiquitous.
Oh ...for the love of the god of '10 years of investment in Overdone GFX, featureless technology and useless mechanics instead of actual gameplay, loss of funding and massive layoffs', get this guy his Magic Freaking Billions Dollar Camera already! I am done...