NVIDIA GeForce 3D Stereo Technology for Developers

Imagine immersing yourself in the world of 3D content like never before. Monsters, bullets, and landscapes jump out of your flat monitor and into your imagination, making you part of the game. With NVIDIA® GeForce® 3D Stereo technology, gaming will never be the same.

2008 has shaped up to be a big year for stereo 3D entertainment, with several audience-drawing 3D films, over 1000 stereo-enabled cinemas in the US, and new technologies that make stereo 3D for home users an inexpensive and high-quality option.

What surprises most game developers is just how little they may have to do to support full 3D stereo display in the games they are making – in fact, many shipping games that were never originally written for stereo already look great in 3D using the NVIDIA 3D Stereo Driver for Vista.

Just check out our latest list of supported games!

Lots of games need no modification, but there are simple things that developers can do to make the experience really fantastic – and a few stumbling blocks that developers can avoid to ensure that their game plays well.

Many of the details can be found in our stereo-for-developers presentation from GDC 2008, which you can view both as a web PDF or see a video of the talk (second half of the video – sorry, the video’s not in stereo… yet!).

Stereo 3D can transform the experience of almost any game, as we've found by playing a lot of games in NVIDIA's stereo lab. It can transform the experience for almost any game genre:

• Strategy Games and RTS's
• RPG and MMO-RPG
• Racing games and Flight Simulators
• Stealth Games & First Person Shooters
• Even Rhythm and Music Games!

How Does It Work?

The NVIDIA 3D Stereo driver can deliver stereo to passive 3D displays (like those from Zalman), as anaglyphic 3D (for testing using multi-colored glasses on old-style non-stereo displays), and will support new forms of 3D display as they become commercially available. The specifics of the display are isolated from the application by the stereo driver, so game developers don’t need to worry about the details.

Inside the driver, each 3D scene gets rendered twice – once for the left eye, and once for the right eye. The driver is able to automatically modify typical 3D game vertex shaders “in flight” so that it can generate the correct images at run time. User options allow players to adjust settings like inter-ocular distance (that is, the amount of “depth”) to their own preference. Developers can explicitly control the stereo aspects of the experience, or just let the driver do its job.

For the best experience, of course, there are a few simple steps that a developer can take to ensure that their game plays its best in 3D stereo, including making sure that player HUD elements are displayed at screen depth, that UI’s like crosshair reticules show in depth correctly (screen reticules can be confusing, but laser sights look *incredible* in 3D, as do projectile ballistics!), and that render-to-texture passes follow a few simple rules (that most developers already follow without realizing it).

With a little more effort, developers can take the reins to control their own 3D stereo experiences, altering subtle player-attention controls like dynamic convergence or adding startling out-of-the-screen special effects.

For more details, check out NVISION and GDC presentations. If you’re an NVIDIA registered developer, let your account manager know you’re interested in making sure your game or application is stereo-ready. And watch for our 3D stereo gaming “Live Lab” LAN at NVISION 2008, including a 2700-seat stereo theatre and special presentations of 3D technologies, products, techniques, and ideas.

Developer Resources for GeForce 3D Stereo Technology

• NVISION 2008 Presentation on Stereo
• Whitepaper: 3D Stereoscopic Game Development plus [VIDEO] (second half of this twin-talk video)
• Latest List: Games Already Supported in 3D (1.8MB PDF)
• NVIDIA's consumer-and-developer oriented GeForce 3D Stereo Page includes driver downloads and more.

List of Supported Games, circa April 2008

(See here for regular updates)