Topic: Is the Wii already equipped to hande 3D gaming?

[BlackNMild2k1]

Iwata dishes on GameCube’s secret 3D abilities

The following information comes from the Q&A portion of Nintendo’s latest financial results…

“…In fact there have already been discussions for a possibility of a 3D video game for a long time. To tell you the truth, GameCube is secretly designed to load graphical circuits which display graphics for right and left eyes respectively, for a future possibility of realizing 3D gaming experience. So actually we have had interest on this technology, but I have some doubt about everyone needing glasses to play.”

This news makes you wonder if the Wii has the same functionality as the GameCube in terms of providing 3D experiences. However, as we know, Nintendo isn’t too big on 3D gaming at the moment.

We already know that the PS3 is equipped to handle 3D gaming and 3D movies, but if they do happen to catch on, starting sometime near the end of the year, do you think the Wii may have already been secretly waiting for this tech to become mainstream?
The Wii after all is just using a beefed up GC chip.

You think this may also be an advertised feature for the Wii 2 since we know it won't just be HD but needs something else?

Discuss.

[Pale]

If the GameCube can handle 3D, that must mean the Wii can handle 6D!

Ya know.. two gamecubes taped together...

Seriously though, I don't think 3D is going to take off period, so I don't see a Nintendo system ever using it.  Avatar was a unique experience that people enjoyed at the theater. I liken it more to a theme park trip.  People like eating junk food and riding thrill rides once in a while, but most people wouldn't want it in their living room.

[Deguello]

No.

So long as 3-D games require those stupid glasses, or require great vision (unlike myself with my legally blind left eye) It will always be a non-starter for videogames.

And definitely not Nintendo.  They learned their lesson with Virtual Boy.

[UncleBob]

I'm on my mobile, so I can't dig up the link (someone do the grunt work for me)... But the 3D abilities have sorta been known about for awhile on the 'Cube.  There's a great article by Don on Electric Pickle that delves into the secrets and such of the official Nintendo GameCube service disc (used by service/repair centers). It touches on this a bit.

[Stogi]

No.

So long as 3-D games require those stupid glasses, or require great vision (unlike myself with my legally blind left eye) It will always be a non-starter for videogames.

And definitely not Nintendo.  They learned their lesson with Virtual Boy.

So you didn't see Avatar in IMAX 3D?

[Deguello]

I have one eye.  I can't see 3-D things, period.

[Stogi]

All i'm saying is, the fact that you can't see 3D kinda makes you bias towards 2D does it not?

[UncleBob]

http://www.electricpickleonline.com/?p=38
Page 3.

[Deguello]

All i'm saying is, the fact that you can't see 3D kinda makes you bias towards 2D does it not?

Does the fact that you can't breathe mustard gas make you biased towards oxygen?

[BlackNMild2k1]

All i'm saying is, the fact that you can't see 3D kinda makes you bias towards 2D does it not?

Does the fact that you can't breathe mustard gas make you biased towards oxygen?

Oxygen is the best. But helium and nitrous are pretty good in small doses.

[Dirk Temporo]

All i'm saying is, the fact that you can't see 3D kinda makes you bias towards 2D does it not?

Does the fact that you can't breathe mustard gas make you biased towards oxygen?

That's the most retarded analogy I've ever heard.

[KDR_11k]

Wasn't there some shitty mech game for the Wii that supported red/green 3D glasses? I think there's even a 3D mode in Glory Days 2 for the DS.

Pseudo edit: Battle Rage: Mech Combat was planned to have 3D support but they rushed it so hard they couldn't even finish their advertised feature in time so they wanted to make an enhanced version later. No idea if they ever did. Still it's technically feasible.

[Ian Sane]

This 3D fad comes and goes every so often once some big movie makes use of it.  Everyone is hot for Avatar right now but in six months no one will care.

But if Nintendo needs some sort of novelty to attract non-gamers to the Wii2 then 3D seems as good of an idea as any.  I thought motion control was a half-baked concept that wouldn't take off but I was WAY wrong on that.  So even though I think this would be a silly gimmick I'm not the standard blue ocean Nintendo customer so I can't guess what they would like.  I have a feeling that with this and motion control and Natal and all the guitar controllers and such that we're going to go peripheral-nuts for a bit and then it will all crash down and we'll just be playing with normal controllers again.

And Deg brings up a good point about vision.  Even ignoring blindness like he has, what about glasses?  In day to day life I don't need to wear glasses but I need them for driving and watching TV is just slightly blurry for me so I wear them then.  I can play games without them but I'll occasionally have to squint to read the text and it's just such a frustrating struggle to deal with slightly off visuals.  Now I'm thinking of someone like my Dad who has to wear glasses all the time.  Tons of people are in that boat.  So they either have to struggle or wear 3D glasses over regular glasses.  And that's not including someone like Dev who would be fucked no matter what.

Motion control didn't really discriminate against disabilities any more than original game controllers did.  What do you require for the Wii remote?  Functional hands.  Well you've needed that for gaming since day one.  But minor vision problems was never a concern before and this is MUCH more common than people without working hands.  Even Natal, which would be compromised for anyone in a wheelchair is still only cutting out a small portion of the population.  But tons of people wear glasses.  And once you get over a certain age practically EVERYONE does.  This precious older market that Nintendo loves so much would be at a disadvantage.

And what the hell does this provide for gaming anyway, REALLY?  So Mario is in front of my face now?  Who cares?  Is this really that different from before?  What we really want is virtual reality and this ain't even close.  It'll be at best neat just like the Virtual Boy.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

People who need 6 eyes to watch a "3D" presentation, please raise your hand.

*raises hand*

[Chozo Ghost]

I have one eye.  I can't see 3-D things, period.

That's right. If you have only one functional eye you can't see 3D in real life, let alone 3D on a screen. 2 eyes are required in order for depth perception, otherwise everything appears 2 dimensional.

[Dirk Temporo]

Ian really will cry about anything. 3D is here to stay. The transition won't happen by magic, but they finally got it right, so people are going to use it. And you know what? I wear glasses, and the 3D glasses are fine. Unless you have huge old lady glasses, there shouldn't be any kind of problem.

[KDR_11k]

Technically two eyes are only required for the stereoscopic part of depth perception, there are a few more components to it (parallaxing, focus, size, ...) but you don't need a 3D TV for those.

[SixthAngel]

I have one eye.  I can't see 3-D things, period.

Look on the brightside, you can get away with wearing a badass Snake Plisken eyepatch.

[DAaaMan64]

And definitely not Nintendo.  They learned their lesson with Virtual Boy.

The VB wasn't a failure of 3D. It was a failure of crap graphics, bad marketing, and design.  Plus this kind of 3D would increase your field of vision of the game by more than triple and that is what the VB lacked that made it a great gaming experience. It was like, you put on the red-****-goggles too look at a shitty tiny TV.

[Deguello]

I've being doing some thinking about 3-D and have a question.  The stereoscopic 3-D stuff.  I understand that to do this you essentially break an image into 2 pieces and send them both out to be decoded by a special pair of glasses.

The question is, for games, would this mean that the game would essentially have to be rendered twice in real-time to make such an image?  And thus would The Zii or PS4 or whatever then need 2X the processing power and 2X the graphics capabilities just so the graphics would look exactly the same in 3-D?  Furthermore, could one "image" of the 3-D signal suffer slowdown while the other doesn't?  Would they then be out of sync?  Would your brain become a pretzel trying to figure it out?

Forgive me if I think 3-D isn't going to happen next-gen.  It's probably something Sony's going to go for because they've invested heavily in 3DTV technology (Yes, this will require the purchase of new, expensive Televisions.  Considering this generation already hamhandedly forced people to by HDTVs, this will go over about as well as you'd think.) and more power to them.  But convincing people to upgrade their TVs AGAIN is goign to be a hard sell.

[that Baby guy]

Just something to note:  Split-screen multiplayer is used in all three current platforms successfully.  Considering this means there's more than one camera used at once running on a single console, I'd imagine the process to create a 3D game would likely be similar, so it wouldn't be a matter as much importance, Deg.

That said, I do think 3D is rather "gimmicky."  I'll say I haven't seen Avatar in 3D when I say this, but I've seen Up, as well as numerous other 3D shows at various themeparks.  Remember that things have been broadcast in 3D for some time now, and it's never really caught on.

From what I've seen, it hasn't been a feature that's worth paying any extra from, nor is it worth even having to wear uncomfortable glasses the whole time.  That said, I've been impressed with tricks utilizing perspective, but unfortunately, every time I've seen said things, they've required the viewer to be at a specific place, unless they measure the viewer's location, like what we've seen using the Wii-Remotes for head tracking.  That technology is a bit different than 3D used now, and I believe it has much more practical application for gaming.  The great thing?  3D glasses wouldn't even be necessary, nor would someone with a disability have trouble seeing the image.

[KDR_11k]

Yeah, full screen 3D would halve the framerate of your game (if you don't want to increase the strain on the hardware, you can probably render the same scene twice with less than 2x the necessary resources since the whole transform step can be skipped) but if it's 60FPS beforehand it's 30 afterwards. No, the images cannot get out of sync unless you allow modifications to the gameworld between the two render runs but it doesn't happen in mid-draw for regular frames either so that's not a problem. You'd simply render to two buffers before you allow the next game step and flip them.

[Chozo Ghost]

And Deg brings up a good point about vision.  Even ignoring blindness like he has, what about glasses?  In day to day life I don't need to wear glasses but I need them for driving and watching TV is just slightly blurry for me so I wear them then.  I can play games without them but I'll occasionally have to squint to read the text and it's just such a frustrating struggle to deal with slightly off visuals.  Now I'm thinking of someone like my Dad who has to wear glasses all the time.  Tons of people are in that boat.  So they either have to struggle or wear 3D glasses over regular glasses.  And that's not including someone like Dev who would be ****ed no matter what.

TVs with built-in 3D capability are in the experimental stage right now. You won't need special glasses or anything extra to pull it off, because the television screen will natively create the 3D experience.

[KDR_11k]

Does it do that from anywhere or only if you sit in a specific spot in front of it?

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

I don't like how the current (~40 years?) 3D fad simply means different objects "pop-out" with pre-set illusions of focus/depth decided by the dev/artist.  If I stare at the artist's intended primary object, things look mostly ok, but if I look elsewhere, I just get something that's blurred out of focus even though I'm attempting to focus on it.

If 3D significantly improves, then it could be like looking at my hand in front of me with all the optical depth trickery nature already provides -- but that's not a big deal in the first place, is it.