You shouldn't be trying to make comparisions with the 3D you've seen at your local cinema. Everyone has pretty much universal agreement that 3D films have largely been ineffective in what they're trying to convey. 3D on the 3DS doesn't require 3D glasses and its actually pretty damn impressive. For most of the games I've played so far (yes I have played the games first hand) I fail to see how it enchances the gameplay, simply because I can easilly judge distances based on knowing how large an object is compared to its relative size on screen.
Thinking about it, how could a game take advantage of the true depth perception as a useful gameplay feature, rather than it just being a (more or less useless) gimmick and optional eyecandy?
And on the other hand, even if there is some gameplay mechanic that could truly take advantage of the depth perception, it would hinder the playing of the minority of players who can't use the 3D mode eg. because of eye strain, headaches or similar physical reasons. I assume all games must support non-3D mode, so a gameplay mechanic which would rely on the depth perception would not work.
3D effects have never worked for me either. I've only been to two movies were it actually worked (whereas I've been to at least 10 movies which were "3D"), and both gave me horrible headaches. I've tried some of the 3D tv demo's in hardware stores, but no ball. I really need to see this work (and not give me a headache) before I even might start to consider buying one.
And as Warp said, I doubt it could be anything more than a gimmick. After all, you don't see more, you just see it differently.
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Actually, seeing differently is an enough efficient asset to achieve gameplay that just wouldn't be the same (or perhaps wouldn't even work at all) in a pure 2D display.
Imagine a game where you have this little room box thing where you decorate it as if it were real. It would feel completely mundane in 2d display, but in a sandbox that is the 3ds screen it feels much more like a convincing boxed environment.
As for not working at all in 2D, from the top of my head I can think of a flat color that has depth information that can form images just by that.
As for not working at all in 2D, from the top of my head I can think of a flat color that has depth information that can form images just by that.
You can't see depth differences if everything you see has a completely uniform coloring. Not in real-life, and thus obviously not with any kind of device that tries to fool your brain to see in stereo.
For a foreground surface to be distinguished from the background it has to have at least some detail other than a completely flat color (which isn't changed even by lighting). Likewise for the background. (Even if both were flat-colored, the foreground and the background should have different colors.)
One thing which would make a difference is if the foreground surface and background have the exact same pattern. In this case the pattern gets shifted differently for each eye depending on depth, while on 2D there would be no discernible difference (because each eye gets the exact same image).
I was excited about the 3DS till I heard the battery life sucked. The battery life is so dang good in my DS (tank size) that it was pretty disappointing to hear.
Also, I used to get horrible hand cramps playing my DS, it seemed like the DS always dug into my hands weird.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Thinking about it, how could a game take advantage of the true depth perception as a useful gameplay feature, rather than it just being a (more or less useless) gimmick and optional eyecandy?
http://www.losteye.com/driving.htm
They really can't, seeing as you can sufficiently navigate the real 3D world with 2D vision. At the end of the day, 3D vision is optional eyecandy these days, our brains are pretty decent as spatial detectors from 2D images. We aren't running from predators/chasing prey anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
They really can't, seeing as you can sufficiently navigate the real 3D world with 2D vision.
Actually our brain is so good at deducing depth from mono vision, by deducing from geometry and how it moves, that one could almost call it 3D even if you look only with one eye. You can actually try this: Play or watch eg. an FPS game with one eye only: After a short while you will actually start getting depth perception which you don't see with both eyes open. It works with (live action) movies as well. The effect is rather cool.
(Rather ironically, when you look at a 2D screen with both eyes, your stereo vision is kind of working against you: Thanks to the (true) stereo vision, your brain can see that it's just a 2D plane with an image on it, even if that image is moving. However, if you look at it with one eye only, the brain loses this extra information and gets fooled into thinking it's actual spatial geometry and starts adding depth perception based on the geometry and how it moves.)
