Bioshock demo is out! Can someone get it to work?

Post by **Jahun** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 4:17 pm

The long awaited Bioshock demo is out, and supposedly it gets great reviews...

However, I couldn' t get this Unreal 3 engine based game to run. Tried disabling all options in-game and a whole host of options in the user config in your windows user dir.

But nothing happens, I got all postprocessing turned off I think but the images are just 2 flat ones that get shifted and the area that opens up on the edge is all kinds of colors.

I don't have enough time to tinker with it very long, but if anyone can investigate it a bit further, I think this game would be very good in 3D!

(how do other Unreal 3 games work in S-3D?)

Thanks...

Post by **sharky** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:30 pm

now i have to go to work, but when i am back i test it with the iz3D drivers. unfortunately nvida still does not work for me so i cant test ti to help you...

sorry

bye

sharky

Post by **deisama** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 1:33 am

I'm having mixed results.
By using the dragon utility I was able to get it split up and look 3d. I just had to set the convergence insanely high. (236.42)
The shadow map option causes graphic glitches.

it'd look great, except for some reason depending on where I look the 3d starts vibrating quite violently. If I turn out post processing it fixes the vibrations, but causes the expected ghosting.

It seems like sometimes only one eye is actually updating, while the other is just showing the same old picture.

I'll play around with it more with the full game. Having to watch that intro everytime I change something is pretty demotivating :p

Post by **Jahun** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 1:54 am

Haha I second that on the intro.. dang.. tweak settings, sit and wait 5 minutes to see if they work. Make the mistake to choose "end game" instead of "exit game" and having to watch 10 minutes of promo.. argh

But great news on getting it to work sort of, that is already a big step!
Keep the info coming.. I'll try some more myself this evening..

Post by **LukePC1** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:46 am

Juhan your first descrition sounds a bit like Rainbow six - Vegas. 2 shifted immages - and wasn't that one coded on Unreal3 Engine as well?

Maybe there'd help a LOT of convergence, too.

Post by **Jahun** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:47 am

Hmm still having no luck..

Care to elaborate a bit deisama?
Like what OS and driver do you use, what 3D system?
You don't see wack edge artifacts? at the edge of screen I mean.

Can you get pop out effect? Whatis your seperation like..
Did you turn off any odd functions?

Some friends of mine are dying to play this game in 3D here.. so I am interested to know

LukePC:
I think I saw something like that.. hmm that would be a big bummer..... but if Deisama has it sort of working already there may be a solution

Post by **deisama** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 2:17 pm

lets see, I have a dual core processor with a 7900gt
I tried it with both the 162.15 and 162.50 drivers.

I think the most relevant fact is that I only played around with it at the the entrance to the first building when you come out of the water, so I don't know if the artifacts are in the water or fire or not.

Other than that, I used the dragon utility to turn on that stereorendertarget thing.
Sometimes with the new drivers, I have to press ctrl-f7 for that to actually take effect.

the convergance was high, I had to hold ctrl-f6 for a really long time to get it to a decent point.
In fact its so high, that during movies and loading screens, it doesn't show anything and its just black
There wasn't a lot of pop, it was mostly depth.
My seperation was 50%

Oh, and when post processing is off, it seems to only work at certain angles. Otherwise, the whole thing goes crazy. (one eye won't update, or one eye will zoom in and out, and it swaps around, so its not the same eye that freaks)

I hope that helps, and hopefully the retail version will have more settings to mess with

Post by **Jahun** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:55 pm

Hmm I am still on the 91.3 drivers or something... maybe that makes a difference.

But still if you say there isn't a whole lot of pop out, even when using insane convergence.. are you sure it is 3D? Or is it just depth, like the whole scene is flat but rendered at a depth inside your screen maybe?

Do you see seperation distances in your scene?

hmmm...

Anything I do makes odd things happen at the edge where the image starts to shift and nothing comes to replace it. Say 50% seperation would give 1cm of odd artifacts at the edge of the screen. When I use postprocessing whole 2nd screen turns wrong, out of synch.. so lines are diagonal or something..

Too bad..

Post by **deisama** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 4:17 pm

No, its definetely in 3D. With the glasses off, I was able to get one of the lamps to merge together while the background would still split apart as they got further away.

I had to use the rediculous convergence, because it just didn't have a huge affect on how much it split. I think the ratio is just wierd

The lack of pop was probably more from the lack of things to try it on. I didn't really explore beyond the doors

Post by **deisama** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 6:30 pm

here a couple screenshots to mock us all with how it COULD look if it just worked right
http://www.ibudesigns.com/bioshock/nice1.jpg
http://www.ibudesigns.com/bioshock/nice2.jpg

unfortunately, this is what the second one looks like when I move the mouse
http://www.ibudesigns.com/bioshock/bug.jpg

hopefully they can get it working

Post by **Jahun** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 5:50 am

Now that looks nice!
Too bad one screen sticks..

I suppose you tried turning off every single option in the graphics settings?

Can you do 1 more thing for me. Go to your documents and settings and look for the Bioshock folder in "my games"or so. It has 2 .ini files and one is for among other things your gfx settings.

It had at some point (maybe in the dx3ddriver blabla) part quite some settings you won't find in the game. Can you manually turn off all postprocessing and odd things you can find in there and try again? Just change true to false etc for things that make sense. I believe one line says something like:
UseLowTechPostprocessing= True and make it false etc

(make a copy of that file to be sure)

I'll change to the new drivers soon then.. let's hope they don't make the games that do work worse..

Post by **Neil** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:47 am

I will test this game out with the NVIDIA drivers later. I showed screenshots of the game in the iZ3D section with all settings maxed.

Regards,
Neil

Post by **Jahun** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 11:51 am

Lol Neil don't rub it in!
Can imagine you are enthousiastic about it though

I saw your post there already btw...

No doubt about it, IZ3D is doing a great job. Now if only they will start supporting dual projector setups, I am in. Ah which reminds me... Will make a post there too

Post by **Neil** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 11:54 am

Were you able to view the screen shots in the iZ3D section?

I can't for some reason. I can see them as .JPGs, but not .JPS. The NVIDIA viewer won't recognize the files.

It recognizes older files, though.

Regards,
Neil

Post by **Jahun** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:01 pm

Ow yes I can see them, but I have no active viewer so IE just opens them side by side and I use crosseyed viewing.

And they look sweet, just sweet.

ow btw Neil:

If you could try the Nvidia drivers too, that would be great. I am getting more and more happy with what IZ3D is doing but the universal applicance of the Nvidia one is important to me...

Post by **Neil** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:03 pm

Thanks for letting me know. I could never get cross-eye to work for me.

Could someone out there confirm if they work with the NVIDIA viewer?

Regards,
Neil

Post by **Jahun** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:14 pm

You can't do cross eye????

How did you ever get to "The Watchfull eye" ?!

Seriously Neil... no cross eye. Tsk tsk...

Post by **thud** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:12 pm

Neil, they're actually PNG files.

If you convert to JPG, then rename to JPS, they're fine.

Pretty impressive. Yes, the HUD is clearly visible top left.

--- HTH

Post by **Likay** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 6:42 pm

Hey Neil... When i'm getting things going i'll try to make "gaming in 3D"-movies as soon as possible. Not gonna use fraps since it slows the computer down and Fraps itself only seems to capture one screen only. My solution (theoretically) is to capture each channel to 2 VCR's. Then record the movies back to the computer and edit them to a stereomovie. Just hoping things will turn out well. However: I'll make them in crosseye-format cause it's the simplest way of checking out 3D without any equipment at all. Follow some tutorials on how to. Freke has an excellent one on his homepage! (some free ads there Freke. lol).
Freke also have some vids in crosseyeformat on his page as well as in our youtube group. But try on photos first since it ten times easier to learn crosseye viewing with those. Have patience. It pays off.

cheers

Post by **Neil** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:01 pm

Excellent! Looking forward to it.

Have you guys ever seen the movie "The Jerk" with Steve Martin? Whenever I think of the cross-eye viewing, I think of how that movie ended with his hologram entertainment machine (which was hysterical!).

Regards,
Neil

Post by **deisama** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:12 pm

well, I give up on getting to work in 3d

I changed every setting in the ini, and none of them could make it work right.

unfortunately, with post processing off, the screen shakes violently, and with it on, theres severe ghosting

Maybe a faq will come out later that explains what all those settings do.

One thing I did discover, is if you put "-nointro" in the shortcut to bioshock than you don't have to see all those logos

Post by **LukePC1** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:16 am

I tried this demo with my Dualcore and the older drivers, too. The result was always freezing on strg+T. Only Reset button would help

I didn't even get 2 different pictures nothing. There seems to be no use trying this game again with my older 9x.xx drivers.

Lets hope for more Settings in the final version

Post by **Jahun** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:09 am

Hmm amazes me LukePC1...

Mine never resets.. just is flat. Something I noticed which is particularly odd, that I get different results using different projection methods. For instance I use the planar LCD method now, but if I use dual side by side option in Nvidia panel, it gives me artifacts in some games..

Dunno why

Post by **thud** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:12 pm

Seems to work fine for me ... have you guys tried the latest drivers?

{It needs 'Stereo Render' enabled but you guys already knew that.}

{Effects are ghosted a little, like in Gothic II, so I'd guess that's a
normal problem with Stereo. The water effects are fantastic.}

All of the reviews mention video drivers as a problem. There's even
a link on the installer ... speaking of which, they're really put some
work into getting everything right for this game.

It recognizes an XBox 360 controller (WITH force feedback as an
option, rare for Windows games) or you can use a traditional
mouse/keyboard combo. Simple setup, nice simple controls.

Best of all, it has an in-game brightness/contrast slider. This seems to
me to show that they *really* get S-3D, as the shutter glasses play
havoc with normal brightness and gamma settings.

--- My $.02

Post by **Jahun** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:54 pm

Omg..

Thud, don't be so short on your explanations..

plz write down exactly what you did and which driver combo you use?

With "Stereo Render enabled" you mean the one in Dragon's utility?

What Stereo viewing option do you use in the Nvidia control panel?

Post by **thud** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:23 pm

I'm using FW 160.03 + Stereo Beta 158.22, with shutter glasses.

{I know what I suggested, but I had good reasons for not upgrading
like 'if it's not broke' ... although I might still -- ahem -- try upgrading}

It worked (I think) without Dragon's utility, so I tried it with (yes,
that's what I meant by "Stereo Render enabled" which you can
see if you look in the registry) and it really seemed to fix most
problems.

I'm still not at my final setup (see my O-O-M thread), but I think
if I turn down the screen resolution and/or AA I may get there.

--- HTH

Post by **Jahun** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:29 pm

hmm kk.

I am still on the 93.something or so drivers. Does your combo work well with something like HL2 etc?

I totally like the way that one is running now....
Would suck if I gain Bioshock and others drop..

Post by **thud** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:37 pm

Yup, that's why I didn't upgrade either, my combo works well with the
games that I like to play.

Sorry, never tried HL2, you'll have to decide for yourself if the risk is
worth it (seems to be a common problem with these drivers). Might I
suggest using Windows save/restore checkpoint ? Then if you're not
happy a restore is easy.

Yeah, once you're generally happy with things, I'm reluctant to fiddle
with them too ...

--- HTH

Post by **thud** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:25 pm

Let's see ... I upgraded to the game recommended drivers (pot; kettle ...)
which didn't seem to make any real difference (my other games still seem
to work okay, which was a relief).

Tried turning off 'Stereo Textures' ... looked nice, but not Stereo.

Turned off PostProcessing ... no help. Set 'LevelOfAnisotropy' to 0 which
might be useful to reduce load but didn't seem to make any difference.

Turned 'ScreenFlashes' off, didn't help with flicker. Neither did setting
'Always use Stereo Refresh Rate'.

It won't run at all with 'HW TnL OFF' selected. The best I could do was
to turn 'High Detail Post Processing' off, which seemed to be the most
useful thing so far. So I tried resetting to the defaults (high settings),
and turning this setting off. At this point I was able to play the demo
all the way through without having any memory problems, although
the stereo textures weren't all that great (no lag 'tho). I think that
DirectX is not the best option for S-3D (in my experience anyway)
so it would have been nice to have the option of OpenGL (Unreal
have this available, but the game developers do not have this as
an option in their config files).

Once the bots starting storming me I even turned Stereo OFF 'cos the
bots were so hard to track and shoot. So ... I think this one is better
with a gamepad and FF rather than S-3D. My opinion, plus then I can
play it in daylight on a monitor that's not dying (like my Stereo beast).

Artox (or other experts) if you're out there, feel free to jump in now.

BTW: GamePlay options; 'Item Shimmer' makes things you're supposed
to pick up shimmer, while 'Usable Object Highlight' makes stuff you can
use or should be doing things to shimmer.

--- Goodbye and thank for all the fish

Post by **Jahun** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:55 am

My experiences with getting this thing working using recent drivers:

+- standard settings, no Dragon's Stereo Render target enabled:
Odd stereo. The convergence point seems to be yourself whatever I do. Even if increased to insane amounts, it seems that convergence and stereo seperation are doing the exact same thing more or less.
No real 3d.. it just looks weird

Using Dragon's Stereo render target:
-With Highdetailpostprocessing on: Good 3D! But... the glow that is added by the postprocessing is calculated for 1 image and dropped onto both. So almost everywhere you see heavy ghosting due to seeing the left eye glow with your right eye. Unplayable.

-With Highdetailpostprocessing off: (seemed a simple step):
Now I get wacky things, as if left and right eye are constantly switching or sometimes (mind you, I use dual screen options and anaglyph so it has nothing to do with shutterglasses or so). Totally unplayable.

Which leaves me in a crappy spot.. I need a console command or so to turn off glow but still having highdetailpostprocessing turned on, and hope that works. So far no such command or console found..

ps: DirectX for 3d is fine... I played thorugh HL2 and Farcry and more and had a blast with perfect 3d

Post by **nathansteinke** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:44 pm

How can you convert the png files to jpg?

Jahun, I apologize, I am not getting great stereo3d from bioshock.

I am able to separate the views, but I think as someone mentioned, it's kind of like Rainbow Six Las Vegas.

I went back and checked out Sherlock Holmes The Awakened, where it definitely is awesome stereo3d, so much better stereo3d than what I'm getting for Bioshock.

I am getting same results from demo and full version.

-Nate

Post by **thud** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:31 am

> How can you convert the png files to jpg?

Most graphics programs (not sure what I used).

A better option is to just re-name them to PNS (Stereo PNG files, just
like JPG and JPS files) at which point the Stereo Viewer recognizes them
just fine.

If you're in touch with the iZ3D people, you could perhaps suggest this?

[Copyrights aside, I think PNG is a better format than JPG in any case]

--- HTH

Post by **nathansteinke** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:18 pm

Thud, I think I'm not doing something right. I do rename the file, but I'm not changing the extension.

I select the file, then right click, select the "rename" from the menu that pulls down.

Then I change the name, adding .jps.

But I forgot how to change the file type, I think I'm doing it incorrectly.
Could you please walk me through it with more detailed steps?
Thanks.
-Nate

Post by **thud** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:36 pm

Okay, first of all uncheck the 'Hide extensions for known file types' option
under the Explorer option - Tools - Folder Options, View tab.

Now I think you will be able to see file extensions.

Right-click on the file, select the Rename option (I think the shortcut is
F2). Change the JPG part to PNS. Enter completes.

The iZ3d drivers produce PNG file (not JPG files) so you need to rename
them as Stereo PNG files (.PNS, geddit?) which the Stereo Viewer knows
all about. JPEG is a proprietary format, so I am sure that the iZ3d people
would rather not pay copyright to produce JPG files which is why they
actually produce PNG files (but label them incorrectly as JPG files).

If you want to you could use a graphics program to convert the Stereo
PNG files to Stereo JPG files, and then rename as JPS - but that's really
unnecessary as the Stereo Viewer knows all about Stereo PNG files.

--- Thud

Post by **nathansteinke** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 8:10 pm

That worked for me, thanks for the details!
-Nate