The young NBA season is just getting started, much like the 3D TV experience. So why not combine them? That’s just what 2K Sports has done, as today is the first day you can experience NBA 2K11 in full 3D — if you have a 3D TV and a PlayStation 3.
The 3D version of NBA 2K11 is available exclusively at Best Buy for the time being, but if you manage to nab a copy, you’ll be able to play as your favorite NBA team — and/or Michael Jordan during his highlight rather than twilight years — in full 3D.
2K’s Ronnie Singh submitted a post on the PlayStation Blog about what went on behind the scenes to make a 3D videogame possible. Below is the text of his interview with the development team:
All 3-D effects come down to one simple idea: make each of a viewer’s eyes see a slightly different image and you can create the illusion of depth on a 2-D screen. Technology to create 3-D movies evolved from two-color images, called anaglyphs, into the more modern projection systems that use differently polarized light. Most of the new 3-D televisions use a technique called “alternate-frame sequencing” in which they first display the image for one eye and then display the image for the other eye, holding each image on the screen for 1/120th of a second. To make sure viewers see the correct images with each eye, glasses that cover-up one eye in exact synchronization with the television display, called active-shutter glasses, are used. What’s most exciting about the new technology is the quality of the images it produces. The new generation of active-shutter HDTVs let us make a 3-D game using full resolution HDTV images at framerates up to 120Hz.
To properly drive one of these televisions, NBA 2K11 must create two separate images every game frame-one for each eye. We create a virtual stereoscopic (two-eyed) camera and render the whole scene in full HD resolution twice, once for each eye of the camera. These two images are packaged together and delivered to the television as one “frame” which the television decodes and displays as two consecutive images, one for each eye of the viewer. Just in case anyone has a pair of the old-school 3-D glasses lying around, NBA 2K11 will render using the anaglyph method as well.
According to Ronnie, NBA 2K11 looks absolutely phenomenal in 3D, so here’s hoping we get a chance to test it out soon for ourselves and give you the full review soon.
