3D gaming, brain computer interfaces, OLED screens, Wii MotionPlus, the DSi, Windows 7, 48-core GPUs and more. The future is... soon! The games industry never stands still – it's an ever-changing world, with a constant jockeying to be at the forefront of technology, coding and gameplay. While 2009 won't see any earth-shattering announcements, what with the next-next-next-gen consoles still a fair way off, there will be a few technologies that have the potential to define this year. We thought we'd take a look at the key gaming technologies to watch in 2009.
3D Gaming Back in the mid 90s, 3D became the new 2D. And now 3D II: Son of 3D is set to become the next new 3D. You probably already know how much of a push 3D is getting in the movie industry, thanks to great new technology and concerted support from a number of studios, but it's also hitting the small(er) screen.
The first place it's going to take off will be on the home PC, where the barrier to entry is a little lower. At Last Month's CES, Nvidia was showing off its GeForce 3D Vision which is a 3D solution (and available now for US $200) that eschews the polarised glasses of other systems. Instead, it uses powered active shutter glasses and a transmitter for the glasses, which results in a very convincing impression of depth. You can also adjust the level of depth on the fly.
You'll need more than just the 3D Vision pack, however; you'll also need a display that can handle the tech – this means a display that can refresh at 120Hz and can be connected via dual link DVI or a DLP HDTV. You'll also need a pretty new GeForce GPU. (Check the list of supported displays and cards here). Once you're set up, however, you can get straight down to the business of playing - hundreds of games will work with the system out of the box (with custom profiles optimised for each), including Left 4 Dead, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, Mirror's Edge and Call of Duty: World at War. Go here for the full list.
Of course, this isn't the only solution for PC - iZ3D also has 3D-ready LCDs, which use polarizing glasses and can be paired with ATI Radeon 3D cards - so it will be interesting to see how things develop over the year. Outside the realm of PC gaming, 3D continues to make headways in the realm of HDTV, with several of the biggest manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic all pushing 3D hard with their latest sets. There are a handful of 3D-ready sets available now, but as 2009 progresses we'll see new models launch and the technology mature. We'll also hopefully see a standard established for 3D in the home. What this all means for games remains to be seen – will we be able to patch current games to support 3D? Will 3D come as standard in the next generation of consoles?
A pretty accurate representation of my facial expression during the 3D Michael Jackson film at Disneyland. Blu-Ray Super Disc Okay, so the current storage capacity of Blu-ray discs is nothing to sniff at, but the future for the format in 2009 is looking seriously rosy, thanks to Pioneer's new Super Disc Blu-ray technology, which packs 16 layers onto the one disc, each of which can hold 25GB, making for 400GB storage capacity total. The best news? The tech is compatible with current blu-ray players. The advantages of greater storage capacity are obvious enough – more 1080p content can be packed into film/TV releases, while if the technology is integrated into PS3 discs, game developers will have more room to move in terms of the size of their games. Final Fantasy XIII – we're looking at you.
Do you come with the Super Disc? The Prognosis: This may not have a huge impact on gaming in 2009, but it's definitely technology to keep an eye on.
Wii MotionPlus Well, the Wii is the gaming success story of the last couple of years, but the actual promise of motion control really hasn't been fulfilled. There are numerous examples of great implementation, but the reality is that the Wiimote simply doesn't have the fine response that many were expecting. Wii MotionPlus aims to rectify that. The add-on essentially allows for one to one replication of movements, giving much greater precision to everything you do in-game. We still don't have a date for it, but we're thinking closer to the middle of the year than later.
Of course, given Nintendo's success, other companies are looking to improve on their design. One is Sixense Entertainment, which has a system called TrueMotion coming for PC at the end of 2009 (but presumably with an eye to licensing it to console manufacturers) which it says delivers true one-to-one by tracking movement along six axes and measuring the exact position of the remote every ten milliseconds. The PC system will be backwards compatible with a number of titles.
The Prognosis: Our excitement for Wii MotionPlus is tempered somewhat by the reality of the market. Sure, the games in Wii Sports Resort will probably control superbly well, but no other game can assume that its entire audience will have the MotionPlus add-on, so will have to make the game compatible for 'vanilla' Wiimote controllers as well as MotionPlus. In gameplay terms that's going to cause some problems.
VIBE-ON!
Posted By: Game Vibe
Monday, February 23rd 2009 at 1:39PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
