MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat

> I meant it as just a technical exercise, for a few games, nothing more than that, and
> really just to discuss if its even possible.
>
> This is more a future thing anyway, when everyone will eventually own 3D tech in
> their telly's.

3D isn't doing very well atm, at this rate people will have switched over to projectors (maybe even hologram projectors) before 3D becomes commonplace in home theater setups and that will probably require a different implementation. If you used projectors you could use the same tech as theaters and not have to have powered glasses, like many current setups. That said, interfacing with a TVs 3D junk might be beyond the scope of MAME, thats more of a video card thing. Seeing as how MAME barely uses video cards at all at this point, because of all of the different types and their different ways of doing things, I can't see 3D coming anytime soon. On top of that, 3D on PCs has been around for years. I remember seeing something on ZDTV about a new video card and glasses that allowed you to play the lastest games, like Tomb Raider 2, in THREE DEE! That was over a decade ago and MAME hasn't done anything with that stuff. It never went away either, every few years something or other pops up that adds 3D to PC games, I know my current gen card has some dork feature that I never use thats supposed to do 3D.

On top of that the work you would need to do to game even a simple game running in 3D would probably be staggering. You'd need to isolate the different layers and figure out what should look flat and what should be 3D and *how* 3D it should look. It would probably be simpler to rewrite an old 2D game from scratch then to convert a driver in MAME to output a 3D image for a game that was never intended to be 3D.

Is it possible? Sure, given enough effort and skills. Is it going to happen? I doubt it. MAME Dev is a herd of cats, they work on what they want, when they want and generally then only if the payoff is worth that effort. The goal of MAME is to document games and make them playable. Networking games, even over a LAN, wouldn't require anywhere near the effort this would, yet it hasn't been done. Neither would supporting more modern video hardware features but again, its not something that has materialized. All of these things aren't required to document the game or make them playable. MAME Dev has no problem wasting your HD space, making the highest end CPUs beg for mercy or make old games look like shit on your $3,000 52 inch plasma display. If it works and its true to the original then thats probably all your ever going to see.

Lando242

How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.