You don't need 3D to view this video.
There wouldn't be much point if you did.
3D looks like THIS on a 3D screen, with each eye-piece viewing a different image to the
other, but for this video the two viewpoints are shown side-by-side and I'll do my best
to point out the interesting bits.
I understand a lot of you will write off 3D as being a gimmick and only for casual play,
but you might be surprised to know that, in its current state, it can give you MASSIVE
advantages in certain situations.
I'll be going through the pros and cons in this video though I've concluded that the
best mode of play is one where you can toggle between the two modes.
To test this I don't have an Oculus Rift or anything like that, but I do have Nvidia's
3D Vision and a 120 HZ monitor, which lets me preview what sort of support existing games
have for 3D.
I can toggle between 2D and 3D mode with the press of a button so it's not as though I'm
committing myself by having it enabled.
I have an Nvidia graphics card so can't speak for AMD's 3D but when I researched it a few
years back, Nvidia's support for games was much better.
And even then it's still as buggy as hell.
Time for the first advantage.
Imagine you want to check a corner.
In normal, 2D mode you're a cyclops, with a single eye in the middle of your head.
3D separates the two viewpoints, meaning that to look around a corner you'll have less of
your body exposed, making you a smaller target.
Let's take a look at a corner in CSGO.
In 2D mode when you're stood here, you can't see around it.
If I press Nvidia's 3D shortcut button, however, you can now see that this eye can see around
it!
Hax!
Does this mean that professional players should all invest in 3D equipment?!
Maybe.
I mean, that's ONE up-side of 3D.
But there are a lot of down-sides, some of which can be fixed.
Let's start with one that's also a really unfair plus-side!
In 3D mode the game will occasionally flash up with some invisible scenery where it doesn't
think you can see but you actually can- Valve could easily fix this if they wanted to.
But wait a second... in its current, broken state, could this be a sort of wall-hack?
Take Banana on inferno, for example.
If I move so that this pillar is in the very corner of the screen... pop!
I can see behind it.
To make matters worse, it still renders players behind it!
Using 3D gives you wallhacks!
Valve, PLEASE FIX.
Onto the aiming.
In games where 3D is perfectly supported, I still found myself missing more shots than
in 2D mode.
It might just be because I'm not used to it, but it took me a fraction of a second longer
to 'find' the crosshair on-screen whenever I had to fire and to line stuff up.
If you're anything like me then this alone makes 3D unsuitable for competitive play-
especially since the bullets are being fired from BETWEEN your two view-points, which makes
a subtle but very real difference in flick-shooters.
Nvidia has done what it can.
It has a toggle-able, built-in 3D crosshair which works by always being the same distance
away as the scenery that you're looking at.
This may sound weird to have a crosshair that's flying all over the place, but in practice
it's very natural.
In some games, such as Half Life 2 and UT 2004, it actually does this effect with the
in-game crosshair!
In others where it isn't supported, like Red Faction, it overlays its own crosshair.
For most games it works!
But not for CSGO.
You're stuck with the in-game crosshair and it hovers just in front of your face, making
it confusing to line up shots that are beyond that distance.
Remember, bullets still come from the middle of your body, so you can't close one eye and
line up the shot with the other: you have to keep both eyes open.
To demonstrate how strange this is, imagine your nose is the gun and you can hold a finger
up in front of it to act as a crosshair.
Now, try aiming at something across the room.
You can either focus on the crosshair or the object, not both.
That's what it's like to play CSGO in 3D, before you even begin to compensate for recoil
or broken hitboxes!
It's funny that it doesn't work for CSGO since it does with earlier games, like Left 4 Dead
and Half Life 2.
The other down-side is the frame-rate.
You immediately halve your frame-rate by enabling 3D mode since it needs to render one frame
for each eye.
Your monitor's refresh-rate is also halved.
In practice, say you have a 144 Hz screen running at 288 FPS.
It will now become 72 Hz per eye and 144 FPS.
NOT what you want for competitive gaming.
But as I said, 3D is currently about trade-offs.
Now for peeker's advantage.
If you run around a corner in 3D, your leading eye will pass around just before your 2D,
central vision will.
But is it worth it?
This could have become a very difficult test since you'd have to consider your speed, the
enemy's speed, how far from the wall you are, the half-refresh rate, how much people care
about refresh-rate and so on, but I'm happy to say it doesn't matter.
CSGO is too fast-paced for 3D mode to have peeker's advantage.
The gap closes the slower you move, but with any weapon in CSGO, the advantage that 3D
delivers doesn't come close to compensating for the reduced refresh rate.
That is to say, in some situations you'll have a fraction of a frame advantage, but
most of the time it'll be behind.
If 3D could refresh as quickly as 2D then it would always be better.
This isn't to say that all 3D is inferior.
It definitely depends on how far apart the viewpoints are, but I find the effect underwhelming
in most first-person games.
In fact, when I made a series that no one bothered watching early last year I found
it worked best in third person games like Tomb Raider and GTA.
I even guessed that Valve would use 3D in their future projects since the support for
it in Left 4 Dead 2 was so good!
CSGO, it seems, is a backward step.
So in conclusion, 3D is good for stealthy, slow and defensive roles thanks to the glitches
and increased cover, but for fast, offensive play, I'd rather opt for 2D.
If you do your research and discover enough broken spots then it's worth having support
for it but be sure to have an easy-to-reach shortcut to toggle the effect on and off with
minimal hassle.