Talk:Stereoscopic 3D Compatibility Guide

3d Rating Conclusions
We've concluded that:
 * A lower count of ratings would be for the best, we seem to have settled on using 3 levels + unrated.
 * 3d compatibility info is more complicated than a simple rating can communicate. Some textual description will be necessary, and is seen as appropriate content for the "Enhancements" portion of each title page.
 * A baseline "3d Output" Problems template needs to be defined to provide preliminary 3d output support details and linkages back to the Stereoscopic 3D Support and Compatibility page. Each title's page will also likely need to provide detailed notes around specific 3d issues/workarounds and depth/separation configuration details (where such isn't integrated with pre-existing inis).

Titles / Descriptions
We need to decide the specific titles/ descriptions used for each rating, there have been at least thee suggestions. The "Unknown" rating seems clear but we still need to conclude on the others.

Lucario
* 3: Excellent: Nice stereoscopic 3D gameplay experience * 2: Acceptable: Some visual issues * 1: Not Recommended: Eyesore and/or renders in 2D


 * Acceptable?: Kolano feels what's "acceptable" varies too greatly between people to use this term.
 * Eyesore: Unclear if we'd want to use a colloquialism like this in our definitions.

Jhonn
* 3: Good: Everything else that doesn't fit the previous two categories get here * 2: Fair: Game renders in 3D but not all times or have other minor issues that shouldn't affect gameplay * 1: No 3D/Not Recommended: Graphics become messed, several issues/game breaking problems or no 3D at all

Kolano
* 3: Good: No problems * 2: Fair: Minor problems not impacting play * 1: Poor: Major problems impacting play


 * Ratings Basis: Kolano suggested we revise the description text to more closely relate things to the cause for these ratings (i.e. problems).

2d App Handling
Should 2d titles be specifically called out or rated in some specific way?
 * Kolano would prefer they be rated just like other titles, and only listed as imperfect if they display poorly under 3d output (i.e. have specific problems, rather than simply not using 3d).
 * Jhonn / Lucario feel 2d titles should receive a 1 star rating regardless of how they output in 3d mode.

Display Location
Major suggested that we not place the 3d rating into the info box, and instead keep it within the enhancement section.
 * This may be prudent to listen to. In future we may also cover things like compatibility with anti-aliasing and anisotropic/forced filtering. It would probably be nice to include similar at a glance ratings for such, but adding 3+ ratings to the infobox seems excessive. I'd almost want to design a separate "Enhancements" sidebar, but that probably has some layout concerns (i.e. forcing gaps in page content to appear below infobox sidebar). Kolano (talk) 23:14, 1 December 2015 (CET)

Display Type
We have 2 main designs for handling 3d ratings we need to decide between: stars mimicking our standard ratings or street light style.
 * Major seems against non-textual displays. I think this has been resolved, as other admins fail to see text only solutions as providing an at a glace evaluation, but leaving a note here in case this needs more discussion.


 * The stop light approach may make the numeric ratings less clear (i.e. does a 1 = red or green), such is much clearer when a star count matches the rating.

Instruction
We'll likely need to define some guidance text to those providing ratings. I'm not quite how to best handle such, since the Infobox may not be a great place for the HTML comment style guidance provided elsewhere (and will be missed if an edit button is provided like our other ratings). It seems we default the undefined ratings to the text "0", so perhaps we can revise such to also provide an instructional comment (perhaps for our regular ratings too). Kolano (talk) 23:14, 1 December 2015 (CET)

Improvements?
Well, this is still a little early in, but you can kind of see the structure forming. Jump in with suggestions on better ways to handle it if you come up with any! - MaJoR (talk) 16:46, 7 August 2014 (CEST)

Split into Enhancements section
OK, this hasn't gotten much work in the past year. As of today, I'm leaning more to including the title specific content under the Enhancements section of each page where it's more likely to be seen with a link back here for the other details on 3d. Kolano (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2015 (CET)

Rating system

 * I'd actually want to create a new rating system for 3D compatibility and integrate them into Infobox VG. They're made up of four sets of green stars and in case of game displaying 2D in 3D mode, we'll use an image of two green stars and two gray stars but there'll be text "2D" hovering above them. The rating parameter will be familiarized with compatibility rating system (0-5) except there'll be no "5", then for 2D, the parameter will be "2D" which coincidentally there'll be two green stars just like "2"! This sounds clever! Can this be done? I'm afraid we'd have to put arbitrary comment about 3D effect issues into Emu Info along with compatibility rating in the Infobox VG. Is it alright this way? Lucario (talk) 04:53, 28 November 2015 (CET)

Continue this thread →
 * Our general concern with ratings comes with the inability to clearly define rules for rating things that result in consistent assignments. I'm currently unclear we can work out rules beyond a Untested/0-2 star system (0: 3d unsupported (i.e. 2d games), 1: 3d /w Problems 2: Functional 3d), let us know if you have a clear ruleset for a more fine-grained system. Some level of significance around 3d Problems would be desirable, but I'm not sure clear rules can be defined. We shouldn't worry about the specific display of this info till we have a well defined system in place. Kolano (talk) 08:19, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * Doesn't 0 stars mean "untested" in the compatibility rating system? I don't want to cause the confusion between "Untested" and "2D" for 0 stars. I've noticed the rating column only contains five different possibilies: "Not recommended", "Fair", "Good", "Excellent" and "No 3D". This is how I came up with four sets of stars for 3D rating system, there will not be fifth star to make up for "No 3D", but will in turn use the text "2D". It should have 2 stars similar to "Fair" as opposed to "Not Recommended" as I can imagine the latter one means "unplayable with 3D on" which I'm sure  "2D" will not do like this, it's just 2D. I think the convergence setting actually works for 2D. Lucario (talk) 09:19, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * 0 stars does mean "untested" there, but it seemed odd to grant a title a star if it didn't support 3d at all. Though perhaps the more appropriate rating for them would be "Excellent" as they presumably work just fine /w 3d options set, they just fail to make use of 3d (which I'm guessing would be obvious for most of these titles). If we have a multi-star system we still need clearer rules on what distinguishes: "Fair", "Good", and "Excellent" (or perhaps just "Fair"/"Good since presumably "Excellent" means things just work as expected). I'm still leaning towards not having such a fine grained rating system, and leaving the discussion of specific issues under Enhancements to indicate the level or problems and proposed corrections.Kolano (talk) 10:19, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * I'm okay with just three stars: Bad, OK, Excellent. Though I'd like to hear from JMC47 about this since it was him who made up five possibilies in the rating column I think. We'd still need to make up distinguish between "untested" and "not recommended". If we can't even give one star to "not recommend" then this will subtract a star down to just two sets of stars. :/ Lucario (talk) 11:28, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * I'm OK with 1 star for "Not Recommended", presuming that means 3d output is significantly broken. I was just uncomfortable using that label for 2d titles that don't output 3d, but work just fine under 3d output modes. Kolano (talk) 12:32, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * Oh right, I somehow thought you said to give 0 stars to the titles rated as "not recommended" in 3D rating compatibility. (I need a "not support 3d =/= not recommended" lesson apparently) I'd still like to give "2D" two stars to coincide with first digit in parameter "2". Lucario (talk) 12:53, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * I am against stars. The silly stars are a huge problem for emulation rating, even when it's much simpler that 3D! 3D is so absurdly complicated! When this was brought up the stars idea was discussed, and I pushed strongly against it, and we settled for the current text technique. I think it should stay as such.
 * I'm also pretty wary of it showing up in pages. Notice how this page here describes the problems with 3D very clearly, as well as having rating. The rating *and* descriptions would need to be integrated into each page, and I have no idea how to do that without looking awkward. Well, the only idea I've come up with is putting it into Emulation Information, but at that point, couldn't you just integrate the rating with the post? - MaJoR (talk) 15:57, 28 November 2015 (CET)

Continue this thread →
 * This info needs to be assessed for every single title. The table here (and the page itself) will eventually become too unwieldy to be useful (i.e. once it contains multiple thousands of rows). The text ratings have the exact same issue as stars, in either case we need rules around how the ratings are assigned and we currently don't have any. My thoughts here had been to add the additional rating to the info box (though it could be moved elsewhere) and include the detailed instructions for problematic titles in the "Enhancements" section of each title. Likely prefixed with a Problems template that would cover 3d info in brief and link back to this page for more specific details around 3d output support. As I think was discussed previously, with no linkages here no one is likely to ever find/see the 3d info provided; and if we add a link to each title we might as well provide the 3d info on the title's page. Kolano (talk) 16:47, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * Oh and we may need to cautious around presuming "No 3d". There may be relevant 3d data even in some 2d games, one example of such (outside the Wii) would be recent Street Fighter II releases, which assign z-indexes to the background layers/character sprites to provide a 3d effect on 3d TVs. Kolano (talk) 17:17, 28 November 2015 (CET)


 * Ok, read the whole discussion now. I think we should move the testing details currently available on this page to an entry in Enhancements section of the respective games, as this page as it is now is starting to get crowded and clunky. About the ratings, I somewhat share the same opinion as MaJoR but I'm also afraid we may not have a better way to evaluate them. What I would suggest is trying to define *veeeeeery clear* rules/aspects to define what "3D rating" a game should get (if we can achieve that I think we won't have further issues with the system) before moving on with that, perhaps using a more simplified rating (that doesn't necessarily needs to be stars, maybe a single "circle" which get a color based on the rating -- maybe on the infobox?). Something like 3 stars? 0 means untested, 1 means No 3D/Not Recommended (e.g. graphics become messed, several issues/game breaking problems or no 3D at all), 2 means fair (e.g. game renders in 3D but not all times or have other minor issues that shouldn't affect gameplay) and 3 means Good (everything else that doesn't fit the previous two categories get here). I would also like to somehow incorporate recommended depth/separation values in the game pages since most games in Dolphin doesn't come with any on their INIs and from personal experience many games requires different values to even get a 3D effect... - Jhonn (talk) 03:48, 29 November 2015 (CET)


 * I felt like now's the good time to bring up the mockup 3D rating table. These are my own words. Might need to hue the stars little more.
 * {| class="wikitable"

!|3D Condition !|Description
 * [[Image:3DStars3.png]]
 * Excellent: Nice stereoscopic 3D gameplay experience.
 * [[Image:3DStars2.png]]
 * OK: Gameplay can progress most of the time. Some visual issues.
 * [[Image:3DStars1.png]]
 * Bad: Gameplay can't progress with 3D mode on. Bad visual issues.
 * [[Image:3DStars2D.png]]
 * 2D: May not show 3D most of the time if not at all.
 * [[Image:3DStars0.png]]
 * Unknown: Has not been tested yet
 * }
 * Lucario (talk) 04:50, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * [[Image:3DStars0.png]]
 * Unknown: Has not been tested yet
 * }
 * Lucario (talk) 04:50, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * Lucario (talk) 04:50, 29 November 2015 (CET)


 * Surprised to hear that you are very against the star rating for 3D condition chart. How come? Just for confirmation, are you a 3D user? I'm considering integrating into Infobox VG as there is compatibility rating and I felt that it's good spot for secondary rating set made to rate 3D of each game (I can't speak for virtual console games however.....). It will be an "easy access" for 3D users and I can't see how is it redundant/silly. Just for future reference I'm against arbitrary data to there. The 3D issue comments should go into Emu Info/Enhancements. Lucario (talk) 04:50, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * Yes, I'm a 3D user (generally by hooking my laptop to an Active 3D Sony BRAVIA TV), not a die-hard user that always run Dolphin in 3D but I test/play my games in 3D often. About the 3D Rating, let me rephrase what I wrote before: like MaJoR, I'm against the "star" rating system because of the problems we already have with it, they're controversial and nobody knows for sure how or what conditions a game may need to achieve a 5-star compatibility rating, for example (there are too many variables to take into account). So, I'm against introducing another rating system based on this concept because it'll almost certainly suffer from the same flaws in long term. However, I also can't think of a better way to provide that info, so I think something well defined and as simple as possible (like the 3-state 3D compatibility I proposed before) *might* work, shapening into a rating system that doesn't suffer from the same flaws our current compatibility rating system have (but again, I'm not a fan of this approach either, but it's what we have at the moment). In other words, my current position is:
 * Having the Notes from the current page into its own entry under Enhancements section of the said game (and probably add recommended depth/separation values too since most games requires different values) because in long term this page will get cluttered and crowded (it's already somewhat like that currently)
 * If we can't figure out another way to "rate" the 3D compatibility without using the flawed stars concept, try something very well defined and very simple like the 3-state rating I proposed before (again, I'm not a fan of more stars but this *may* work in that case)
 * Jhonn (talk) 05:56, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * In case you didn't know, I was replying to MaJoR. Unless you just want to chime in about my comment. The rating system for 3D is only made of 3 stars and should be simple enough than five stars the compatibility rating been having. They're also hued to green to appear different from rating stars for compatibility. Can they not get along well in the Info VG? I'm not sure we'd need the recommended convergence/depth setting here because I think there are PR's and GameINI that will provide preset 3D per game for all 3D users. Lucario (talk) 08:46, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * You should have used two colons instead of three, technically you replied to kolano! :P Anyway, I'm not against a rating system per se, if we can come up with a good way to communicate it and something users can understand, that's alright. We just need to be very careful to avoid the mess that has happened to the main rating system. Here's a thought... beneath the rating stars, why don't we show the name of the rating! Seriously, we should do this for the main rating as well. I'll go bring it up on the talk page over there. - MaJoR (talk) 10:05, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * You've got nice idea with naming beneath each set of stars. It'll be very clear to the users what they're supposed to rate the game as! I'd also like to throw mine for 3D condition rating stars: Excellent, Okay, and Eyesore. Is the last one too funny? Lucario (talk) 10:38, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * Those two ideas are at Template talk:Infobox VG and Template talk:Ratings. I hope you don't mind that Kolano, but it seemed silly to have it ALL here, even ideas that apply to everything. - MaJoR (talk) 11:26, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * I would replace that "Eyesore" with "Not Recommended", it's a bit more ample, we could tag 2D only titles here as well... - Jhonn (talk) 18:27, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * And give them 1 star also? This also takes away the hint whether the game runs in 2D or 3D. It's good opportunity for the non-3D users! By the way, thanks for adding category tags to the experimental templates I made. I've forgotten about that. One more thing, I've never got the 3D condition rating working in Twilight Princess/Sandbox. Maybe someone can help? EDIT: Got it working!Lucario (talk) 22:00, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * There's a lot of aspects to consider when defining whether a game runs in 2D or 3D, and I'm afraid this will increase chances of complaints/fights about a given rating because this system very susceptible to those kind of flaws, that's why I think both 2D games or games severely messed when in 3D should use the same 1-star rating (to specifically avoid that -- we could note whether the game is 2D or 3D on Enhancements section, for example). There are games that are obviously 2D only (like Zelda Four Swords Adventures) but we also have veeery odd cases of 3D games that for whatever reason doesn't output 3D at all (e.g. Super Paper Mario is a game that generally plays in 2D perspective but Mario has the ability to "flip" the world in 3D but even in the flipped world I couldn't get any depth at all, even after messing with all available options -- only the HUD were affected). - Jhonn (talk) 22:44, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * I'm trying to think of other cases, other than those two examples you provided, and I'm afraid you're right, I can imagine the games that run 2D most of the times have tendency to cause eyesore when/if there is 3D effect at all. That same eyesore as those 3D games with bad 3D ratings. Here's the revised table with my own words. What do you think?
 * {| class="wikitable"

!|3D Condition !|Description Excellent Acceptable Not Recommended Unknown
 * [[Image:3DStars3.png]]
 * [[Image:3DStars3.png]]
 * Excellent: Nice stereoscopic 3D gameplay experience
 * [[Image:3DStars2.png]]
 * [[Image:3DStars2.png]]
 * Acceptable: Some visual issues
 * [[Image:3DStars1.png]]
 * [[Image:3DStars1.png]]
 * Not recommended: Eyesore and/or renders in 2D
 * [[Image:3DStars0.png]]
 * [[Image:3DStars0.png]]
 * Unknown: Has not been tested yet
 * colspan=2| Notice: 3D condition of a game is rated during its main gameplay only.
 * }
 * Lucario (talk) 04:50, 29 November 2015 (CET)
 * AHH KOLANO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! BRILLIANT! They looks super nice. Can they be arranged more to the north? I've reworded some in attempt to shorten/expand the word length for consistency. "OK" -> "Acceptable" and "Not Recommended" -> "Eyesore/2D". Are these words OK?
 * On a second thought, I'm perfectly fine with the way they're arranged.
 * We've got several issues: 1. The rating stars will not be clickable when the text is over them. They've got links that will lead to the game list with same rating. 2. The Note.svg.png will be arranged next to text instead of image of stars. I've band-aided them with & n b s p ; but I'd like the real fix if available. Lucario (talk) 02:18, 30 November 2015 (CET)
 * LOL, NO! Please, no! This text overlapping the stars is just awful, looks like broken website rendering! I would go either stars only or the previous "label" concept MaJoR showed before in Template talk:Infobox VG - Jhonn (talk) 03:22, 30 November 2015 (CET)
 * I'm gonna agree with Jhonn actually. By doing this the clickable area of the image of stars is inadvertently blocked by it.
 * The table has been revised to exactly follow MaJoR's concept. What do you think? Lucario (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2015 (CET)
 * The table has been revised to exactly follow MaJoR's concept. What do you think? Lucario (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2015 (CET)

Cleaned up the text alignment, and removed the quotes. I don't think the text in the final row should appear, as we should be concerned with 3d issues generally, not just during gameplay. I also feel the ratings should associate with the level of problems that occur in a title under 3d output. So I still dislike labeling 2D titles as 1 star. Titles that can be played in 3d output mode without issues should get 3 stars, even if not making use of 3d output features. Some 2d titles may be completely wacky under 3d output, which would be listed as issues for the title and depending on the severity would grant them a different rating. Related to that, I'd suggest changing the text, perhaps: "Excellent: No problems", "Acceptable: Minor problems not impacting play","Not recommended: Problems impacting play". I definitely dislike the "Eyesore" label, we should be matching the other columns label. I presume the "Eyesore/2d" text was used because "Not recommended" extended beyond the width of 3 stars, perhaps "Unacceptable" which is about the same width would be better. Not sure if there's a better set of terms, I'm a bit uncomfortable stating what may or not be acceptable to someone else. Kolano (talk) 09:31, 30 November 2015 (CET)

Continue this thread →
 * I can tell you that "Not Recommended" extending beyond the width of 3 stars is no longer an issue. It was originally inline over the stars but they're now on beneath of them. I'm okay with going back to "Not Recommended". Can you update your font styling changes to Infobox VG/sandbox as well? Thanks. Lucario (talk) 10:09, 30 November 2015 (CET)

I thought of something that may look clever: For 3D ratings we'll have only 3 states, right? What about a small circle that can get gray (for undefined), yellow (to replace 1 star), green (to replace 2 stars) or blue (to replace 3 stars), following the label? BTW, those colors aren't final, initially I thought of gray, red, yellow, green but red may look like it's shouting "LOOK TO ME NOW!". I'll do a mockup soon - Jhonn (talk) 18:04, 30 November 2015 (CET)

Well, I'm far from home and hadn't time to actually code a concept and only have MS Paint at my disposition, but that's what I meant (ignore the misalignments/linebreaks and the aliased circles): Jhonn (talk) 19:41, 30 November 2015 (CET)

Here's a version of Jhonn's idea in code that can be modified. I think stop light colors provide clearer info /wo documentation than yellow, green, blue. We can go pastel if the colors are too bold. One problem I see with it rather than using stars is that it's less clear that a rating of 1=Not recommended and 3=Excellent than when using a star count that match the assigned rating. On the other hand, perhaps the lack of stars is better to distinguish the two ratings. Kolano (talk) 19:58, 30 November 2015 (CET)

Continue this thread →
 * /\ THIS! Exactly what I meant, despite the gray (that I made a little lighter) Kolano even managed to tone down the red color a little bit so it don't look like it's shouting to my eyes, thanks, I liked... - Jhonn (talk) 02:14, 1 December 2015 (CET)
 * To give appropriate credit, Lucario revised the colors. Kolano (talk) 02:45, 1 December 2015 (CET)


 * Unfortunately that doesn't pass the colorblind test. The green and yellow are almost identical at least what I've seen in the colorblind simulator tool (here). I will set up the color profiles in the up there then we can preview it in the simulator tools and decide which ones that looks good and will be used in every game pages. You can add your own color profile and see if everyone likes it!Lucario (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2015 (CET)

While talking with JMC earlier, it seems changes coming down the pike related to supporting VR headsets are likely to impact/improve 3d rendering in a lot of titles. Based on that they encouraged us to not rush into actually rating things right now. We probably should bring the discussion of how we'll handle things when it's appropriate to move forward with such to a close though. Feel free to continue to respond, but I'll try to add some summary of things later so we can hopefully keep things needing further discussion moving forward. Kolano (talk) 02:52, 1 December 2015 (CET)

Continue this thread →
 * Gotcha. What if we move the discussion to how the 3D info should look/what should we put on the entry when moved to Enhancements section (well, if you guys agree moving it there) and hold the 3D rating implementation until it's ready (I mean, keep discussing it but don't implement anything outside of sandboxes, at least not yet)? - Jhonn (talk) 03:19, 1 December 2015 (CET)

My wordings in the description column aren't set in the stone. I'm always up for better way how it's written.Lucario (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2015 (CET)